I was driving back from the airport yesterday and dropped into a hardware store (called a home center here in Japan). I was grabbing some absorbent pads in the pet section and glanced over at the puppies. There are often Shiba pups for sale, but this one looked different.
And there it is. The first Shikoku pup I've ever seen in a pet store, being sold for 248,000 JPY.
And there it is. The first Shikoku pup I've ever seen in a pet store, being sold for 248,000 JPY.
:( and he/she is very expensive for this "quality"
ReplyDeleteTalk about a dichotomy of emotions. Do you know what breeder it came from? Is there any sort of stigma that comes with breeders that produce puppies that end up in pet stores in the Japanese culture as there is here in the U.S.?
ReplyDeleteIt says it was bred in Tochigi, but I don't know any kennels there. Could be it's a puppy mill type establishment, or just a byb with a few dogs.
DeleteI'd say that for a famous kennel it would be bad for your reputation to see your pups in a pet store (which means they were taken to an auction and sold there), but it goes deeper than just puppies ending up in pet stores. In Japan people who breed dogs as a business (in the Nihon Ken world anyway) are generally looked down on a little bit. That's a pretty blanket statement, but fairly fair I think. This has its roots in Japanese culture I think where the purity of one's motives is important, especially in things that involve culture and art, and that's the world of the Nihon Ken.