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Chapter 3

Where Babies Come From:

Poorly Bred versus Purely Bred

Horses are cheaper than oats.

—Anonymous

Designer dogs are abandoned, turned into shelters, becoming sick, and dying at an alarming rate. The reason lies in the designer dog recipe.

Designer dogs can come from responsible breeders, but more often they’re from puppy mills, backyard breeders (amateur breeders who often breed substandard dogs for fun or extra income), or hobbyists (who are like backyard breeders, but usually breed on a smaller scale and specialize in one breed). These suppliers exist all over the world and the dogs are sold domestically and internationally. The dogs sometimes travel twenty hours, halfway around the world, to get to their destination. Conditions are often squalid and infections spread between the puppies, further destabilizing their health and immune systems. It is a traumatic experience that can cause physical and mental health issues, or compound existing ones.

The internet offers quick and easy ways to find and buy designer dogs. The simplicity of this often leads to impulse-driven, whim acquisitions. And because the purchases are sight unseen, you can’t be certain what you are actually buying and from whom. Often the dog you think you’re buying, which you selected because of a cute photo or video, is not the dog that arrives at the door. Though existing laws protect these pets, there is frequently a lack of resources, officers, and the will to enforce them.

Some breeders and puppy mills are licensed; some are not. Some are registered with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA); some are not. To be licensed and registered, a breeder needs to fill out a form, pay a fee, and agree to submit to inspections for compliance with minimum standards of care. Some breeders operate in places of business; others operate in homes. Proof of registration with the USDA or meeting an individual state’s registration requirements doesn’t guarantee compliance with federal, state, humane, husbandry, and retail laws.

After the 2016 presidential election, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) scrubbed much of the section of its website related to animal welfare. An “Editor’s Note” on the website reads, “APHIS is implementing actions to remove documents it posts on APHIS’ website involving the Horse Protection Act (HPA) and the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).”

On August 18, 2017, in response to a public outcry and threats of legal challenges, it reinstated the public search tool that provides access to AWA compliance records and some information regarding license and compliance issues, however, it’s clear that the records are incomplete by the site’s own admission that it will “continue to review records and determine which information is appropriate for reposting.” Instead of transparently sharing all violation information known to it, the agency requires that the person seeking information file a request, stating, “Those seeking information from APHIS regarding inspection reports not currently posted to the website, regulatory correspondence, and enforcement-related matters may submit Freedom of Information Act requests for that information.” This information is important for the public to be able to conduct even a minimal background check on the supplier of an animal being considered for purchase, and for those of us in law enforcement who use the information to inform state violations, assess patterns of mistreatment, and propose legislation. As of this writing, responses to information requests are slow, often ignored, and may be heavily redacted. New lawsuits have been filed to address these issues. The fact that this information is not readily available is reprehensible.

The Farmer in the Mill

After the Second World War, two things occurred that greatly affected the pet industry. The first was the post-war boom that ignited the rise of the middle class and the sudden presence of disposable income to spend on items like pets. The second was the changes in agriculture in the West and Midwest. New technology developed sophisticated agricultural machines and irrigation systems, and these, coupled with better pesticides, improved crops and crop yields, but there were also great challenges. Industrialization and urbanization caused many field hands to seek work in cities, and there were several years of severe drought during the 1950s. In response, cash-strapped farmers sought to produce new crops that would be immune to these challenges. The farmers began to “farm” puppies as an alternative cash crop. The farms became known as “puppy farms.”

The farmers had no understanding of the dog-breeding industry and yet they jumped into business. To keep costs down, they stuffed dogs into wire chicken coops, crates, junked appliances, and car seats, and tied others to poles and tree trunks. To increase volume, wire cages were stacked high, one on top of the other, so that pee and poop seeped downward, to the cages beneath. The dogs bred and lived in their own waste and that of other dogs, and were subjected to extreme heat and cold. They were barely fed or medically tended to. Siblings were bred with siblings, parents, and any other dog that could be found. A single puppy farm could have hundreds or thousands of dogs imprisoned at any one time. The dogs were always ill, dirty, malnourished, and living in misery. Babies were often born deformed. Ones considered “unsuitable” (unlikely to sell or breed well) were quickly killed. These conditions continue today.

