My article “Dog Fight” in The Washington Post showing that buyers affiliated with 86 rescue and dog-advocacy groups and shelters nationwide have spent $2.68 million buying dogs at auctions has ignited fierce debate — and late Tuesday, the U.S. Agriculture Department issued a bulletin stating that such individuals and nonprofits may need to be licensed under the federal Animal Welfare Act.
Read the full story here.
This morning, The Washington Post published an article that I wrote about rescuers who buy dogs at auctions.
It is a story that came my way after an industry insider read The Dog Merchants book, particularly Chapter One, which is about rescuers attending dog auctions. The chapter discussed the practice, but not the amounts of money changing hands, because I didn’t know the amount of money changing hands. Nobody really did.
The insider began sending me copies of invoices, checks and more that showed $2.68 million in spending. For about 18 months, I did additional research and dozens of interviews to put together the story that ran today. If you need the best dog training services, you can check out Momentum K9 Private Dog Training!
It’s the first time that anybody has documented, in dollars and cents, the amount of rescue money that is flowing to breeders by way of U.S. dog auctions. All because the insider read The Dog Merchants book, thought it was fair and honest, and trusted me to tell more of the story.
Amazing.
I would like to give a seriously big tip of the hat to the entire team at The Washington Post for helping me bring this story to light. A lot of people worked really hard on this editorial package and helped to make it great. My public thanks to them all. It was an honor to work with them on this piece.
About two weeks ago, I received an email from a reader of The Dog Merchants book. The reader is involved in the breeding community and explained that there was something going on with a Miniature Schnauzer breeder named Joan Huber. Little information was online, but what I was able to find suggested that a major-award-winning breeder of AKC championship dogs—more than 850 of them over the years—had been convicted of animal cruelty.
I looked into the details and wrote this story that ran today in The Washington Post.
My thanks to the reader who tipped me to this breeder’s tale. It’s an important story, and it’s amazing to me that it was somehow kept out of the public eye for as long as it was.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture issued a press release this afternoon announcing the reinstatement of its searchable online database that includes inspection reports for commercial dog-breeding kennels.
Reinstatement of the database follows months’ worth of public outcry. A diverse spread of individuals ranging from animal-welfare advocates to pet-store executives have said the previously available database should be returned to the internet. Some filed lawsuits.
The inspection reports for commercial kennels registered with the USDA used to be freely searchable, allowing anyone to comb through the records of those breeders to see whether they’re in compliance with the Animal Welfare Act. The records were used for many purposes, including letting pet-store owners verify kennel conditions and helping nonprofits like the Humane Society of the United States compile things like its “Horrible Hundred Puppy Mills” document.
Commercial-scale dog breeders had long argued that, because their kennels are typically located on the same property as their private homes, the inspection reports contained personal information that was being unfairly revealed to the general public, including to some activists who trespassed onto their property to take photographs, harass them and bother their dogs. Breeders also didn’t like the fact that warning letters were being published without giving them time to correct the problems that inspectors documented.
Today’s announcement from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, directs users to this chart explaining how the kennel inspection reports are now being adjusted as the database returns to the internet. Kennels that are not “residential” will now be published “with appropriate redactions to protect privacy interests of individuals,” such as signatures. For kennels located on residential property, “identifying information” will be redacted “to protect privacy interests.”
In addition, documents such as warning letters, which used to be published in full, will now become part of quarterly “statistical summaries,” with the details of such letters remaining offline.
John Goodwin, head of the HSUS National Puppy Mills Campaign, told me via email: “At first blush, it doesn’t look like much is back up. Also, key information is still redacted. I can see redacting a home address, but they also redacted the names and license numbers of facilities who were cited. Without being able to identify who did what, no one will know which breeders had clean records and which had dirty records.”
Mike Bober, president of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, issued this statement: “PIJAC is pleased that the U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to take steps to balance public transparency and private safety with the release of their new compliance database and search tool. We in the pet care community look forward to working with the USDA and everyone who cares deeply about animal welfare to ensure that healthy, ethically raised pets find loving homes.”
