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. 

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.

[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.

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).

‘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.

If you buy a puppy from a pet store, you are supporting a system of cruelty that has been well-documented again and again and again for more than 50 years. You, yes you, are making puppy mills possible.

Grow up. Take responsibility for your actions. And say NO to puppy mills by buying directly from a reputable, ethical breeder or adopting from a shelter or rescue group. There is no excuse for supporting cruelty with your puppy-mill retail outlet purchase.

This year’s first installment of No Christmas Puppies (click for all our past posts, going back for years), courtesy of MSNBC.com:

After an eight-month investigation, the Humane Society of the United States accused Petland, the national pet store chain, of selling dogs bred under appalling conditions at puppy mills around the country.

The animal protection group made the charges at a news conference in Washington Thursday. The investigation involved 21 Petland stores and dozens of breeders and brokers. The Petland stores are being supplied by large-scale puppy mills, although customers are routinely informed that the dogs come only from good breeders, the Humane Society said.

We write about this every year. Nothing will stop this sick and cruel mass-production of puppies except for customers to not support this industry. No reputable, ethical breeder sells through a third party. Not ever. And no reputable, ethical breeder ships from Internet sites to people who place an order with a few clicks and a credit card. Not ever.

Talk to me about how you love your pet-store puppy and you’d better stand back because I am going to singe your eyebrows off.

I’m glad you are taking good care of your puppy-mill purchase. I’m glad you love her. I’m glad you haven’t had the health and behavior problems that are rampant in these carelessly bred, unsocialized dogs. How nice for you, and for your one dog.

But don’t expect me to sign off on your behavior, because I will never let you off the hook for dooming thousands of dogs to a brutal lives in crap-filled wired cages exposed to the elements because you wanted that puppy in the window. Not ever.

People who run puppy mills are heartless bastards. And they wouldn’t be in business without buyers.

If you’re one of those buyers, shame on you.

Update: More from the HSUS on their Petland investigations. If you are thinking maybe it doesn’t matter where you buy a puppy, you are wrong.

What kind of dog the first family should get.

For the record, I hope the Obamas get a nice little shelter dog, maybe some kind of mopsy, fuzzy-faced terrier mix. An adult, not a puppy, because a well-chosen adult dog often fits in better and more quickly into busy households, especially those with little dog experience.

Yes, it would be a good thing and a good example. But honestly? I don’t much care beyond that they get a nice dog who fits with their family and brings joy to their lives.

See, the Obamas choice of a family pet ranks about 1,074,037th on my list of things that it’s important for President Obama to be thinking about.

In my own Top 10? Along with the economy, the wars, healthcare and energy independence, I would put food.

Food.

Food.

and then, Food.

To say we are vulnerable to terrorist attack though our food supply is to state the absolute obvious. We don’t even need to have people want to hurt us: It’s already happening, just because of corporate greed, corruption in China and shoddy work from a government that’s supposed to protect us, not industry profits.

Melamine. In pet food, livestock feed, infant formula and heaven know what else. Salmonella, from the over-industrialized food system. Antibiotic resistance, from factory farming.

These issues are so much more important to me than getting the politically correct dog for the adorable Obama daughters.

I’m disappointed with the animal advocacy groups . With the lone exception of the Animal Poison Control Center of the ASPCA (hat tip to the courageous Dr. Steve Hansen of the APCC), they were mostly silent during the pet-food recall and they remain so on the issue of food safety still. A safe food supply effects us all, pets included, and I would hope to see some of them step up and say so.

So let’s all enjoy the photo op moment of the Obamas getting their family dog. And then, let’s move on to something that really matters.

“Do you want a free baby bunny?” she asked. She had been crying, and she held a tiny brown bunny. I talked to her for a few minutes, and figured out — a little reading between the lines — that non-custodial dad had decided at the last minute to give his kid a baby bunny, without a shelter, food or dishes. Custodial mom had nixed this idea, and had driven the kid to Petsmart parking lot to dump the bun.

“If I can’t get rid of it,” said the kid, “mom says to just turn it loose in the parking lot.”

I took the bunny. I didn’t take the urine-soaked cardboard box he’d been living in or the wilted iceberg lettuce that had been standing in for food. Instead, I put the soft little guy on my shoulder and drove home, assuring the girl that her rabbit had found a good home. I’m not sure she really cared, and I am quite sure neither of her idiotic parents did.

Velocity is still with me. I had him neutered and he lives happily on a healthy diet of grass hay and fresh greens.