Capitalizing on post-war disposable income, dogs were offered for commercial sale. The first pet stores opened and puppies were put in store windows to lure customers. As is the case today, consumers wanted the breeds they saw in film, on television, and in the hands of matinee idols. For example, after the release of the film Lassie Come Home in 1943, the popularity of the collie increased by 60 percent during the next decade. The release of the movie The Shaggy Dog, in 1959, did the same for Old English sheepdogs, and this scenario played out countless times over the following decades.3

To satisfy demand, breeders quickly farmed and transported dogs. And dogs, legally property, became the new cash crop. Overhead costs were kept low in the “manufacturing process,” and profits soared. It was a win-win for farmers and retailers, and consumers had easy access to whatever dog breed was in vogue.

In 1953, Patti Page recorded the song “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” complete with barking sounds. The song, written by Bob Merrill and released by Mercury Records, hit Number 1 on both Billboard and Cashbox charts in 1953. Its single sold two million copies. Its chorus is unforgettable:

How much is that doggie in the window?

The one with the waggly tail

How much is that doggie in the window?

I do hope that doggie’s for sale

This song celebrated the pure joy of a cute, loyal dog who protects his owner and provides companionship. It became the symbol of the premise that the pet store dog was the best thing in the world and that everyone should have one. Owning a dog from a pet shop was also thought of as a status symbol. In 1997, the song was adapted into a children’s book, How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?, retold and illustrated by Iza Trapani, in which a little boy tries to save his entire allowance and chore money in order to purchase a “doggie in the window.” Again, the iconic song encouraged and romanticized the purchase of a pet shop dog rather than the adoption of a shelter dog.

“Cheap to produce, expensive to buy” was the song the farmers were singing.

Over the years, the song “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” organically morphed into the anthem of activists who were decrying the dark side of puppy mills and who begged people to adopt from crowded shelters rather than buy from puppy mills. At issue for them was the inhumanity of the pet industry and the fact that healthy dogs were being euthanized for reasons related to time, space, and a lack of families to adopt them.

The anti–puppy-mill sentiment that became associated with the song upset Patti Page so much that in 2009 she recorded a new version of the song titled “Do You See That Doggie in the Shelter?” Its lyrics were written by Chris Gantry and the rights for it were given to the Humane Society of the United States. The new version confronts the existence and practices of puppy mills and answers the question “how much” with “too much.” In 2009, Patti Page was quoted by the Humane Society as saying:

The original song asks the question: “How much is that doggie in the window?” Today, the answer is “too much.” And I don’t just mean the price tag on the puppies in pet stores. The real cost is in the suffering of the mother dogs back at the puppy mill. That’s where most pet store puppies come from. And that kind of cruelty is too high a price to pay.4

The lyrics of “Do You See That Doggie in the Shelter?” were set to the same tune as the original version. It spoke of the dogs across the country without homes and owners to protect them, and who are lost and go hungry until rescued by a shelter.

Its catchy chorus is:

Do you see that doggie in the shelter

the one with the take me home eyes

If you give him your love and attention

he will be your best friend for life

While the public was celebrating its easy access to designer dogs, as the happy, tail-wagging music played on, back at the farms horrible things were happening. The original puppy farmers, who came from a background of agricultural crop farming and were not dog-breeding experts, treated the dogs like livestock rather than companion animals and figured out early on that the less they invested in good food, veterinary care, and husbandry, the higher their profits would be. They gave no regard to the health of mother dogs, which they bred constantly, or to genetic pool diversity. They also spent as little as possible to care for puppies during their transportation to pet stores. If some puppies died during transport, the price of the survivors would be raised so that the profit wouldn’t be hurt.

