• • •
Pet stores also came into the crosshairs of puppy mill opponents. A third of America’s 11,500 pet stores sell as many as 400,000 puppies a year, all told, and animal welfare groups estimate that 90 percent of them come from puppy mills.
In June 2007, the HSUS filed a class action lawsuit against the Wizard of Claws pet store in Broward County, Florida. The suit claimed the store misled customers into believing the puppies they’d purchased had come from reputable breeders. In fact, the dogs were the products of decrepit kennels, and a number of the animals suffered health problems and genetic flaws. The litigation actually began on a smaller scale four years earlier with a handful of disgruntled customers, but the HSUS helped unearth more than 250 victims. The lawsuit said the store’s veterinarian had signed health certificates allowing the sale of sick puppies. When customers confronted store personnel, they refused to reimburse them the purchase price of the dogs or their veterinary bills, which in some cases came to thousands of dollars.
That same year, the HSUS released a video report on a pet boutique in Los Angeles called Pets of Bel Air. Investigators visited five of the twenty-eight commercial breeders in the Midwest that supplied puppies to the store. All five were large-volume operations housing 100 to 300 dogs. Puppies frequently arrived at the stores ill or diseased.
On tape, the manager and employees of the pet shop could be heard openly discussing how to play down a puppy’s illness when customers were around. “Never say the dog is sick. Ever, ever, ever, ever,” one employee cautioned. “Never say ‘sick,’ ‘parvo,’ ‘distemper.’ Never. I usually say ‘sniffles.’ It sounds cuter.”
Other animal welfare groups pressured pet stores to stop selling dogs from puppy mills. Last Chance for Animals succeeded in shutting down four Posh Puppy stores in Los Angeles that were selling dogs produced in puppy mills. The group persuaded the new owner of another store, OrangeBone, to stop selling puppy mill dogs and offer rescue and shelter dogs instead. Best Friends Animal Society launched a similar campaign against the Pet Love pet store in Beverly Hills. The owners bowed to the criticism and announced they would terminate their lease the following month.
In 2008, the HSUS waged a major campaign against the practices of the Petland chain. The HSUS tracked puppies sold in twenty-one Petland stores across the country to thirty-five breeders who kept their dogs in squalid conditions, with little care or socialization. In contrast to Petland’s assurance that it dealt only with kennels that practiced “the highest standards of pet care,” state and federal inspection records found that more than 60 percent of the breeders selling to Petland had been cited for failing to provide basic care. Petland denounced the claims as “sensationalism at its best.”
It’s easy to see why pet stores want to sell dogs and cats. A purebred puppy purchased from a broker for $300 can be sold for three or four times that amount. Pet sales alone often generate 20 percent of a store’s revenue. But by the close of 2008, some pet stores began turning to the more politically correct practice of offering homeless animals instead. Customers could adopt a dog or cat and then turn around and buy hundreds of dollars’ worth of supplies from the store—a win-win scenario.
• • •
Raids on problem kennels continued into 2008. In eastern Oregon, rescuers seized more than sixty dogs who’d been abandoned three weeks earlier. In Stoughton, Massachusetts, authorities removed ninety Yorkshire Terriers, Cockapoos, and other dogs squeezed into a single house. In Henagar, Alabama, nearly seventy dogs were taken from a kennel so toxic workers were advised to don protective gear. In Jay, Oklahoma, enforcers removed more than 100 dogs who had gone without food for six days. In DeKalb County, Alabama, 131 dogs were seized. In Wenatchee, Washington, forty-seven Husky puppies were rescued; they were being sold on the Internet as part of a “Christian outreach.” In the Florida Keys, workers carried out forty-six dogs found locked in a warehouse. In Dexter, Wisconsin, workers removed eighty-four dogs from the kennel of a repeat offender. In Georgia, rescuers found 182 Chihuahuas, Yorkies, Shih Tzu, Pugs, and Poodles with bald spots, open sores, and severe ear and eye infections.
