Adopt Don't Shop

Planning an Event

Adopt Don’t Shop Day is the ideal time to educate your community and your neighbors as they finish their holiday shopping. If you can advocate in a busy shopping area, you can reach thousands of people. Your efforts can be as low-key as passing out educational leaflet about pet factories (see IDAusa.org website for samples) for a few hours with friends. Below are some tips and ideas to get you started. Remember to register your event here and order your posters and outreach literature.

Click here for Adopt, Don’t Shop Talking Points

Choosing a Location
Getting Permission
Demonstrations
Leafleting
Information Tabling

Choosing a Location

Ideally, your event should be held in a busy outside shopping area either near or in front of a retailer that sells puppies and/or kittens.

Getting Permission

Once you have chosen a location, you should check with the local police office to learn whether permits are required for the event you have in mind. Requirements for permits vary widely so it is essential to always confirm well in advance of your event. Some questions you might ask include:

Do I need a permit? (Permits are usually easy to apply for but may take two or three weeks to process.)
Are there any restrictions on the type of equipment that can be set up?

Demonstrations

The possibilities for Adopt Don’t Shop demonstrations are limited only by your imagination. Demonstrations have the advantage of attracting media attention, informing the public about your issue, and involving community members in grassroots activism. But if poorly planned or conducted, they have the potential disadvantage of reinforcing stereotypes of animal activists as irrational or combative. At the worst, isolated illegal or rude acts are sometimes depicted as the norm for animal advocates. Keep in mind that you are representing what we wish to be, a mainstream movement, and act as such.

Make it a priority to have good literature and background information available to the media. The Demonstration Checklist will help you organize and coordinate your event.

Leafleting

Leafleting can be a great way to educate the public. We can provide you with leaflets and brochures. To be effective, keep the following tips in mind:

Don't wait for people to approach you, walk up to them, and hand them a flier with a friendly smile and a positive comment like, “Have a compassionate holiday.” Then move on.
Make eye contact to engage; but stay friendly, rather than challenging.
Prepare some brief answers ahead of time to questions such as, "Who's doing this?" or "What's this all about?"
Don't waste time arguing. Be polite.
Try to get someone else to leaflet with you.
Dress neatly and conservatively.

Information Tabling

Setting up an information table in a public place is a simple and relatively easy outreach activity, educating hundreds of people in your community. Literature and other materials for tabling are available from IDA. You may want to integrate one of our anti-puppy mill posters, glued to 1/4-inch or 3/8-inch sheet of foamcore, into your display. You may also set up a video monitor and show IDA’s anti-puppy mill PSA or make another kind of attractive display. (See Tabling Checklist). One advantage of tabling is that it takes only a few people to run a table all day. Always be friendly and patient while tabling. If someone comes up to the table and persists in creating a debate, DO NOT ARGUE. State your position briefly and firmly, express regret at your disagreement, and then immediately turn to someone else – you are out there to reach people, not debate. When you argue at the table you miss the opportunity to educate someone else who may be more receptive, and you appear less approachable to others.

Adopt, Don’t Shop Talking Points

Adopt, Don’t Shop Day

We are educating the public as part of the 1st annual “Adopt, Don’t Shop” day with over 25 events taking place in front of pet stores across the country and Canada.
As consumers, we have the power to stop the cruel cycle of animal abuse perpetuated by puppy mills and pet factories.
Adopting a dog instead of buying one is the surest way to strike a blow against puppy mills. Animal shelters have dozens of dogs, many of them purebreds, just waiting for homes. There are also breed specific rescue groups for every breed of dog, including "designer" or "hybrids" like Labradoodles and Puggles.

Puppy mills & pet stores

Despite claims made by pet stores, most pet store puppies come from puppy mills.
Constant confinement of puppy mills and a lack of adequate veterinary care and socialization often result in animals who are unhealthy and difficult to socialize.
Puppies are taken from their mothers and sold to brokers who pack them into crates for transport and resale to pet stores. Puppies who are shipped from mill to broker to pet store can travel hundreds of miles in pickup trucks, tractor trailers, and/or airplanes, often without adequate food, water, ventilation, or shelter.
There are thousands of breeders and dealers across the country. In Missouri alone, there are more than 1,400 licensed dog-breeding operations, although so many illegal breeders are in business that a state audit advised that the program designed to regulate commercial breeding was ineffective.
At puppy mills, dogs are bred for quantity, not quality, so unmonitored genetic defects and personality disorders that are passed on from generation to generation are common.

USDA & Lack of Government Regulation

The USDA is supposed to monitor and inspect kennels to ensure that they are not violating the housing standards of the Animal Welfare Act, but kennel inspections are a low priority.
In the U.S., there are more than 1,000 research facilities, more than 2,800 exhibitors, and 4,500 dealers that are supposed to be inspected each year. There are three APHIS sector offices with a total of approximately 70 veterinary inspectors who are supposed to inspect, unannounced, the various types of facilities covered by the AWA. This means that 70 inspectors have to cover more than 8,300 facilities nationwide.
Many USDA-licensed breeders get away with repeated violations of the Animal Welfare Act. These violators are rarely fined nor are their licenses suspended. Facilities with long histories of repeated violations for basic care conditions are often allowed to renew their licenses again and again.

Companion Animal Overpopulation

Every animal bred and born—on purpose or by accident—and every animal purchased from a breeder or a pet shop fills a home that could have taken in a dog or a cat dying for a home at a local shelter.
Every year in the U.S. shelters across the nation are forced to put to death roughly half of the 6 million to 8 million unwanted dogs and cats who pour into their overwhelmed facilities.