The term “puppy mill,” while colloquially used during the post-war period, wasn’t formally introduced into legal vernacular until a 1984 Minnesota court case, Avenson v. Zegart, 577 F. Supp. 958. The plaintiffs in the case had been operating a dog-breeding business in Hubbard County, Minnesota, when, in March of 1982, they came to the attention of Lesley Zegart, then executive director of the Minnesota Humane Society, who was investigating dog-breeding businesses in Minnesota to determine which ones were operating as puppy mills. The term “puppy mills” got an official on-the-record definition in the courts’ statement of facts, which defined it as “a dog breeding operation in which the health of the dogs is disregarded in order to maintain a low overhead and maximize profits.” This characterization was true from the onset of puppy mills through the time of the 1984 case and continues to be true today.

The retailers the farmers shipped the dogs to were no better at caring for the dogs than they were. They too were out to make the highest profit margins possible, and they too crammed as many dogs into cages as they could and avoided paying for high-quality food or medical care. In effect they became minimills. If puppy deaths during transportation led to low inventory, that is, scarce “crop,” or they had to pay more to farmers because of this, they, too, simply raised their prices to make up for it. Costs were passed to the consumer.

Many dogs died within days of arrival at a shop or purchase by a consumer. Yet stores were not legally obligated to provide refunds for the purchase cost or the medical bills incurred by grief-stricken consumers. Decades later, this persistent bad behavior inspired the passage of dog and cat “lemon laws” and “puppy/kitten mill warranty laws” in some states. These laws required refunds, reimbursement for medical bills, husbandry standards, and mandatory documentation of the source of each pet and its medical status—a customer bill of rights, if you will. Later in this book you will see actual cases involving these issues.

It is critical to note that although a puppy may survive early challenges and appear healthy, problems caused in the breeding process often manifest later in life, for example, medical disabilities, congenital problems, and incurable pain or discomfort. Sometimes an entire litter shares the same condition. Customers saddled with ongoing medical bills are often excluded from pet insurance protection policies, as many of the problems are considered preexisting conditions. The Affordable Care Act legislated against excluding coverage, or price gauging for coverage of people deemed to have preexisting conditions by insurance companies, but there is no such law governing pet insurance. Often when these costs are too burdensome, the pets are abandoned.

In the 1950s, stores like Sears, Roebuck and Company, and F. W. Woolworth Company started to get in on the action, featuring window dogs to attract customers, who bought other items as well once they were in the store. One could even order dogs from the Sears catalogue, foreshadowing the ability to order sight unseen from the internet.

What did department stores know about housing and caring for live animals? Not much more than anyone else at either end of the supply chain. I still remember the section of the Woolworth store that had what seemed like hundreds of little birds for sale crammed into cages!

As puppies were becoming available for purchase through a wide variety of retailers, brokers and dealers were developing a “convenience delivery program” to service the industry. The service would, if you will, “Uber” puppies to shops, buyers, and even research laboratories. It was a cash business with no regulation or third-party oversight. Puppies were transported in cramped quarters via pickup trucks or trailers and subjected to the elements.

In the 1950s, the beagle, made popular by the debut of Snoopy of Peanuts fame, became one of the most popular family dogs of the next two decades. Beagles also became, and still are, the favorite breed for animal testing in laboratories, as they are small, docile, and willing to please. The less stressed out a dog is during experiments, the fewer unpredictable changes in their physiology will occur and the more consistent the results will be. The calm demeanor of the beagle also reduces stress for the laboratory staff while they are experimenting on the dogs or caring for them. That a dog revered for his or her love and trust of humans is rewarded by being subjected to painful testing, seems like treachery and a cruel misuse of that trust.

