Enough sick puppies for six lifetimes: ‘Notorious’ puppy-mill outlet closes
By Gina Spadafori
June 11, 2009
For as long as this place has been open, it has been the very model of a puppy-mill retail outlet, selling sick puppies to people who didn’t know or care the cruelty they were supporting. Seeing it shuttered has really made my afternoon:
On Monday, notorious Florida-based puppy retailer Wizard of Claws filed for bankruptcy, resulting in the shuttering of the store and the seizure by the bankruptcy trustee of the store’s remaining puppy inventory. When The Humane Society of the United States learned the bankruptcy trustee intended to auction off the remaining puppies housed at the store, an anonymous donor stepped in to sponsor the dogs, and The HSUS brokered a deal to have all 32 dogs placed for adoption into loving, permanent homes.
The closure comes on the heels of a recent ruling by a Broward County judge refusing to dismiss a major class action lawsuit filed by Humane Society of the United States members and other individuals against Wizard of Claws for selling sick and dying puppies through its retail pet store and over the Internet to hundreds of unsuspecting consumers.
The 32 puppies seized by the bankruptcy trustee will be transferred to the custody of The HSUS and the Broward County Humane Society today. The dogs, which include Yorkies, Chihuahuas, Maltese, Pomeranians, Dachshunds, and Shih-tzus, will each be given evaluations and medical inspections as well as any needed veterinary treatment before being offered for adoption.
Here’s the rest. Lucky for those puppies, but not for their parents, and all the other still trapped in cruel puppy mills. How to stop this: Don’t buy from a pet store or an Internet site that offers lots of different breeds or mixes. Adopt from a shelter or rescue group, or buy from a reputable, compassionate breeder.
Hopefully the people who ran this pet shop won’t just open another one up somewhere else — that seems to be the way they do things.
I think it was you who mentioned in another post that the guy who owns Hunte has a show dog (I’d love to know where he got it).
Do you remember when the woman who owned Docktor pets in Santa Rosa (Coddingtown) was also into showing dogs? She had Bloodhounds, mainly, and something else.
What was really cool was whenever she entered her dogs in shows up there, everybody else in the breed would pull their entries at the last minute to keep her from getting any points. (Of course entries were a lot cheaper back then!)
As I recall, she finally ended up selling the store and moving away, but she was still showing her dogs and had opened up another shop. Talk about blurring the lines…
Comment by stellaluna — June 11, 2009 @ 1:35 pm
Andrew Hunte of Hunte Corp shows GSDs. There was I gather a whole lot of knicker-twisting about that and his subsequent acceptance into the GSDCA among the responsible members of the Fancy. And you are right, Stellaluna, depending on which type of bankruptcy they have filed, they could re-open in a matter of months. Look at Chrysler and Chevy. On second thought, don’t look.
But the ‘bright side’ says this is a wonderful victory! Wizard of Claws has been a boil on the fundament of Florida for years!
Comment by Anne T — June 11, 2009 @ 1:54 pm
My parents have a place near there and a few years back, my kids dragged me in to see an older GSD pup. At their young age they knew there was something wrong withhim. His back knees nearly touched ground. They saw us lookng @ him and tried to sell him to me for $200 bucks. It was sickening. Goodbye evil puppy store.
Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — June 11, 2009 @ 2:11 pm
When Katie was here to help evaluate the puppies, we were sitting on my front porch when woman walked by with a banana-backed, heels-hitting-the ground German shepherd. They both seemed very nice, but …. oh … my … word, why did this stangeness become fashionable? Poor dogs!
Comment by Gina Spadafori — June 11, 2009 @ 2:25 pm
It’s apparently supposed to make them look ready to spring into action, at least that is what I read somewhere. Too bad they can’t even walk normally, much less run. The breeders of those dogs should be arrested for abuse.
Comment by Susan Fox — June 11, 2009 @ 2:32 pm
Way back in my conformation days hanging around the show ring, the story about this was that because of the enormous popularity of the TV show Rin Tin Tin, everyone and his brother wanted a GSD that looked exactly like RTT. Most unfortunately, TV star Rin Tin Tin’s conformation was terribly incorrect and seriously malformed with that low slung back. Despite this, the low-slung fad took off. Clearly a case where the breed was ruined by fame. It has been told to me that most GSDs now have back problems and serious hip dysplacia as a result.
Comment by NadineL — June 11, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
This pup was so badly deformed that my kids noticed. Even my then 5 year old. That was why he was about 5-6 months old and still in the store. One of my kids was trying to talk the guy into giving him to us and just could not understand when I said I wouldn’t take the puppy for free. We went back to see him (against my will!) a few times. Sweet dog— they still talk about him. They named him Dave. The real sloping GSDs make no sense to me, but this pup was like a character of one of those.
