This was kind of a sad finding to me: "Nearly 20 percent of prior pet owners surveyed said they didn't acquire a new dog or cat because they were still grieving the loss of a previous pet."
It has been a major goal of the American Humane Association to increase pet ownership. I hope they put equal efforts into pet owner education, because as we all know there are far too many pet owners that have no business being around animals. Some of these are just nasty people who will never treat animals well, but many others are simply ill informed, misguided, and clueless. If better access to quality affordable training and behavior advice was offered, pets would benefit greatly. The push to increase pet ownership should definitely be accompanied by a push to increase educational opportunities for the pet owning public. After all, behavior issues are a major reason cats and dogs end up dumped at shelters.
Additionally, I still believe spay & neuter initiatives to decrease the unwanted pet population should be the #1 goal rather than increased pet ownership. There are simply not enough
good homes for all of these unwanted cats and dogs
. 
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