The United States is experiencing a pet overpopulation crisis and seeing increased euthanasia rates nationwide. Contributing to this issue is the ease with which backyard breeders can advertise their litters of puppies for sale, particularly on Craigslist.

Craigslist prohibits “pet sales (re-homing with small adoption fee ok), animal parts, stud service” (https://www.craigslist.org/about/prohibited). However, there is a massive problem on Craigslist with people advertising puppies for sale under the guise of “rehoming” them or placing them for “adoption.” There are also many posts where people are either requesting stud services or offering up their dogs for stud service.

These posts are incredibly easy to find. There are countless ads for litters of designer or purebred dogs (make no mistake, these are not “accidental litters” of purebred or designer puppies that are in high demand), mentions of AKC registration, dogs with high “rehoming” or “adoption” fees, and even exact mentions of “stud service.” All it takes is a simple search in Craigslist’s pets or for sale sections to find these listings.

Craigslist currently does not enforce their restrictions on posts like these, instead relying on people to “flag” prohibited posts. The flagging system is entirely inefficient as multiple people need to flag posts to get them removed. Craigslist’s lack of enforcement of their own rules gives unethical breeders the opportunity to easily sell puppies on their platform and lets people with stud dogs profit off their pups while further contributing to overcrowding in shelters and higher euthanasia rates.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

The nation is in a pet overpopulation crisis, and we need Craigslist to do their part to help. We are asking Craigslist CEO, Jim Buckmaster, and his team to do one of the following:

1. Either enforce the rules set forth on their site by automatically removing/deleting posts that contain verbiage that is consistent with stud services and backyard breeders that are selling puppies, OR
2. If enforcing their own rules is too difficult, they can completely remove the pets section from their site and automatically remove/delete posts in the “for sale” section that pertain to animals

We ask Craigslist to please immediately implement one of the above solutions to help reduce the homeless pet population and lower euthanasia rates throughout the country by ensuring dogs are not being sold on their site or used for stud services.