Communities were often caught off guard when dogs confined to hidden kennels suddenly surfaced in need of care. After Georgia closed a puppy mill, L&D Farm and Kennel in Jackson County, in February 2008, animal control officers seized more than 300 malnourished and mange-ridden dogs and farmed them out to a dozen area shelters. A month later, 750 dogs, mostly Chihuahuas, were removed from a triple-wide trailer in Pima County, Arizona. The Humane Society of Southern Arizona estimated it would cost $400,000 to rescue and treat the dogs. Two months later, fifty-four Dachshunds needed to be placed when authorities closed a puppy mill in Rockport, Texas.
While animal welfare groups were stepping up their vigilance, the country’s preeminent dog registry, the American Kennel Club, faced criticism for failing to do more to address problems in puppy mills. The organization rarely suspended breeders for poor standards of care, but instead tried to help them comply with its standards—seldom checking back, critics said, to see if any improvements were actually made.
To its credit, the AKC started a program in 2000 to better ensure the parentage of dogs in its registry. Any male dog who sired seven or more litters in a lifetime or more than three litters in a calendar year had to be DNA-tested, along with the puppies, to verify their parentage. The test involves swabbing the cheeks of the dogs.
A number of commercial breeders resisted the move. Unwilling to go along with the new requirements, members of the sizable Missouri Pet Breeders association boycotted the AKC and began registering their dogs with a little-known group based in Arkansas called the American Pet Registry, Inc. Like the American Canine Association, the American Purebred Registry, the North American Purebred Dog Registry, and two dozen similar groups, the American Pet Registry offered dog breeders an alternative form of registration that sounded impressive but required no proof of parentage. From 1999 to 2006, AKC registrations fell by nearly 250,000.
The AKC said it inspects annually breeders who produce more than twenty-five litters a year, and kennel operators who produce seven to twenty-four litters a year are inspected every eighteen months. The organization also conducts random inspections of kennels that are subjects of written, signed complaints, spokeswoman Lisa Peterson said. An AKC inspector’s main job is to check records and make certain the puppies’ parents are purebred and that all record-keeping is accurate. Inspectors also look to make sure dogs have adequate food, water, and shelter and that their kennels are appropriately built and not overcrowded.
The organization lacks regulatory authority, but its board of directors can suspend or revoke a breeder’s AKC privileges and forward information about poorly run kennels to officials who do have the power to shut down a kennel. Breeders convicted of animal cruelty are suspended from the AKC for ten years and fined $2,000, or fifteen years and $3,000 if the circumstances warrant it. Breeders like Michael Wolf are suspended permanently, meaning they can never again register a dog with the AKC.
When the AKC formed a High-Volume Breeders Committee in 2001 and invited Gretchen Bernardi to serve on it, she was delighted. Bernardi was steeped in credentials: an Irish Wolfhound breeder, she is an exhibitor, an AKC judge, and an AKC delegate representing the Mississippi Valley Kennel Club, the oldest kennel club west of the Mississippi. She belongs to the Illinois Livestock Commission and writes a column for Canine Chronicle magazine. She had long believed something needed to be done to rein in puppy mills.
Over the course of a year, the committee came up with several suggestions. It recommended that the AKC increase inspection and investigation staff and budget more money to inspect all high-volume breeders at least once a year; that it expand pet store inspections; that it develop a rapid-response plan to deal with high-volume kennels whose operators had become ill and were no longer able to take care of their dogs; that it b
uild a closer relationship with regulatory agencies; and that it start a speakers bureau to talk about registration procedures and policies involving care and condition of dogs. The panel suggested setting a five-year goal of having DNA on file for every parent dog in the AKC registry. Finally, it recommended establishing a dialogue with high-volume breeders.
The AKC did expand its presence at pet stores and auctions, and it lowered the number of litters that could prompt a possible inspection. It required that all AKC-registered dogs sold at auction be at least 8 weeks old and microchipped.
But the method by which the AKC established a dialogue with high-volume breeders made Bernardi wince. The organization became a platinum corporate sponsor of an educational conference sponsored by the Montana Pet Breeders, the same group that had boycotted the registry. Gone, suddenly, from the AKC website was its warning to avoid buying puppies from pet stores. The organization offered limited-time-only discount registration coupons, a move critics said was targeted at attracting high-volume breeders. In 2006, the AKC even signed a deal with the Petland chain offering to preregister some of the puppies sold through Petland stores. The AKC quickly backed out of the agreement following an outcry from responsible breeders.