In the late 1990s, the actress Kim Basinger brought cruel laboratory testing on beagles into the public eye when she learned that Yamanouchi USA, a pharmaceutical company, and Huntingdon Life Sciences, a medical research company, planned to break the legs of thirty-six beagles to test an osteoporosis drug. Basinger mounted an enormous, well-publicized fight, during which she demanded the release of the dogs and even offered to take all thirty-six beagles home with her. The laboratory refused her request to remove the dogs, but it did stop the experiment.

To this day, the beagle remains the favorite dog of animal testing laboratories, but it’s also the subject of “beagle freedom” legislation. The legislation calls for dogs (not just beagles) and cats to be released to humane societies and societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, to be adopted into loving homes rather than euthanized, when they’re no longer desired by the labs. In 2015, California enacted a law that required that publicly funded research institutions comply. There are comparable statutes in four other states: Connecticut, Minnesota, Illinois, and Nevada.

The bottom line is that the beagle suffered the torments of mass production because children wanted Snoopy dogs and medical researchers wanted to cut them up. Why do beagles still like us sixty years later? As an aside, it is not uncommon for me to see dogs who were brutally treated by their human companions still act like they love them. It is really heartbreaking to see that; we can’t always understand that level of love and loyalty.

Pepper the Dalmation

With the surge of family pets came a surge of burglaries. Family pets were easy targets because they are more docile than stray dogs. This quality made them especially desirable for research institutions, since it’s easier to experiment on a dog with a calm demeanor. And so, dognappers caught pet dogs and sold them to research facilities.

In 1965, the issues of stolen family pets ending up in laboratories, their mistreatment there, and the deplorable treatment many of them received early on from puppy farm operators and other breeders, became part of the public discourse after the journalist Coles Phinizy published a story titled “The Lost Pets that Stray to the Labs” in the November 29, 1965 edition of Sports Illustrated.5 It told the tale of Pepper the Dalmatian.

Pepper was a five-year-old dalmatian and the beloved pet of Julia and Peter Lakavage and their children when she disappeared from their Pennsylvania farm. The couple advertised that Pepper was missing and searched relentlessly for her. Ultimately, they learned of the arrest of William Miller, an opportunist pet dealer, who was attempting to ship dogs and goats in a truck that was not up to local vehicular codes. His shipment was housed for a night at a Pennsylvania SPCA while he resolved his truck violations. In the account of the arrest, the Lakavages read that there were two dalmatians in the truck. Julia called the shelter to ask about the dalmatians and later, after seeing a photo of them, identified one as Pepper. But before the Lakavages could get to the shelter to rescue their dog, Miller had already unloaded his shipment at Montefiore Hospital in New York City. When Julia learned where Miller had gone, she raced to the hospital, but by the time she got there, it was too late. Pepper had died during experimentation and been cremated after. It was too late to save her.

During an investigation by Pennsylvania police officers, Miller claimed to have received the dog from a person who claimed he got the dog from another person, and so on. There were no reliable records to document any transactions. It was clear that dealers were stealing, selling, and transporting dogs across the country, unregulated.

During the hunt for Pepper, Senator Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania and Congressman Joseph Resnick of New York learned of the theft and investigation. With Senator Clark’s support, Congressman Resnick introduced a bill, H.R. 9743, that mandated that anyone dealing, buying, selling, or brokering dogs be licensed by the federal government and keep a proper record of all related transactions.

The proposed bill led to a raging debate in Congress between two sides: people who had witnessed extreme animal cruelty in puppy farms or those like the Lakavages, who suffered heartbreaking experiences, against members of the medical research community who wanted test subjects regardless of the source, whether bred for research, stolen, or bought from public pounds or private shelters. (The terms “pound” and “shelter” are distinctions without a difference. Antiquated statutes still in use tend to use the word “pound” while modern ones have changed the term to “shelters.” Sometimes the former connotes a public rather than private organization.) Some legislators held a strong position for federal action and others advocated states’ rights and said the federal government shouldn’t intervene. Phinizy articulated the core of the conflict when he wrote:

Whether or not the martyred Pepper will succeed in making a federal case out of dognapping is up to the men who make our nation’s laws, but there are two things that the legislative investigation of her death and disappearance have made quite clear: 1) many pet dogs are being stolen from the front lawns and sidewalks of this country, and 2) the thefts in large part are motivated by science’s constant and growing need for laboratory animals.6

The bill ultimately passed, the winning argument being that because dogs were shipped throughout the country, consistency in regulation was necessary and so the legislation must come from the federal government and not the states. But it wasn’t an easy win.

