pet connection

Seems the folks at the EPA are looking out for animals. Not only did the agency come down on Hunte Kennel Systems and Animal Care, Inc. like a ton ‘o bricks, but someone at the agency took the time to make sure we saw the media release:

A southwest Missouri pet supply dealer has agreed to pay a $56,632 civil penalty to the United States to settle allegations that it violated the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA) by repackaging, relabeling and selling an insecticide meant for use on cattle and hogs as a flea and tick treatment for dogs.

Hunte Kennel Systems and Animal Care, Inc., of Goodman, Mo., will pay the civil penalty under terms of an administrative consent agreement filed today by EPA Region 7 in Kansas City, Kan.

The allegations stem from findings made by the Missouri Department of Agriculture during October 2006 inspections of the company’s facilities in Goodman and Buffalo, Mo. The inspections found that the company had bottled the pesticide Prolate/Lintox-HD into different packaging and sold it as another pesticide, Paramite.

During the inspections, the company was ordered to immediately stop selling the repackaged pesticide.

Prolate/Lintox-HD is formulated for use in the control of flies, lice, mange and ticks on cattle, and for the control of lice and mange on swine. Paramite is no longer manufactured as a flea and tick treatment for dogs.

Here’s the release. Nice work, folks! I do realize that one factory farmed production unit  is about the same as another to the manufacturer, but maybe the folks at Hunte can get flash cards to learn the difference between hogs and dogs. Not that they much care, I’m guessing.

Oh, if you’ve a strong stomach, read the About page on Hunte’s Web site:

When my wife Gina and I founded The Hunte Corporation, we pledged to help professional breeders, pet retailers, veterinarians, and other members of our industry provide the highest quality puppies available.

Sucks how that little fine is going to cut into Andrew Hunte’s efforts to help those “professional breeders,” doesn’t it?

Family pets from family homes. 

Dr. Marty Becker and I wrote a short article for today’s edition of Parade magazine on the health and behavior challenges of today’s oh-so popular tiny dogs.  We interviewed Pet Connection regular commenter Lis about what she likes about Addy, her powderpuff Chinese Crested. Alas, Lis and Addy were trimmed for space.

Miami veterinary surgeon Dr. Marc Wosar, who has put oodles of tiny poodles and other little dogs back together as well as taken the bad bits out of them, took time out from a surgical seminar in lovely La Jolla, Calif.,  to give an extensive interview. (He also helped me with some timely advice on Heather’s pain patch, which had gotten wet. Since it was still sticking tight, said Dr. Wosar, she was still getting the pain relief. He made us both feel better, and no doubt helped to extend Heather’s time on this earth.)

Deborah Wood also was generous with her advice. She’s a person I’ve “known” for years but never had a long conversation with until this article. She is an expert on training small dogs, and recently took her expertise as a writer/trainer into a new arena: As director of her local animal shelter.

Too bad we didn’t have more room. As it stands, though, the piece is small but mighty meaty!

What else didn’t make the cut: If you want a small dog, adopt from a shelter or rescue or buy in person from reputable, ethical  home-based breeder. Small breeds and mixes are popular with puppy-milling scum, and the puppies that make it out of those hell-holes are especially challenged with health and behavior problems.

Not to mention: When you buy from a pet store or puppy-mill Web site, you’re supporting the continuation of a system of cruelty that’s truly mind-boggling. Your puppy may be safe now, but his mother isn’t.

Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly has had it with puppy-milling scum and their retail sales outlets. And she wants you to know what veterinarians see when people bring in those sick dogs:

[A]bhorrent conditions are common. Animals are more often sick and congenitally diseased than not. Puppy mill origins are the norm. And still there’s a seemingly bottomless font of willing buyers prepared to pay up for the right to buy what very well might be a purebred disaster sourced from a disreputable establishment where abusive farming practices are the norm.

Every retail pet shop I’ve ever visited (and I’ve made it a point to visit a great many) has always disputed all the above points. In the face of sniffles and severe congenital ailments alike, pet shops have patently denied the defects, pointed to certificates, cited “championship bloodlines” and —— most egregiously —— often ignored my requests that they water their “widgets.”

And hey … these are the “cleaned-up” pups for public display! You wanna see real hell? Visit the puppy-mills themselves, where the parents of the “merchandise” spend their entire lives in misery. Oh, sorry …you can’t.

You’re not “rescuing” when you buy a puppy-mill dog from a pet store or Internet site: You’re perpetuating a cycle of mind-numbing cruelty. And don’t think you’ll do better by buying a “hybrid” — a Puggle, Maltipoo, whatever — from these outfits, because you won’t.

Don’t buy so much as a flea comb from these places. Just walk on by.

And if you do step in, be sure you understand what they’re telling you, and what it means. Dr. Patty explains it all. And then walk on out.

Adopt a pet or buy from a reputable breeder. Here are some tips.