Bernardi was disappointed when the heart of the suggestions put forth by the High-Volume Breeders Committee were ignored. “I always thought that if people like me who go to dog shows and care for dogs only knew how bad conditions were in many puppy mills, they would rise up,” she said. “But I have found in the last ten years after registrations have gone down—and told by people at the AKC that we have to have [high-volume breeders] to survive—how quick they were to adjust their values.”
Despite AKC policy, Bernardi said, records showed that some of the most problematic kennels went two years without an inspection. Peterson said registration privileges of problem kennels can be put on hold until the deficiencies are corrected. If they’re not corrected, the AKC’s board of directors may suspend the breeder. The organization’s goal is to treat all breeders equally, regardless of the size of their kennel, the spokeswoman said. “We do not believe that intentionally excluding large numbers of purebred dogs from these AKC requirements is doing a service to the dog or to the pet-buying public,” Peterson said. She said refusing to register puppies from certain breeders would not discourage breeding, it would only mean fewer breeders were inspected.
• • •
Across the country, Americans have reached out to puppy mill survivors, no matter how daunting the odds. Breed rescue groups nurture sick and injured dogs and help them find new homes. Among the twenty dogs the Elmbrook Humane Society rescued from a kennel in western Wisconsin in 2007 was a 3-year-old Poodle they named China who was missing two of her legs. Her mother had chewed them off, a sign of stress commonly manifested in puppy mills. In a matter of months, officials had fashioned a custom-fitted cart that enabled China to scoot around happily, and a local resident stepped forward to adopt her.
At dog auctions, ardent animal lovers show up with enough money to outbid breeders on at least a few of the dogs. The salvaged dogs are taken to rescue groups, which work to find them new homes. Rescuing dogs at auctions is somewhat controversial: Critics say it enables kennel operators to make money off of their worn-out breeding dogs and creates openings in kennels that must be filled by still more breeding dogs. But rescuers feel they are giving deprived dogs a well-deserved chance at a decent life.
At an estate-sale auction of a Georgia breeder in 2006, the Chattanooga-based Humane Educational Society spent $20,000 buying dogs who might otherwise have gone to other puppy mills. The next year, Helen Hamilton, a veterinarian from the San Francisco Bay area, drove to a kennel liquidation auction in Arkansas with $9,000, enough to rescue more than a few breeding dogs. Of the 300 Pugs, Dachshunds, Boston Terriers, Pekingese, Scottish Terriers, Yorkies, and Cairn Terriers for sale, she bought sixty-nine. Two of the dogs were 11 years old and still producing puppies. Awaiting them back home was Loree Levy-Schwartz, chairwoman of the American Shih-Tzu Club and the Golden Gate Shih-Tzu Fanciers, who had offered to help find homes for as many Yorkies as Hamilton could deliver.
“You know, you’re never going to save them all,” Levy-Schwartz told a newspaper. “But . . . it’s one dog at a time. To me, it’s worth it.”
When Wallace Haven, the owner of Puppy Haven Kennels north of Madison, Wisconsin, decided to go out of business in 2008, the Wisconsin Humane Society swooped in. Haven sold roughly 3,000 designer-breed puppies a year—Puggles, Peekapoos, and dozens more hybrids—and boasted that he had dog breeding down to a science. His animals had food and water and access to small indoor kennels, but no beds to sleep on and no toys.
To keep him from selling off his remaining dogs to other breeders, the Wisconsin group did something unprecedented: It bought the dogs—1,600 of them by the time several litters were born—at a steep discount. The dogs were so unsocialized that to prepare them for adoption, volunteers sat on stools and read to them until they became accustomed to the sound of human voices. The kennels at the rescue shelter automatically dispensed treats any time a person walked by in hopes that the dogs would learn to associate human beings with something good. When the time came to adopt the dogs out, a number of area pet stores allowed rescue groups to display the animals in their shops. Six months later, all of the dogs had new homes.
