Need to borrow a puppy? A Utah college student is running an hourly puppy rental business with the goal of finding the dogs a good home.
Jenna Miller, 20, of Brigham Young University in Utah rents out puppies to fellow college students and animal lovers.
"We're not allowed to have pets in college and a lot of people miss the interaction, so it was something I wanted to solve," Jenna Miller, 20, told "Good Morning America."
The rentable pooches come from people who are giving up their pets. Miller rents out 11-week-old mixed breed puppies Toast and Charly to those who are in need of some quality puppy time. She rents the dogs out for $15 an hour or $25 for two hours.
"Our goal is to place the puppies in good homes. We're taking puppies that would otherwise be sitting in a cage, in a pound," Miller said.
Miller understands that not everyone can keep the dogs, but she thinks it's a better option to have them taken care of by a family for at least a little while than for them to be alone in a pound. However, her business gives people a test run of the dogs and they can decide if they'd like to permanently adopt them.
"I think that adoption is obviously a superior option, with the responsibility, but that's just not an option for a lot of people and I think you have to recognize that and we are placing the dogs in homes," Miller told GMA.
Last month, a student named Summer Jones rented one of the puppies named Douglas. She liked him so much that she wound up keeping him.
"Having a puppy is a lot of work," Jones said. "My mom has been really resistant about getting a dog, but I think me bringing him home and us renting him, the fact that we got to rent him and play with him, it softened my mom's heart a little."
Miller believes her business helps "create pet owners, people who thought they'd never have a dog. They rent a puppy, they see how much fun their kids have with it, they see the positive benefits of a dog."
However not everyone agrees with the practice. Bill Berloni, a dog trainer for the Humane Society of New York says that renting out puppies can be bad for the dogs. He believes that puppies that are rented out will be more difficult to train and will have problems learning to attach to people.
"It reduces them to things, things we use for our leisure," Berloni told GMA.
However Miller's customer have grown to see the dog as much more than just things. Her business has been very successful so far. All of the 11 puppies that she rented out were eventually adopted by college students or families.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
