PETS IN ENGLAND

Manawatu Times, Volume 64, Issue 306, 28 December 1939, Page 10

PETS IN ENGLAND

Resumption of Demand LONDON. People are buying pets again. Dogs, cats, tropical fish, and singing birds are coming into their own once more, and at slightly reduced prices. Large dogs have gone out of fashion. They eat too much, they need too much exercise, and they take up too much room in crowded evacuee households. Small breeds, like cairns, cocker spaniels. Yorkshire terriers and Pekingese. are in demand. Professional breeders of vhese types are keeping on their stud dogs. Women with husbands on A.R.P. night duty want a small house dog; those who have moved into lonely country districts need a pet for company and protection. Dog owners who had their pets destroyed in the first panic of the war are buying new ones. They miss them so much and the feared gas attacked have not come. The only breeders who have given up dojs are the amateurs who, before the war. bred thousands every year. Many of these were retired officers, who have gone back into the services: others were women who have turned to land work and food production. Empty houses and the destruction of hundreds of cats by evacuating families have produced a plague of mice and rats; so cats are in demand again.