Heaven knows how many throwaway pets that family has gone through since. Honestly, it makes you wish people had to pass a test to be parents.

I’m thinking of that story because he’s happily munching his favorite meal — beets with the greens left on them — and because over on Lassie Get Help, Luisa has a good post on the same subject, albeit about dogs in particular. Go over and see what the U.S.D.A. believes is a space large enough that “breeding stock” need never leave it. What she says about people not knowing about puppy mills is sadly quite true. Christie and I have both been stunned to realize that many people have no idea. (That’s like how when the Michael Vick thing first broke, a guy I work with said, “I don’t see what’s the big deal. When I was growing up our dog would fight sometimes. Dogs fight, right.” He didn’t realize that this wasn’t a couple of dogs scrapping at a dog park, and he was blissfully unaware of organized dog-fighting.)

None of the regular readers here would buy a pet without any planning — and I surely hope none would support a puppy mill by buying from a pet store or direct-sale Internet puppy site — but if your Web browsing has brought you here because you’re looking for for a last minute gift … please stop and think.

Better you should teach your child compassion and responsibility than that living, feeling animals are something to toss into a parking lot because you can’t be bothered. Because it seems to me that a child who grows up with such an attitude isn’t going to look too kindly on the needs of aging parents.

Just saying.

Some of [the dogs] live in rabbit hutches with no heat, no air conditioning, no protection from the elements. Sometimes they don’t even have a roof over their heads. I’m thinking right now about the puppies in Oklahoma, with the ice storm they’re having. There are dogs right now in puppy mills there that are shivering and huddling close together, trying to stay warm. But as long as they are alive, and producing more puppies, the people running these places don’t care about the suffering.

They don’t care about the suffering. Do you? When you buy a puppy from a pet store or Internet puppy site, you’re making sure this industry continues.

The power to stop puppy mills in in your hands.  Don’t support this cruel industry.

Why was I out on my wood deck in a nightgown, coat and clogs without socks at a little after dawn?

I was waiting for Otter to pee.

Of course, she wasn’t about to do that with me on the ground, and soon I was covered with sweet puppy kisses. I stood up as quickly as I could — not easy, since I was sure I had broken something — and then tried to encourage her to take care of her business.

Please, Otter. Please. Please. But oh no: She had found a leaf instead, and happily retrieved it for me. See? I’m a good puppy retriever? See? See?

What could I say? “Good girl, Otter,” I told her, taking the leaf she offered me. “Now puppy go potty before I freeze to death.”

Why would anyone want to raise a puppy in the winter? Even in California? I’ve long advised against the whole Christmas puppy thing for many reasons, key among them that Christmas puppies are usually available only from puppy-millers (either through pet stores of direct-sale Internet sites) or careless and clueless backyard breeders.

Aside from the philosophical reasons for not supporting such sellers, these puppies are often ill-equipped to be good pets: They’re often unsocialized and more likely to have congenital defects that will plague them throughout their lives. Do you need a neurotic pet with expensive health problems? If that’s no what you want, why not take the trouble to find a shelter or rescue dog from a group with an active foster program, or from a reputable, ethical breeder? No, you can’t whip out a credit card on a whim with these folks, but isn’t getting a pup with a head start worth a little research, effort and patience?

Seriously.  Think about it.

But the practical matters are important, too: It’s flat-out more difficult to raise a puppy when the nights are cold and the days are short. You don’t just throw a puppy outside, after all, you have to house-train them — note the use of the term “house-train” rather then the ill-informed concept of house-breaking. To train, you limit their territory in the house, manage their timing and take them where you want them to go and praising them for getting it right. To break, you punish a puppy for making a mistake she doesn’t understand. How bloody unfair!

And what about the all-important socialization? That’s so much easier in the summer, too, because you can always find people at outdoor tables willing to pet a puppy. (I always take my puppies where people, not dogs are. Socialization needs to be safe before puppy immunizations are complete.) When it’s 40 degrees outside, you’re going to find many people at those outdoor tables. And you can’t take the puppy inside the Starbucks.

Longer days are better for training, too, even though some of that can of course be done inside.

But we’re coping, Otter and me.  It’s just more work and more effort on my part. Otter isn’t really a “Christmas puppy” and she’s not even mine. I’m raising her for a friend, and she’ll go to that friend in April. That’s a lot of responsibility!

But when she does leave me, she’ll have all the basics covered, be healthy, well-trained and well-socialized. No matter how cold it is outide.

Given my druthers, I’d rather raise a puppy in the summer. And so should you.