Last weekend Oceanside residents and animal lovers protested in front of a newly opened puppy store on Oceanside Blvd.

Protesters stated that the puppies are trucked in from puppy mills in Missouri instead of coming from local shelters and their goal is to rally support in the city of Oceanside to create a ban on the sale of puppies, kittens, and bunnies at retail storefronts.

Over a dozen cities in California including Los Angeles, Laguna Beach, Dana Point, Chula Vista, and San Diego have adopted ordinances placing restrictions on the sale of animals from commercial breeders. The ban was created to stop the flow of puppy-mill puppies into those cities, which increases the number of  dogs left languishing in shelters, effectively increasing the number of animals euthanized each year and costing cities money.

As one of the protesters put it, “We want them to be here. We love the business. We just don’t want them to sell puppy-mill dogs. It would be wonderful if they would take puppies from our shelters because we have hundreds of them.”

Follow the link for the full story in the Union Tribune: Oceanside-pet-store-protest