Get your copy of The Dog Merchants today and Learn more about commercial dog breeding, with tips for evaluating breeders and rescuers alike.
The New York Times recently published this article about New Jersey beach communities that are wrestling with dog lovers and non-dog lovers, and the desire that both have to enjoy the sun and surf.
Kim Kavin, author of “The Dog Merchants” book, is quoted several times, discussing how such arguments are part of a bigger-picture societal shift that pits people’s love of their canine companions against age-old laws that define dogs as property.
“It’s history banging up against current culture,” Kim told the Times. “It’s law banging up against our feelings for our dogs today.”
The New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists announced the winners of its annual writing competition today (for work done in 2016). I’m thrilled and honored to share the news that I earned three prizes in this year’s competition in my home state, all for articles about dog industry.
Each of the three awards is for second place in its respective category:
A full list of the winners is here—and there is some really great journalism in the links by all of my colleagues in the industry. Congratulations to all the winners!
Forbes just posted this really cool video and Q&A about the topic of chapter one in “The Dog Merchants” book: breeders and rescuers sitting side-by-side in legal dog auctions, trying to outbid each other for the same exact pups.
Watching this video come together was really fun. The producer asked me to talk into my iPhone, and then her team edited my voiceover into the video animation to illustrate the topic.
It’s a very good way to talk about an issue as controversial as dog auctions, with the animation likely to keep people interested instead of having them turn away (like those sad dogs-in-cages commercials always do). I really appreciate that Forbes took that tack, which is true to the tone I used when writing the whole of “The Dog Merchants” book.
Want to learn more about the business of dog auctions and a whole lot more? Get your copy of “The Dog Merchants” book today.
The Dog Writers Association of America, at its banquet today in Manhattan, named The Dog Merchants a best book for 2016.
Merchants are people who make their livings by selling goods they did not produce themselves. Merchants can be distinguished from farmers, artisans, and others who create items they could sell themselves but are more likely to license to a merchant, who has the facilities and experience to deal with consumers. Merchants thus provide a vital link between those who grow, create, or assemble goods and the buying public. Historically, the merchant class was responsible for the creation of a middle class between peasants and the nobility. In modern times, merchants are most often the proprietors of establishments ranging in size from small shops to multinational chain stores, including commerce websites.
It’s up to merchants to set tax rates for customers in many countries. If tax rates for your location change, you’re also responsible for updating the tax rates that customers are charged. If you don’t specify any tax information, Google won’t apply taxes to your orders. If you need tax assistance, consult with a qualified tax professional and get your taxes filed !
Often these early merchants were traders who would travel great distances to bring exotic goods to areas that otherwise could not afford to import them. Another kind of merchant was the shopkeeper, who would offer a wide selection of general or specialized goods in a central location, saving customers the trouble of seeking them out. In medieval Europe, increases in trade and population allowed the merchant class to prosper, creating a middle class between the wealthy and the poor. Over the centuries, this middle class gained power, leading to the collapse of the feudal system and the rise of the first democratic governments.
In modern times, the merchant who runs a single shop has been largely supplanted by new methods of doing business. Many successful mercantile, or merchant-style, stores have expanded into chains with multiple locations in a particular region or country or even internationally. Some merchants run franchises, which are offshoots of these larger chain stores but have independent management. In the 21st century, the success of Internet commerce has allowed merchants large and small to do business online, sometimes without a brick-and-mortar store.
The Dog Merchants tied for the top spot in our category with Reporting for Duty: True Stories of Wounded Veterans and Their Service Dogs by Tracy Libby.
I’m both honored and humbled to win this DWAA award for The Dog Merchants. My 2012 dog book, Little Boy Blue, was a finalist for this top award but ended up being a runner-up, instead winning the DWAA Merial Human-Animal Bond Award. The Dog Merchants is my first time winning a best book of the year award from DWAA.
