pet connection

Here’s a fairly bizarre and completely disgusting story, about a dog breeder who took it upon herself to practice veterinary medicine, performing everything from spays to ear crops, tail dockings, cesareans, hernia repairs and dew claw removal. (Side note: A lot of breeders do their own tail docks and dew claw removals, on newborn puppies, so this in itself isn’t outside of the norm. But a spay? )

Anyway, the woman apparenly isn’t a very good surgeon, leaving parts of the organs she was planning to take out behind, with disastrous results. Her explanation for all this?

“It used to be that you could perform surgeries on dogs if they were your own,” said [Kathy Bauck, who owns and operates Pick of the Litter, Inc.]. “The state doesn’t read it that way anymore so I won’t do it anymore. I’ve complied 100 percent and I don’t have a problem with that … I never did anything to intentionally hurt any of the animals.”

The order states the dogs involved were not hers, which Bauck says is not true.

“They were not sold, they were given away,” she said. “Because I still had the papers, I assumed I still owned them. The state got (the case) because I spayed a dog I was giving away. It got an infection and I paid the veterinarian bill. That’s the end of it.”

Geez, I sure hope that IS the end of it. And by the way: Pick of the Litter, Inc.? I’ve never known a reputable breeder who did enough business to incorporate under a cutesy-pie name. That sort of thing is usually reserved for puppy-millers.

What kind of person doesn’t go to a good veterinarian? And what kind of person has the breeder do surgery? Honestly, I’m starting my annual no-swearing New Year’s resolution early, so I won’t tell you the words I have in mind.

Here’s the rest of the story.