In his article, Phinizy lamented what seemed like a catch-22 presented to Congress, that they had an important subject to regulate, but insufficient statistics to guide their decision. In other words, there was no documentation to prove the need or lack of need for documentation, and no documentation to prove the activity at all. He wrote:

At a preliminary hearing on the bill some weeks ago a great many charges were made, but not much was proved one way or the other. The truth of the matter is that the whole business of dog procurement for laboratory use, illicit or otherwise, wallows in a sea of insufficient fact. How many dogs do US laboratories use in a year? Nobody knows. How many laboratories use dogs in experiments? Again nobody knows. Where do most of the dogs come from? No one can say for sure.7

The problem articulated by Phinizy is one that the animal welfare community sees over and over again. We learn of atrocities being committed regularly and we demand change to prevent the atrocities from recurring, changes like requiring all parties to formally document their activities so there is a paper trail, and responsibility can be allocated if something goes wrong, but because of the lack of authentic, accurate, and uniform documentation of the sketchy transactions of breeders and dealers, it’s hard to prove their activities, and there is no documentation to rely on to support the enactment of laws that would mandate documentation. The lack of statistics makes it impossible to gauge the size of a problem, if any, and the extent of the necessary fix if one is needed.

The right jab leveled by the Sports Illustrated story against the pet breeding and dealing business was followed by a left cross when, on February 4, 1966, Life magazine published “Concentration Camp for Dogs,” a photographic essay by Stan Wayman that depicted heart-wrenching images of the cruel confines of a puppy farm.8 Wayman had taken the photos during a raid by the Baltimore Humane Society and Maryland State Police on a compound holding 103 dogs. One page of photographs was titled “Raiders Discover a Den of Woes.” One of the many upsetting images showed a dog who had frozen to death in below freezing temperatures. The public outrage from these two seminal articles was loud and clear enough to be heard by the legislators on Capitol Hill and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Sadly, those haunting photographs could have been taken yesterday, as puppy mills like the one photographed still exist around the country.

On August 24, 1966, President Johnson signed the Laboratory Animal Welfare Act of 1966 (now known as the Animal Welfare Act (AWA)), which incorporated the bill proposed by Clark and Resnick, and added humane treatment standards for laboratory animals. Upon signing the bill, President Johnson remarked:

Progress, particularly in science and medicine, does require the use of animals for research and this bill does not interfere with that. But science and research do not compel us to tolerate the kind of inhumanity which has been involved in the business of supplying stolen animals to laboratories or which is sometimes involved in the careless and callous handling of animals in some of our laboratories.9

The AWA provided guidelines for minimum standards of care for the humane treatment of animals in housing, transport, and breeding, as well as a slew of documentation and record-­keeping requirements with detailed transaction records and source, veterinary, and sale records. It also outlined two types of parties, breeders and dealers, and required licenses for them, a class A license and a class B license, respectively.

The definition of a class A licensee includes the following language:

Class “A” licensee means a person subject to the licensing requirements . . . and meeting the definition of a “dealer” [a person breeding, buying, and selling] and whose business involving animals consists only of animals that are bred and raised on the premises in a closed or stable colony and those animals acquired for the sole purpose of maintaining or enhancing the breeding colony.10

This type of licensee can sell only what he breeds on his premises. It doesn’t mean the licensee doesn’t run a puppy mill, and is breaking the guidelines for minimum standards of care, but theoretically the source of the animals and the breeding records are established and documented, so a license might be secured. A class A licensee could be breeding specifically to sell either to a laboratory or the pet industry.