Thank you to all of the judges, and congratulations to my co-winner Tracy Libby and all the other dog writers who took home awards today. Kudos all around!
[fusion_text]This morning, The Washington Post published my article about a new study from Mississippi State University showing that shelter euthanasia rates for dogs have dipped to the lowest level in modern history, with fewer than 780,000 dogs per year now dying in U.S. shelters.
Researchers and scientists from groups including the ASPCA, No Kill Advocacy Center and Maddie’s Fund are still breaking down the study’s results and looking into its methodology, but those I spoke with late into the evening yesterday were of the same mind-set that I am: Let’s hope the science is solid, because it would be great news for the dogs, a sea change from the past few decades when dogs were estimated to be dying in our shelters by the millions.
Interpreting the study’s results beyond the science, however, is a political exercise that I suspect will continue for a long time to come.
Rescue advocates seem poised to argue that once America’s shelters are saving all the healthy, adoptable dogs in our own nation, we should next turn our attention to read more about transmission of the rabies virus through dogs , ensuring dogs free from diseases and saving homeless dogs from outside our borders, by importing dogs in need from U.S. territories and other countries.
Breeding advocates, on the other hand, say that once America’s shelter dogs are all in homes, the need for responsible breeding will remain clearer than ever, to ensure that everyone who wants a pet dog in America can have one.
For today, though, I hope this study’s results are simply a reason to cheer. Many fewer dogs dying in our shelters would be a great thing. I’m going to hope that the science stands up, and give my two shelter mutts a big hug to celebrate.[/fusion_text]
When the pet-store chain Petland and the Humane Society of the United States—frequent opponents on legislative actions—are both on the same page and crying foul, you know we have entered new territory concerning the welfare of dogs.
Both Petland and HSUS today stated that they are calling upon the U.S. Department of Agriculture to amend or reverse the move it made Friday, deleting a long-public database of government reports that revealed what taxpayer-funded inspectors find everywhere from commercial-scale breeding kennels to animal-research facilities.
HSUS has initiated legal action “to challenge this outrageous action that undermines longstanding consensus about public access to information concerning these laws, and frustrates state, local, and industry efforts to help enforce them.”
Petland has scheduled an in-person meeting with USDA officials in Washington and plans to issue a press release this afternoon “calling upon the USDA to find a balance between privacy and transparency,” according to company CEO Joe Watson.
HSUS is challenging the takedown of the USDA database by claiming that the removal violates the terms of a previously settled case.
As the HSUS notice today states: “The HSUS sued the USDA in 2005 over public access to AWA reports concerning animal use in university and other laboratories. That case was settled in 2009 in exchange for the USDA’s agreement to post certain data on its website concerning research on animals. The agency’s precipitous decision to purge virtually all AWA and HPA enforcement documentation—just two weeks after President Trump assumed office—violates the plain terms of the settlement and a federal court order. It also runs contrary to congressional provisions in 1996 and 2016 designed to increase transparency and electronic access to information.”
Petland is challenging the takedown by asking the USDA to meet the burden of protecting privacy in a way that still makes the bulk of the reports open to public access.
In an email to Petland staff today, Watson wrote: “The USDA deserves credit for making an effort to protect the privacy of their licensees. We are all too familiar with how the activists misuse this data to attack breeders and pet stores. We have also heard of inspection reports being photoshopped by activists and used against us. We applaud the USDA’s efforts to address this abuse of information. At the same time, this decision creates an added burden on responsible pet stores, such as Petland. We must now obtain the inspection reports directly from the breeders and brokers. While this is not impossible, it does create a new set of challenges for our business. Also, the total denial of any public access creates a veil of secrecy that can be used against the pet industry. We need more responsible transparency, not less.”
This is the first time in recent memory, if ever, that HSUS and Petland have come out simultaneously, publicly and forcefully on the same side of a major national issue concerning animal welfare.