After PETA Push, Dog-Breeding Restraint No Longer Sold at Walmart

After PETA pointed out that immobilizing dog-breeding stands, also known as “rape racks,” are used to restrain female dogs so that they can’t fight back as they’re mounted by males, Walmart removed the horrific metal devices from its website.

Mother dogs are nothing more than puppy-making machines to breeders, and most places that sell puppies obtain them from puppy mills, hellish mass-breeding facilities where dogs are typically forced to live in cramped, squalid conditions with minimal—if any—veterinary care and human interaction. Walmart’s removal of dog-breeding stands is a win for dogs and sets an example of compassion and responsibility for other retailers to follow.

What You Can Do to Help Dogs Used for Breeding

The solution to ending the suffering of dogs used by breeders is simple: Stop buying them. The breeding industry is big business, and as long as there is money to be made by selling, showing, and breeding dogs, greedy breeders will continue to produce more of them—regardless of how much suffering they cause to dogs in the process.

Many “purebred” dogs become ill, exhibit psychological distress, or die prematurely because of traits they were bred to have in order to meet archaic standards set by the American Kennel Club. Plus, buying a dog means that a homeless one in a shelter will lose a potential family.

More than 70 million dogs and cats are homeless in the U.S. at any given time, and breeders exacerbate this crisis by producing additional litters of animals. Dogs, cats, and all other animals are individuals, not property, which is why they should never be bought from pet stores, breeders, online catalogs, or anywhere else. At reputable animal shelters, animals are spayed or neutered before they’re adopted so as not to contribute to the companion animal overpopulation crisis.