Saving Gracie (20 page)

This time, Meuser was charged with animal cruelty and, like Horton, she lucked out. In exchange for pleading guilty to the charges and agreeing to give up her animals, she was given two years’ probation and banned from breeding or selling dogs or cats again. She was allowed to keep five personal pets, however, and the first fifty people to adopt her animals had to pay $100 each to help Meuser offset the loss of future income. The upside was that, as a result of the deal, the case was resolved in four days and the dogs were spared from waiting weeks or months to be adopted out to new homes.

A similar outcome occurred in March 2007, when eighty-three Golden Retrievers with bite and scratch marks, some with chains embedded in their necks, were seized from a puppy mill in Bismarck, North Dakota. The breeder voluntarily forfeited the forty-six adult dogs, but a Minnesota rescue group, Retrieve a Golden, had to pay more than $5,000 for the thirty-seven puppies. Treating the dogs’ medical problems was expected to cost the organization another $25,000.

Two months later, 171 dogs were rescued from a puppy mill in south-central Nebraska. Pomeranian mixes, Terrier mixes, Yorkshire Terriers, and other small dogs were confined to small buildings and surrounded by excrement and trash, with little water; they suffered from dehydration, parasites, and skin infections. The owner agreed to give up the animals, and, in turn, the county attorney agreed not to prosecute her so that the dogs could be adopted out to new homes.

The following January, 150 Labradoodles were discovered languishing with no food, water, or bedding in a puppy mill in Lamartine, Wisconsin. The 69-year-old breeder had a track record of neglect, and the Wisconsin Puppy Mill Project, a statewide organization, offered to help rescue the dogs. But the Fond du Lac County Sheriff’s office opted against filing charges against the kennel operator—and even permitted her to move the dogs eighty-eight miles away to the town of Kenosha.

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Dog auctions were another sordid aspect of the puppy mill trade. Auctions sprang up in the mid-1990s as a way for breeders to either sell off dozens of dogs of a single breed, dump all of their breeding dogs so that they could start fresh, or sell their entire stock and get out of the business.

The format is similar to that of a livestock auction. Dogs are brought into a seller’s ring in an auction barn and sold to the highest bidder, usually to other kennel operators looking to augment their breeding stock. The HSUS investigated dog auctions in Ohio, Kansas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma and found hundreds of dogs deprived of food and water while they waited to be sold, housed for hours on end in cages so tiny they could neither sit upright nor lie down comfortably. Depending on their age and ability to produce, the dogs were priced at anywhere from $1 to $1,000. Even animals with obvious genetic defects were auctioned off.

Dog auctions are common in Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Ohio, and Wisconsin, too. At a typical auction, roughly 250 dogs change hands. A dog’s ability to produce litters is the biggest selling point. Auctioneers think nothing of exposing a pregnant dog’s belly to show bidders they’ll be getting a whole litter of dogs with their purchase. The
Kansas City Star
described a 2008 auction in Missouri, where a Dachshund sat shivering on a table while the auctioneer talked her up. “She’s young. She’s an ’07 model,” he said. “She’s ready to work.”

In Missouri alone, an estimated 18,000 dogs were sold at auction in 2007. The Buckeye Dog Auction in Ohio, though, is the biggest in the country. Dog auctions are illegal in Pennsylvania, so many of the breeders in that state buy and sell dogs at the roving Buckeye auction. Puppy mills have begun sprouting in Geauga and Holmes Counties, where the auction takes place. By 2007, the two counties, whose combined population is 130,000, had nearly 600 kennels.

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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.

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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 build 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.”