Pet Store Regulations: A Growing Trend
PUPPY MILLS
New Hampshire Union Leader
Haley Shoemaker
Boston University Washington News Service
October 21, 2009
WASHINGTON—Everyone loves puppies, but not everyone knows where his or her own puppy comes from or how the animal was treated before it was sold.
Now, federal and state lawmakers are paying attention to the problem.
In the past two years, many bills have been introduced in state legislatures to increase regulation of “puppy mills,” which critics describe as large, overcrowded and unsanitary facilities.
Two years ago, Congress attached a provision to the 2007 farm bill that banned the importation of young dogs from foreign puppy mills.
By requiring that imported dogs be in good health, vaccinated and at least 6 months old, the sponsors, including Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., said in a letter to the House and Senate Agriculture Committees that they hoped to “ensure that physically immature and potentially unweaned puppies are not forced to endure harsh, long-distance transport and that consumers are not unknowingly subjected to buying unhealthy pups.”
In the letter, Frank and the other sponsors said they were “outraged by the operation of puppy mills both in the U.S. and abroad.”
Legislation to support animal rights represents “a growing trend across the United States,” said Dale Bartlett, deputy manager for animal cruelty issues of the Humane Society of the United States. He said 10 states have enacted laws that restrict or regulate puppy mills in some way.
In Massachusetts, state Sen. Robert Hedlund, R-Weymouth, introduced Senate Bill 774, which would limit breeders in the state to 25 dogs over the age of six months at any time.
A related bill in the Massachusetts State House (House Bill 344) would ban “debarking,” the practice of relieving dogs of their ability to bark “by taking a screwdriver to sever their vocal cords so the mills can be established in residential areas without the neighbors ever knowing about it,” Bartlett said.
“Both of these bills are current, they’re both still in the chamber they originated in and they’re still alive and kicking,” Bartlett said.
Frank, in a statement last month, said: “We ought to ensure that puppies are not raised in abusive conditions. In the past, I have supported efforts to curb abusive practices associated with mass dog breeding activities. I will continue to support efforts that prevent animal cruelty.”
In puppy mills, their critics say, dogs sometimes are in desperate need of veterinary care, are forced to drink unclean water and are kept in rusty and broken cages with accumulations of feces and urine.
“The females are bred until they give out, then they are taken outside and shot,” said Martin Mersereau, director of the cruelty casework division at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. “They are not socialized at all, which is really difficult for the dogs because they’re pack animals. It’s like the holocaust for dogs.”
Massachusetts is known as a “pet store state,” said Kathleen Summers, manager of the Humane Society’s puppy mill campaign, “because there are many local pet stores that carry imported puppies [from out of state].”
The Humane Society has received complaints about pet stores throughout Massachusetts, including the mini-chain Debbie’s Petland. One of these complaints came from Danielle Maloney, who said she bought a Bullmastiff puppy last May from Debbie’s Petland. The puppy was sold to the store by Hunte Corp., a Missouri-based animal broker, Maloney said.
Soon after she purchased the dog, she said, it was diagnosed with severe Giardia, an intestinal infection. She added that the puppy infected her other dog and that she had to disinfect her entire house because the disease is highly contagious.
Maloney said she returned the dog to the store and sought reimbursement for her veterinary costs as well. The store refunded the purchase price but would not reimburse her for veterinary fees because she did not take the puppy to a store-approved clinic, she said.
When the Humane Society receives such a complaint, it passes it on to local animal control authorities or, in some cases, to the state attorney general’s office. “We get far, far more complaints than we have investigators,” Summers said. “In some cases, if we get multiple complaints on a store we’ll take further action, such as litigation or investigations, but it depends on the circumstances.”
Kim Duross, owner of Debbie’s PetLand, was not available this week to comment on Maloney’s complaint and her store employees said they were instructed not to talk about the case. However, in a previous interview Duross did defend her business, saying, “We have never received any complaints from the Humane Society.”
Debbie’s Petland, she said, has been in business for 50 years and doesn’t do business with puppy mills. It deals only with brokers who support regulation of breeders, and with breeders who are licensed by the U.S. Agriculture Department.
The brokers, Duross said, “make sure they’re up to date with vaccinations and that they are on a feeding program so that you don’t jeopardize the health of the inventory stock.”
Duross contends that pet stores are more heavily regulated than most restaurants.
“We’re extremely heavily regulated by the board of health and seven different regulatory agencies that check on us all the time,” she said. “The MSPCA [MSPCA-Angell, a nonprofit organization in the fields of animal protection and veterinary medicine] can come in our stores all the time, the Department of Agriculture, animal control officers; everybody is always in there to check up on everything, everything is disclosed to anybody.”
Massachusetts has also had problems with brokers and breeders who have sold dogs to local pet shops, including Kathy Bauck of Minnesota, identified as “one of the largest breeders and brokers in the country” by Deborah Howard, president of Companion Animal Protection Society in Cohasset. Her organization filed a criminal complaint in April 2008 against Bauck that led to her conviction on four counts of animal cruelty and torture, Howard said.
Using hidden cameras and sound equipment, an investigator for Howard’s organization gathered information that led to the criminal proceedings.
“She’ll probably be losing her [U.S. Agriculture Department] license in a few months, but she will still be able to sell on line,” Howard said.
Bauck’s lawyer, Zenas Baer said, “The insidious thing is that the owner was convicted only because she placed trust in someone who was working to shut her down, this CAPS employee who wanted to capture evidence of inhumane treatment of animals.”
In Howard’s view, “The whole industry is about profit. Dogs you see in pet shops don’t come from reputable breeders. Reputable breeders don’t sell to pet shops because they’re more discriminating.”
At animal shelters such as the Humane Society & Shelter-South Coast, in North Dartmouth, “most of the dogs we get come in stray or from pet shops,” said Melinda Ventura, the executive director. “We are not seeing litters of puppies coming through the shelter; we get the stragglers.”
Across the United States, there are more than 4 million adoptable dogs, without good homes or families to care for them, according to Mersereau.
The advice from the Humane Society’s Summers: There is really no way to tell where that puppy in the window of a pet store came from, unless you research the broker and breeder that sold to the pet store. “Just go and see how the mother is treated, and if they aren’t treated in a way that you would treat your animals at home, then you shouldn’t buy from them.”
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