Pet stores in Japan

jeffnkazuko

I just visited a pet store in Kawasaki and there were two Japanese dogs for sale. One was a Shiba (mame or bean type). It was female and soooo cute! The other was an all white Shiba, a male but his face looked a bit too sharp, maybe mixed or perhaps a Hokkaido? The mame was cheaper than the other dog but both were in small cages and the store is quite dubious. On the second floor they were even selling monkeys!!! I am just wondering if this still goes on in North America or not. I feel so sorry for these dogs and this store even had an Akita a month or so ago in a tiny little cage.

jeffnkazuko

Jbm0024

I randomly stumbled across a pet store in Kabukicho a couple of weeks ago and I saw a Kai and a Shiba. They were in small cages for sure, as well as the rest of the dogs.

InuRyuu

Still plenty of petshop puppymilled Shibas in the US. Think about how keeping a puppy in a small cage is a sales motivator. Makes a person want to rescue it from the terrible enclosure.

Crispy

When I was still a kid, I worked kennels of a small pet shop. The dog care and the retail positions were separate - thankfully - so I could dedicate all of my time to the dogs but I frequently got warnings for letting the puppies run around the store/kennel area in the morning before the retail crew came in (I either let a puppy run around too long or I forgot to clean up something a puppy pulled off the shelf).

To be a little more on topic and answer your question... most of the pet shops that sell dogs are being shut down in my area and the one that I worked at closed down almost a year ago.


I was always very worried about the Shiba (as well as the other dogs - but I always more for the "harder" breeds) we carried and we often had a woman who was involved in Shiba rescue come in and play with our Shiba and express her concern that a lot of these Shiba would end up put up for adoption as soon as they stopped being "cute" and started being "Shiba". There were several times I wanted to take the Shiba we got in home with me.

This one (came to us with the name "Oki") was one of my favorites. He stayed with us for an awfully long time. I'm almost certain he was mixed with some kind of terrier or Basenji. He had little-to-no Urajiro and large white markings with ticking. We used to get a lot of Shiba with bold white markings.

shibamistress

Those poor little pups!

I remember seeing some truly odd animals in pet stores in Japan. Chipmunks one day, for example! They never had dogs in the one I visited (Kintetsu dept store) in Osaka, thankfully, but did have a lot of other small animals. And going to the meat dept. was almost as interesting...one day I saw an octopus escape from the seafood counter and make its way of across the floor.

But while there are less and less dogs in the pet stores in the US, there are still some, like Petland, that refuse to stop selling, and the puppy mills of course just move to the internet. It's pretty sad.

Saya

Sadly there's tons petshops here.

None close to me thankfully most them seem to be in big cities we used to have one in the mall it closed down another one opened up, but got closed do.

I saw a show where they were selling beetles for pets at this one pet store I think it was either bizarre foods or maybe something else I forgot..

Sadly pet shops that sell puppies are everywhere in every country I'm sure.

jeffnkazuko

I saw 2 female shibas for sale today. One was getting big so was marked down half-price. The other was really small, a bit too small I thought, but had a high price tag. I think Shiba are the common mans dog here in Japan and not in such great demand compared to other breeds. I get the feeling the people that want a Shiba are the ones not interested in dressing their dog in latest fashions ect.. just a regular family dog.

kumachan

I've never appreciated pet stores in Japan. There's a "Home Depot" type store in my wife's hometown of Tsuchiura that had the following animals in small cages for sale the last time I was there: puppies, kittens; a full grown golden retriever; raccoons; squirrels; chipmunks; and rabbits. The squirrels and chipmunks had, apparently, gone insane and were literally flipping over in their cages, nonstop. Granted, it was Japan, and the cages were spotless and the animals water and food was regularly changed, it made no sense to me that there were pets for sale in a hardware store/lumber yard.

There is also a fairly well known professional Shiba inu breeder in Tsuchiura that we regularly visit when we're over there. I think that most people on this forum would be horrified to see how breeders operate in Japan as compared to the States. I was taken aback the first time I went there as the pups and stock dogs were kept in very small, cramped cages, but all the dogs I've seen at that breeder's shop over the last 12 years have all seemed to be happy and playful and got a lot of time rotated out of their cages.

shibamistress

Yeah, when I lived in Osaka, I saw a lot of Shibas in the working class neighborhood I lived in, and when I got into fancier parts of the city, it was more other types of dogs. I do remember talking to my students about dogs (I taught english in Japan) and the vast majority of them had never seen or encountered an Akita (of course they knew about Hachiko, but hadn't really seen one), and they were dismissive about Shibas as being uninteresting, common dogs.

Not a novelty, I guess.

jellyfish

@shibamistress did you encounter any Akitas yourself over there? And so, if people knew about hachiko,is it a big deal to own an Akita in Japan? Or are akitas not as highly saught after/ not fashionable anymore? I see that the shibas arent much of anything over there, which i find odd. I don't know much about shibas, but I know of the akita's history, so i would think at least akitas would be a big deal over there.

It's fascinating to see how other countries view things differently.

Sangmort

Ive noticed, that while us westerners are all over the stuff that's in Japan, Japan is usually all over what's in the west. Sort of, "the grass is greener on the other side" kind of thing.

A japanese friend [ from Hiroshima ] once told me that, while japanese breeds are gaining popularity here in the states, in Japan, they actually like western breeds. ~

Saya

Raccoons? Wow raccoons or Tanuki? I don't think I'd want a raccoon, tanuki, chipmunk, squirrel as a pet..

I had a rock pigeon as a pet once a dog got it and broke it's wing my brother had shoot a gun in the ground to get the dog to stop..

The wing had to be amputated and my dad built a nice sized cage for her to walk around and get on ledges and stuff.. She was pretty friendly actually and allowed me to pick her up during when it was time to clean the cage.

I'm not a fan of any pet store who sells puppies impulse buys are high there..

Funny how it is.. I mainly like Japanese breeds and other Asian breeds due to their primitiveness. I love village type dogs, dingo, singers etc..

I also like anime too.. lol

kumachan

No, it wasn't tanuki, definitely raccoon. I've seen a few tanuki (in Nara, actually) and way too many raccoon to know the difference!

Saya

Yuck Racoons make horrible pets dunno on tanuki, but I rather keep those things in wild where they belong..

I read on this forum of a kai ken which searches for raccoons for removal because they're not native this might be where these raccoons came from..

Raccoons chew up things and can get nasty coarse being raised might make it less so, but I think I rather a boxer or a shiba as a pet..

jeffnkazuko

@jellyfart I see the occasional Akita but very few compared to Shibas. I think most Japanese people think Hachiko was as Shiba and not an Akita. Some people I have met still think of them as fighting dogs but again people are into non-Japanese breeds more than Akitas or shibas.

shishiinu

Usually people who buy the raccoons as pets end up letting them go in the mountains. Because of that Japan has a growing population of raccoons, north American snapping turtles, alligator gars, Taiwanese squirrels, and many other invasive animals.