Pet stores no place to find a companion

My daughter refuses to watch any nonanimated movie with a dog as a main character. After seeing one too many of these in her 19 years, she has concluded man’s best friend “always dies in the end.”

This, of course, isn’t true. Critics and parents alike nauseated by Beethoven and the Air Buddies couldn’t kill off those canines in multiple sequels and, yes, while it’s been a few years since those series have been in production — trust me — they are just cat napping.

But in real life, all dogs do eventually die. The many joys that spunky puppy brings us on arrival eventually ends in a painful moment when a faithful, furry family member leaves forever. This is what happened to us last month.

Murphy, our yellow Labrador retriever who never missed an opportunity to sneak a snack or lick a face within tongue’s reach, was 13. The boy, who was always a boy no matter how gray his muzzle or how slow and short his daily walks became, survived an awful lot in those years.

A yearlong run of diarrhea, explosive and slimy, from an intestinal parasite.

Two bouts with a rare autoimmune disease that caused blotchy, itchy lesions.

A fungal infection in his sinus cavity that caused a bloody nose that keep me up with him on both Christmas and New Year Eve’s one year, and left him with a runny right nostril for his last seven.

Then there was the time he devoured rat poison.

You know, the usual Lab stuff. All that and old age finally caught up to The Murphinator on Aug. 12. It came after one last summer of lounging on my home office couch while I worked and in the left field foul territory of Cubeta Stadium while my son play baseball. He even managed a final sunset with his family on the beach of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. It wasn’t the worst of ways to go.

While our family is still grieving, me probably more than anyone, we did agree early on that we wouldn’t be complete without another wagging tail around. We also agreed we should bring into our lives a dog who needed us as much we needed him.

My wife and daughter quickly started scouring dog rescue sites. Unexpectedly fast, we found and adopted an affectionate little 14weekold Southern gentleman named Lester, part hound, part terrier and many other parts unknown.

Lester, who was quickly renamed Dinger (that’s a home run in baseball) by my daughter, came to us through The Little Pink Shelter in Westport, a nonprofit that works with rescue groups in Arkansas to find new homes for the many stray and abandoned dogs there who deserve a chance to be loved and give love to others. In 10 years, Little Pink Shelter has helped more than 3,000 adult dogs and puppies do just that.

All of this transpired before I had caught up on the local news about the current proposal before our city’s Board of Representatives to ban pet stores from selling puppies and kittens. (The measure is on hold while the city reviews possible conflicts of authority with the state.) So this may be one of the few times in my life that I was actually ahead of the curve on something.

Murphy and his predecessor, Kiner (another Lab) came from highly respected breeders we vetted through multiple references and who also did some work to make sure we knew what we were getting into with a highenergy pup.

However, a pet store is not a breeder and it’s often hard to know how legitimate the source of its animals are given the minimal federal standards for selling animals and lack of enforcement and transparency in the industry.

Unless a store is working with a reputable shelter or rescue organization to place dogs and cats already in jeopardy, a pet store dog or cat purchase — and they are a purchase, not an adoption — could be abetting puppy mills and the worst kinds of animal breeding practices, proponents of the ban say.

At a time when 1.5 million dogs and cats brought into U.S. shelters are euthanized because they couldn’t be returned to their original homes or new ones found for them, this is irresponsible.

So buy chew toys, puppy chow and kitty litter at your local pet store, not your family’s new best friend. For Dinger’s sake. Stamford native and resident Kevin McKeever is a nationally awardwinning columnist and a freelance writer for hire. Email him at kevin@writeonkevin.com.