A Chihuahua awaits adoption at a shelter in Los Angeles. Experts blame the glut of abandoned Chihuahuas, which make up about one-third of the dogs at many California shelters, on the influence of pop culture, a bad economy, and puppy mills. (David McNew/Getty Images)

While animal rights activists are lauding a Vancouver suburb’s decision to ban the retail sale of puppies, a pet store owner says he will fight the move, calling it discriminatory.

Richmond city council voted unanimously on Oct. 4 to draft a bylaw banning the sale of puppies in pet stores, becoming the first municipality in Canada to make such a decision.

The move is an attempt to rein in the impulse buying of puppies and stop pet stores from purchasing animals from puppy mills or unscrupulous backyard breeders.

Ernest Ang, owner of Pet Habitat, a British Columbia franchise, says the ban is “totally unfair.”

“I’m running a very, very legitimate operation. I don’t support puppy mills,” Ang says, adding that all his puppies come from a reputable USDA-licensed kennel in the United States and are examined by a vet prior to export.

“As far as I’m concerned we’ve complied with all the requirements of the city, and in fact we keep upgrading the standards, and we are much better than any stores in North America as far as handling of pets is concerned,” he says.

Ang, who opened his store in the Richmond Centre mall 30 years ago, says the city should put its efforts into stopping illegitimate breeders operating locally, such as Puppy Paradise, an alleged puppy mill in Abbotsford recently raided by the B.C. SPCA.

If the bylaw is approved, the ban is slated to be implemented in April 2011, giving pet store owners time to sell or remove their dogs.

“It was the right decision. And it was certainly the most humane thing [council] could have done,” says Christie Lagally of the ban.

Lagally is with the Animal Welfare Advocacy Coalition which has been advocating for a ban on the sale of puppies in Richmond’s pet stores for three years.

The ban will help stem the flow of dogs from puppy mills in the U.S., says Lagally—animals that have “come from horrific conditions and the parent dogs are still in those awful conditions.”

“We wanted to stop the importing of those animals. And the only way we could find to do it was to actually ban their sale, just take away the demand.”

The ban will also result in fewer abandoned dogs winding up at the local animal shelter, she says.

“There is overwhelming evidence that our Richmond animal shelter is just full of purebred dogs and dogs that are sold in pet stores. What we find is most people go and do an impulse purchase which soon ends up at the animal shelter, oftentimes with the receipt that they got from the pet store.”

Lagally says puppies sold at Pet Habitat and PJ’s Pets, a Canadian franchise, come from the Hunte Corporation, a notorious U.S.-based brokerage that gets its dogs from puppy mills in Missouri and Minnesota.

Because the Canadian Kennel Club’s breeders’ code of ethics stipulates that breeders cannot sell to pet stores, it is largely believed that most of the puppies sold in stores come from backyard breeders and puppy mills, both in Canada and the U.S.

A 2009 CBC documentary traced dogs sold in Canadian pet stores to U.S. puppy mills, where the animals are bred in unhygienic conditions strictly for financial gain with little regard for their health or well-being.

There are more than 10,000 puppy mills operating in the U.S., producing between two and four million dogs annually, according to Kristin Bryson, a criminal prosecutor and volunteer member of the SPCA board of directors.

Bryson told council on Oct. 4 that housing and euthanizing all the unwanted animals costs U.S. taxpayers $2 billion per year. Several U.S. cities, including Fort Lauderdale and Austin, have full or partial bans on the retail sale of live animals.

The Richmond ban will not only help reduce the number of abandoned dogs but also “send a good educational message that people can turn to their local shelters or the SPCA to be matched with wonderful animals that need homes,” says Marcie Moriarty, general manager of cruelty investigations with the SPCA.

Moriarty hopes all municipalities will follow Richmond’s lead, which earlier this year also banned the sale of rabbits in pet stores to curb the problem of growing numbers of abandoned bunnies in parks.

“I think it would be a huge step for animal welfare, and also responsible pet ownership,” she says.

As for Eng, he says that with only three stores in Richmond that sell pets, he doesn’t understand why the city pursued the ban, noting that the price he charges for puppies—between $2,000 and $3,000—discourages impulse buys.

“We’re major contributors to business in Richmond, and I feel this is totally unfair,” he says. “We’re not selling anything illegal. We’re selling love, we’re selling companionship, and we’re adopting pets to new families, so how can they stop us from doing that?”

City council met for a reading on the issue on Tuesday night, ahead of a two-week series of public consultations.