By mid-2009, the HSUS had a staff of six devoted exclusively to fighting puppy mills. A task force was formed to help law enforcers process cases, especially in communities that found themselves overwhelmed at the prospect of caring for hundreds of rescued animals.
Shain takes part in puppy mill rescues whenever she gets the chance. In the spring of 2009, she helped other rescuers remove more than 350 matted Shetland Sheepdogs, Shih Tzu, Poodles, and other dogs who had been squirreled away in a series of ramshackle buildings in the hilly countryside around Paris, Arkansas. One animal in particular stood out: a dignified-looking Akita who’d been confined alone to a fenced-in outdoor cement pad connecting two of the barns. At the end of the day, after the other dogs had been removed, a worker slipped a leash-collar around the Akita’s neck and began to lead him toward safety. The dog did just fine until he reached the edge of the cement. Then he stopped. He refused to go any farther. It finally dawned on rescuers that he was blind. Despite years of deprivation, the dog was afraid to venture into the unknown.
Workers finally coaxed him out and, once he was freed from puppy mill life, the Akita surprised everyone. He was sweet and loving—so much so that the first shelter that cared for him named him Gentle Ben. An Akita rescue group in New York State took him in next, and not long after that, Shain received a photo in the mail of Gentle Ben posing happily alongside his new owner. The mellow countenance of the big dog is what she remembers most about that raid.
“It’s so sad to see dogs in those conditions,” she said, “but it’s so wonderful to be able to take them out.”
Chapter 20: Two Lives Changed
Linda was acting nonchalant, but Erika and Julia could tell something was up. She’d told them, “I have to run an errand out to Frystown. Why don’t you come with me?” But it was clear the girls didn’t really have a choice in the matter. When they quizzed their mother for details, she refused to say anything more.
It was Christmas Eve 2007. The house was decorated, the presents were already under the tree, and the girls couldn’t imagine what would necessitate this last-minute trip. For the duration of the thirteen-mile drive, Linda was conspiratorially silent. Gracie was along for the ride, although there was nothing unusual about that. The girls’ brother, Ryan, was bagging groceries at Weis Market; if he wasn’t, he would have been dragged along, too.
On an isolated stretch of the highway, Linda turned in to a driveway and pulled up next to a car plastered with Cavalier King Charles Spaniel stickers. Erika immediately put two and two together.
“Oh my God, are you serious?” she said. “Are we getting another dog?”
Linda kept up her silence. But just as Erika suspected, the sound of barking dogs from a nearby building greeted them as they walked down a brick path by the side of the house. A woman stepped onto the back porch and invited them into her kitchen, where a handful of Cavaliers were milling about.
Linda finally admitted the obvious: “I was thinking we could get another dog.” She seemed to have one in particular in mind, the dog she was kneeling by—a tricolor Cavalier with especially curly hair.
A second dog could work, the girls agreed. The family cat, Kitty, had died of a respiratory infection right after Thanksgiving. Having another Cavalier around might be fun—even more fun if it was the chestnut and white puppy chasing a ball in the corner.
“Why can’t we get a puppy?” Erika wanted to know. She thought but didn’t say, “instead of an old dog who isn’t even potty-trained.”
But the decision had already been made. A short time later, Linda and the girls were headed home with Gracie in the front seat and the new dog, Jackie, nestled between Erika and Julia in the back. The irony of the moment wasn’t lost on Linda: Here she was, the same woman who two years ago had given away the family’s Yorkie and sworn off dogs for good, inviting a new dog into her life—to go with the other dog she’d vowed never to get. Yet if she really thought about it, the turn of events made perfect sense.
Ever since she adopted Gracie in the summer of 2006, Linda could not stop thinking about the plight of puppy mill dogs like her. An image would flash through her mind, fleeting but memorable, of thousands of breeding dogs trapped in deplorable cages, destined to produce puppies until their bodies were ravaged and their spirits destroyed. By happenstance, Gracie had escaped her fate. Most puppy mill dogs weren’t so fortunate.
Saving Gracie Page 20