Later in the act, the language states that a license is not required for breeders who have four or fewer breeding females and sell only the offspring of these females.

The description of a class B licensee includes the following language:

Class “B” licensee means a person subject to the licensing requirements . . . and meeting the definition of a “dealer” and whose business includes the purchase and/or resale of any animal. This term includes brokers, and operators of an auction sale, as such individuals negotiate or arrange for the purchase, sale, or transport of animals in commerce. Such individuals do not usually take actual physical possession or control of the animals and do not usually hold animals in any facilities. A class “B” licensee may also exhibit animals as a minor part of the business.

This licensee is a random source dealer, which means his animals could come from anywhere, including front lawns, pounds, owners, swap meets, and animal shelters. Some of these dealers work with middlemen called “bunchers.” A buncher is not licensed, permitted, or otherwise regulated and can pick up pets from regulated or unregulated sources, like Craigslist or “free to good home” advertisements. The buncher sells to a class B licensee, who can then sell to anyone, including research institutions. The buncher rarely has documentation and is not required to. Hence, a class B licensee, though regulated, can circumvent requirements and muddy the footprints on the source trail by using a buncher.

A class B licensee, though he or she usually doesn’t hold animals at a facility, may store the dogs in the back of a truck or use some makeshift confinement system until enough animals are acquired to move to the research institutions. The conditions under which these animals are held are frequently grossly inadequate and the dogs often become ill because of this, or it compounds existing illnesses. The standard defense is to assert that the dogs were in poor shape when they were acquired, so the dealer should not be held responsible. Since the dogs could come from such places as auctions and pounds, it is hard to prove this defense false. Also, no one really asks. It’s the silent wink and nod of the seedy underbelly of the business.

Consider this, if Pepper the Dalmatian was stolen by a buncher and sold to a class B licensee, a random source dealer, who then sold Pepper to a laboratory, the result at that time would have been the same.

The AWA was flawed, and enforcement lax, but it was a start. And there were ripple effects as some states enacted, revised, or augmented their own animal welfare laws. At the time, in the mid- to late 1960s, there was some optimism that relief for these dogs would come. Sadly, it was not to be.

“Try It On the Dog”—Pound Seizure

The AWA was not seriously enforced by the USDA or law enforcement, and there was little respite for dogs. They continued to be brutally farmed, stolen, sold, and abused. Pound seizure practices exacerbated the harm to them.

Pound seizure is the sale or release of pets from a pound to a research testing or educational facility. In this way, shelters, ostensibly safe havens for animals, betrayed them as well. The shelters were supposed to be places where lost pets could be kept safe until found, and abandoned animals could be cared for. Shelters were supposed to help heal dogs who’d been injured or abused, and, ideally, place them into new and loving homes. They were also places that could provide a peaceful, painless, and humane death to animals should that be necessary. Their overarching goals were to ease suffering, provide shelter from the elements, and protect dogs from harm. Or at least they proclaimed these were their goals.

The biomedical and pharmaceutical industries still wanted to test on animals, and researchers and laboratories discovered that pounds were a cheap source of dogs. For their experiments, they did not require that dogs be purebred, or even bred in a consistent manner, to achieve uniform traits. They only required that they be dead or alive.

In the 1940s, several laws were enacted that mandated that public pounds (and even some private organizations housing animals) turn over unclaimed animals to research institutions for experimentation and testing. The following is an actual law passed in Minnesota in 1949 and is representative of similar laws passed in other states around the same time.

35.71 UNCLAIMED AND UNREDEEMED ANIMALS IMPOUNDED; SCIENTIFIC USE.

Subdivision 1. Institution defined. As used in this section, “institution” means any school or college of agriculture, veterinary medicine, medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, or other educational or scientific establishment properly concerned with the investigation of, or instruction concerning the structure or functions of living organisms, the cause, prevention, control or cure of diseases or abnormal conditions of human beings or animals.

