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ESSENTIAL DESTINATIONS

MONTH: November/December 2007

Puppy mill cases raise animal rights vs. property rights issues

“I think it’s called dog-napping,” Junior Horton of Horton’s Pups told Donna Alvis-Banks of the Roanoke Times, after humane societies from throughout the region took some of the 980 dogs who were seized during the first few days of November from Horton’s property in Hillsdale, Virginia.

Some of the rescuers made almost the same charge against Horton.

There were reportedly about 1,100 dogs on the premises when the impoundments began. Someone allegedly removed 200 to 300 of the dogs before they could be taken into custody, Danville Area Humane Society director Paulette Dean told Danville Register & Bee staff writer Rebecca Blanton.

“The authorities worked out an agreement with Horton, but they didn’t tell him he couldn’t move any of the animals,” Dean elaborated. “They thought he would honor his word about keeping the dogs there.”

The conflict in perspectives exemplified the difference in outlook between breeders and rescuers. In Horton’s view, the humane societies were taking property that employee Timmy Bullion told Associated Press might be worth as much as $450,000. To the rescuers, the dogs were not property but individual lives in distress.

The difference in viewpoints is central to a set of initiative petitions now being circulated by California dog breeders, who have until April 21, 2008 to collect the 700,000 signatures of California registered voters that they need to put their proposals on the November 2008 state ballot.

One of the proposals, Initiative 1294, would amend the state constitution to declare that “all animals owned by citizens, including pets and animals used for agricultural purposes, are property,” and would “prohibit enactment or enforcement of any law that would characterize privately-owned animals as anything other than property.”

Another, Initiative 1295, would “prohibit enactment or enforcement of any law requiring or coercing by any means, including financial penalty, sexual sterilization of any human or animal.” This would repeal all licensing and adoption ordinances that offer discounts to people whose animals are sterilized, and would also repeal the breed-specific requirement for sterilizing pit bull terriers that has within the past year cut the number of pit bulls impounded by the San Francisco Department of Animal Care and Control by 21%.

Behind the court cases and the California initiatives appears to be a pervasive and spreading belief among breeders that humane societies want to establish a monopoly on selling animals. Some allege that this might be a first step toward achieving the stated PETA goal of eventually eliminating petkeeping.

Even many breeders who doubt the possibility of a plot linking PETA with humane societies are often convinced that humane societies are eager to confiscate and sell breeders’ animals––for the money.

Circulating in anti-animal rights literature since the early 1990s, these beliefs have gained a following as shelters have become more aggressive about advertising animals for adoption in competition with breeders; enjoy the advantages of placing animals through the PetSmart and Petco adoption boutiques, which exclude breeders; succeed in placing ever higher percentages of the dogs they receive, so that demand for some types of dog far exceeds the shelter supply; and have become increasingly inclined to set adoption fees that reflect demand.

Setting a higher adoption fee for a small dog or a pedigreed dog is a flashpoint for breeder ire, in particular, because this looks to breeders like doing the same thing they do: Setting a higher adoption fee for a trying to make a profit from animals, instead of just finding homes.

Few shelters set higher adoption fees for the most adoptable animals until under 10 years ago, due to a prevailing belief that variable adoption fees implied that some animals’ lives had less value––but until under 10 years ago most shelter animals were killed. Now that most dogs of breeds other than pit bull terrier are adopted or returned to their homes, pegging adoption fees to demand is widely seen as just maximizing revenue, so as to be able to help more animals in need.

But now that pit bull terriers often make up half or more of the dog intake at major shelters, breeders often allege that shelters impounding their dogs merely want to have other kinds of dog available for adoption.

Claims that shelters have a pecuniary interest in seizing dogs are involved in two cases that are currently before courts in New York and Maine.

New York State Supreme Court Justice Andrew O’Rourke on November 13, 2007 stayed the proceedings in a case involving 13 Maltese dogs and pups until November 30. “We are talking about these dogs as though they are cans of beans,” O’Rourke said. “They are living beings. My concern is these dogs, and nobody has told me what is going to happen to them, or if there are even going to be inspections” to ensure that the dogs are properly cared for, pending the final disposition of neglect charges against breeder Linda Nelson, of Kent Cliffs.

Nelson was charged in July 2006 with 22 counts of neglect. The dogs were seized by Putnam County Sheriff’s Deputy Barbara Dunn, who searched Nelson’s home with a warrant entitling her to check on the health and welfare of any person found inside.

Dunn is also the volunteer president of the Putnam County Humane Society. Dunn placed the dogs in custody of the humane society. The humane society then sued Nelson for the cost of keeping the dogs while the neglect case progresses.

Nelson filed a federal lawsuit alleging that Dunn’s dual role in the case represents a conflict of interest, and that Dunn and the humane society violated her civil rights.

Ruling that Dunn did not have a warrant that entitled her to search and seize dogs from the upstairs of Nelson’s residence, town justice Peter J. Collins dismissed the charges pertaining to the six dogs who were seized upstairs, and ordered the humane society to return them to Nelson, along with two puppies who were later born to them.

Putnam County Humane Society lawyer David Bernham told Collins that the humane society would not return animals to a person being prosecuted for neglect.

Collins then ordered that the remaining five impounded dogs be transferred to the SPCA of Westchester County, pending the outcome of the case. But the Putnam County Humane Society refused to surrender the dogs, whose whereabouts were not disclosed.

Breeders John and Heidi Frasca, of Buxton, Maine, in early November 2007 filed a lawsuit at the U.S. District Court in Portland, prepared “without the help of an attorney,” wrote Westbrook American Journal reporter Robert Lowell, which “claims taking their animals violated their constitutional rights, and alleges that the defendants should be held liable for conspiracy and racketeering.”

Among the defendants, Lowell said, are “Governor John Baldacci, Attorney General Steven Rowe, and York County district attorney Mark Lawrence, as well as several state and local officials, multiple animal welfare groups, and private individuals. The Frascas seek return of their dogs, and $900 million in damages.”

State and local investigators seized 249 dogs from the Frascas on August 21, 2007, and in September were authorized by the Biddeford District Court to sterilize them and offer them for adoption. The Frascas appealed the verdict, but failed to post a security bond of $867,740 that was required to pursue the appeal.

Charged with 25 counts of cruelty to animals, John Frasca did not appear for arraignment on November 14. A warrant was issued for his arrest.