Earlier this week the  Humane Society of the United States released an investigation linking the pet-store chain Petland to puppy-mills, a morally bankrupt industry that treats dogs as machines, cranking out puppies for sale as cheaply as possible as often and as long as they can, often in horrific and cruel conditions. Petland fired back by pointing to its “adoption” programs, which had people who follow this issue snorting over the chutzpah of the company to claim such high ground. The HSUS thought it pretty remarkable as well. In HSUS boss Wayne Pacelle’s blog, he writes:

Unable to defend the puppy mill cruelties that dooms breeding dogs to barren lives in cages without socialization or the kind of human affection that pets deserve, Petland rolled out the claim that it has an “Adopt-A-Pet” program. The PR team at Petland knows that “adoption” has as many positive connotations as “puppy mill” has awful ones, so why not bob and weave.

But Petland using the word doesn’t make it true.

In fact, we were sure they’d try to raise the subject to divert public attention. So before our investigation was made public, our experts called every one of the 133 Petland stores operating at that time in the U.S. We asked if the store participated in the “Adopt-A-Pet” program—and if so, where the adoptee dogs come from.

To start out with, 56 of the stores said they didn’t bother with adoptions.

Then we heard some strange answers: 23 stores said they offered cut-rate adoption prices on older puppies that had not sold, 16 said they offered puppies for adoption when the animals were returned by previous customers, and seven stores said they wanted to offer homeless dogs for adoption but they couldn’t get a supply of pups from local shelters. Little wonder about that last claim. Animal shelters know that retail puppy-sellers and the whole puppy mill industry are large contributors to the overpopulation of dogs in the U.S. Why support them?

Now, to be fair, we found some Petland stores that claimed to offer puppies that were brought in by local people, sometimes from “accidental” litters. A few stores said they would occasionally refer customers to shelters. Some said they actually did offer shelter dogs for adoption—but I have to wonder.

So do we. We wonder how those in the puppy-mill indsutry can enjoy the Christmas season knowing how much suffering they cause.

Don’t buy a puppy from a puppy-mill retail outlet or a direct-from-the-puppy-mill Web site. If you do, you are the reason this industry keeps doing what it does, despite 50 years or more of investigations and expose that show the rot as its core.

Do the right thing. Adopt from a shelter or rescue group, or buy from a reputable, ethical breeder. (Hint: good breeders don’t sell through third parties, and they don’t ship with a few clicks and credit card from a Web site shopping site).

Over on Raised by Wolves blog, dog trainer and SAR dog handler Heather Houlihan lays it all out for anyone who’a thinking of patronizing the sick, immoral and inhumane puppy-mill industry with a pet store puppy purchase this holiday season. It’s an absolute must read:

‘Tis the season in which puppymills make their profits. What consumers do in the next month determines whether Amos and Ada fire up the puggle factory for spring production, or cut their losses and go back to making oak furniture and rhubarb preserves. You decide whether March sees the opening of a shiny new GNC in that mall slot, or another year of shivering Yorki-poos behind glass.

[...]

We can only repeat, over and over again: If it is for sale in a pet store, it came from a puppymill. If it came from a puppymill (and it did, it did — do you get this? — it did), its genetics are highly suspect, its early environment was impoverished, it has been stressed and exposed to communicable disease before its immune system developed, it is at ultra-high risk of becoming a dog with serious, unfixable health and behavior problems, and you will get no help or sympathy from the seller when it does. You are buying an expensive heartbreak for yourself and your family. Furthermore, you — you personally — are perpetuating animal cruelty that would make you puke if you saw it, heard it, smelled it. You and your Visa card have sentenced this puppy’s mother, father, and their now-inevitable successors in the puppy production line to continued lives of unremitting misery.

Do not believe the lies of the super-kyoot clerk. This puppy did not come from a “reputable breeder.” (Except in the sense that “reputation” used to carry when my mother was in high school.) No reputable, ethical, caring, competent, knowledgeable breeder ever sells a puppy through a pet store, broker, or any third party to persons unknown. Never. Never ever. The person or corporation who owns this puppy’s unfortunate mother does not give a rat’s ass about his mother, the puppy, or any part of you that is not backed by Citibank.

And a clean, sanitized, concrete-and-stainless, passed-USDA-inspection “commercial kennel” is still a puppymill. (If a breeding kennel is large enough to be USDA-licensed — it is a puppymill.) Regular use of bleach is not indicative of love for, knowledge of, or commitment to, the production units breeding animals caged there, nor for their products puppies or the unseen suckers buyers.

Don’t buy a a puppy from a pet store or from a direct-from-the-puppy-mill Web site. Not because they’re cute, and not because “she needs me.”

The only thing that will stop the mass-production of puppies in high-volume commercial kennels is when buyers say, “We’re not supporting this anymore.” And that’s the only thing that will ever shut it down.

Do you care about animals? Don’t support cruelty. Adopt from a shelter or rescue group or buy from a reputable, ethical, responsible breeder. Don’t buy from a pet store. No excuses.