Subd. 2. Application by institution for license. Such institutions may apply to the State Live Stock-Sanitary Board for a license to obtain animals from establishments maintained by or for municipalities for the impounding, care and disposal of animals seized by lawful authority. If, after investigation, the State Live Stock Sanitary Board finds that the institution making request for licensure is a fit and proper agency within the meaning of this section, to receive a license, and that the public interest will be served thereby, it may issue a license to such institution authorizing it to obtain animals hereunder, subject to the restrictions and limitations herein provided.

Subd. 3. Supervisor of licensed institution. It shall be the duty of the supervisor of any establishment referred to in subdivision 2 to make available to an institution licensed hereunder, from the available impounded animals seized by lawful authority, such number of animals as the institution may request, provided however, that such animals shall have been impounded for not less than five days or for such other minimum period of time as may be specified by municipal ordinance and remain unclaimed and unredeemed by their owners or by any other person entitled to do so. If a request is made by a licensed institution to such supervisor for a larger number of animals than are available at the time of such request, the supervisor of such establishment shall withhold thereafter from destruction, all such unclaimed and unredeemed animals until such request has been filled, provided that the actual expense of holding such animals beyond the time of notice to such institution of their availability, shall be borne by the institution receiving them.11

Other pound seizure laws such as the one above were enacted before the Animal Welfare Act, so there were no restrictions or rules concerning anesthetizing or treating animals humanely while subjecting them to experimentation.

The practice of pound seizures allowed shelters to monetize their animals in two ways. A shelter could sell a live animal to a research institution rather than pay to house and care for it until an owner claimed it as a lost pet, or an abandoned animal found a new home. Or a shelter could euthanize a pet sooner rather than later, as dead pets could also be sold to institutions. When word got out about these practices, some members of the public who knew and disapproved of them would release or leave strays to suffer and die on the streets rather than turn them into pounds. This fundamentally gutted the primary objective of shelters and deprived the animals of any solace.

It was not until 1993, almost fifty years after pound seizure laws were passed and more than thirty years after the label of a class B dealer was established, that a five-day holding period was enacted, as an amendment to the Animal Welfare Act, ostensibly to allow families to reclaim their lost or stolen pets before it was too late. During this period, laboratories (who sold to other institutions such as laboratories and schools), institutions, and shelters were prohibited from selling pets to a dealer. Such a provision might have saved Pepper the Dalmatian thirty years earlier. The following is the USDA summary statement:

SUMMARY: We are amending the regulations under the Animal Welfare Act (Act) to require that dogs and cats acquired by pounds and shelters owned and operated by States, counties, and cities, private entities established for the purpose of caring for animals, such as humane societies or contract pounds or shelters, and research facilities licensed as dealers by the United States Department of Agriculture, be held and cared for at those establishments for at least 5 days before being provided to a dealer. We are also amending the regulations to require that dealers provide a valid certification to anyone acquiring random source dogs and cats from them. These amendments are being made pursuant to the most recent amendment of the Act. The amendment to the Act was enacted to prevent the use of stolen pets in research and to provide owners the opportunity to locate their animals.

EFFECTIVE DATE: August 23, 1993.12

As of this writing, lest you think that pound seizure is a dead issue, only eighteen states and Washington, DC, have prohibited the practice. Thirty-one states leave the decision to local cities and counties, and Oklahoma still requires that animals be handed over for testing. California, considered the most enlightened and progressive state in issues of animal welfare, did not ban the practice of turning over live animals to research institutions until 2016. However, California shelters may still turn over dead animals for research, if they post a notice informing the public that they do. (The notice requirement used to apply to live animals as well.) The State Humane Association of California, now the California Animal Welfare Association, of which I am currently president, sponsored a bill to ban turning over animals, both dead and alive, to research facilities (Assembly Bill 2269). The part of the bill protecting live animals became law, but the part intended to protect dead pets and let them rest in peace did not prevail.