Comment by Nancy Freedman-Smith CPDT — June 11, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Dave the GSD pup who was 5-6 months old in the pet store was probably suffering from the effects of malnutrition and lack of exercise, plus being on either wire or a slippery floor.
The conformation is so horrible in the show-bred dogs (generally not as bad in most puppymill models) that they are predisposed to all sorts of terrible developmental issues if they aren’t managed just so. And if they are.
At least one geneticist says that they all have a hereditary connective-tissue disorder.
Why is it that absolutely everyone — including a five-year-old child — can tell that “that dog has something wrong with it” — except the dumbass who is laxing wyrical about the dog’s “fantastic reach, amazing sidegait, floating trot, look of eagles, gorgeous angulation?”
Did these people not notice yet that they are no longer living in bizzaro-world? Or are they just non-assimilating colonists, in, but not of, the reality-based community?
Oh, and ding dong the witch is dead for wizard of claws.
Comment by H. Houlahan — June 11, 2009 @ 3:35 pm
I don’t get what has happened to GSD at all. When I was a little girl growing up in Pittsburgh (60s), GSD was what you had for protection. I was scared beyond belief of those dogs (and for very good reasons). Those dogs didn’t “look” like they were going to leap into action — they actually did so!
I see the GSD today and I’m pretty sure that as a child, I could have outrun these dogs! There’s something very sad about that. . .
Comment by Dorene — June 11, 2009 @ 3:47 pm
There’s a shaggy GSD up the street that seems to have a temperment that I would never associate with the breed. Was barking and running the fence a couple of years ago like crazy, but when I just stood quietly at the wire fence and “claimed the space”, he caved and now won’t come near me. His owner thinks it’s great that I can control him from outside the fence, and says she tells the story to friends, but I hate to see him so timid and lacking in confidence. Has something screwy been done to their heads along with their bodies? Most of the ones I meet seem to be weird in one way or another.
Comment by Susan Fox — June 11, 2009 @ 5:39 pm
I try to avoid looking at the puppies. It pains me to watch them suffer, and I don’t want to be tempted into supporting the milling industry.
My parents took home an almost-free 6 month old Siberian Husky who had outstayed his welcome at our local Docktor Pets many (24) years ago. They’d been eyeing him for months, and it had reached the point where they could barely stuff him in the crate anymore.
K was absolutely gorgeous and had a beautiful temperament, but pretty much everything else was a bust. On his first trip to the vet’s, he was determined to have hip dysplasia so severe the parentals were advised to operate ASAP. (They elected to wait, and he wound up getting by without it… but having minor MVA-related hip issues myself, I think I’d have opted for surgery.) He was pronounced mentally retarded (there were suspicions of birth trauma), suffered from intractable skin allergies, GI problems and derm issues, was horribly neurotic (even by SH standards), and every vet or trainer that saw this dog was positive that he was not a purebred, but a Husky/Malamute X… despite papers from the AKC that said otherwise.
We lost him to cancer at 14.5, but he did not age well. For the last three years of his life, my father carried him (all 80 lbs. of him- definitely not a purebred SH) upstairs to sleep with them every night and downstairs again in the morning. Spent more time at the vet’s his first year than my parents’ two well-bred Malamutes (ages 8.5 and 5.5) have, put together, in their entire lives thus far.
Baffles me how somebody could be actively involved in the fancy while profiting off of milling operations. I had no idea Hunte showed, but I guess it doesn’t surprise me. I worked in a pet shop (we didn’t sell puppies) some years ago, and the trade magazines we’d get were full of his ads. Schmuck surrounded by happy, healthy-looking puppies and religious clip art… as if slapping a few Jesus fish on there somehow makes him trustworthy and negates the fact that that handsome little Lab he’s patting is probably going to have a medical record that reads like a copy of War and Peace by the time he reaches his third birthday (not to mention the conditions his mom is probably languishing in).
Poor Dave. Good riddance, WoC!
Comment by 3FabulousFelines — June 11, 2009 @ 7:12 pm
To answer the question about GSDs, you must watch this video. Retrieverman had it on his blog a few months ago. it’s a fabulous visual aid!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc-UsM-tivU
Comment by Anne T — June 12, 2009 @ 3:26 am
You know a pet store is bad when people who have never even been to the city/state have heard of it. here’s hoping they are gone for good.
In other news of horrible pet people, Falcons officially dropped Vick today. Hopefully the NFL will follow suit or slap a long enough suspension on him, the reality of his 10 buck an hour job will hit him.
Comment by straybaby — June 12, 2009 @ 9:59 pm
Thanks, AnneT. The progression to those under-sized heads is almost as weird as the crippling of the body.
No wonder law enforcement imports their GSDs or has gone to Belgian Malinois instead.
Comment by Susan Fox — June 13, 2009 @ 6:02 am