Date:10/12/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/12/10/stories/2008121050940200.htm

New Delhi

High time to express your ‘puppy love’

In a unique animal-friendly initiative, non-government organisation People For Animals in collaboration with Select City Mall is putting up a two-day puppy adoption corner in the Capital at Christmas Bazaar in Saket beginning this Wednesday.

The puppy adoption corner will offer puppies for free adoption. Named “Puppy Love”, the stall will be done up in the form of a manger in keeping with the Christmas spirit. There will be 15 to 20 puppies at the stall. The initiative has been welcomed by a number of leading vets and pet product retailers who have come forward to support it.

This is the first time that shelter puppies are being promoted to the public. It is an enormously useful endeavour since puppies have very high susceptibility to infections in a shelter and urgently need to find homes. Since few people bother to visit shelters to choose pets, this is a wonderful way of taking pups to them. It has been found that children who have pets at home become more intelligent and responsible than those that don’t have animals.

Moreover, Indian dogs are better suited to the local climate and conditions. They make bright, beautiful, loving and loyal companions. If instead of buying dogs people were to adopt pups off the street or a shelter, there would soon be no strays left to suffer on the street.

Windsor Pet Shop of Khan Market and Heads Up for Tails of Saket have contributed puppy beds for the stall, while a leading veterinarian, Dr. Narendra Gandhi of East of Kailash, has offered free lifetime rabies and tetanus vaccinations for any pup adopted from here.

Staff Reporter