Pennsylvania Tries to Get Tough on Puppy Mills

New Pennsylvania laws attempted to crack down on puppy mills but many of the provisions are getting push back from all sides.

Published: Jan 28, 2007

LANCASTER -

Nina Schaefer’s favorite is the one about “lateral recumbence.”

Buried deep in 67 pages worth of new dog laws proposed by state officials to crack down on Pennsylvania’s “puppy mill” problem is a provision governing the size of “primary enclosures” for kennels. They are, according to the proposed rule, to be big enough so that a dog may lie in a “lateral recumbence” — on its side or back with legs fully extended — without any part of its body, tail, feet or head touching any side of the enclosure.

“Haven’t they ever seen a dog lie down?” asks Schaefer, president of the Pennsylvania Federation of Dog Clubs. “Any time I’ve ever seen a dog lying with its legs sticking straight out, it’s dead.”

It is, she said, all too typical of the proposed new rules, which she and other critics say appear to have been written by those with little background in animal husbandry, in the intent of putting breeders out of business.

“Honestly,” said Schaefer, “you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Instead of doing either, breeders, dog clubs and others have gotten angry, deluging the state Department of Agriculture with comments and complaints about the new rules, which could go into effect this year.


Officials who back the new regulations — part of a broad effort by Gov. Ed Rendell to reform the breeding industry and rid Pennsylvania of its reputation as puppy mill capital of the Northeast — say some things should and likely will be tweaked. But the state has long needed better, stronger, more specific laws regarding the treatment of dogs, and the proposed new regulations provide exactly that.

“This is an attempt to improve conditions at large commercial kennels,” said Jessie Smith, special deputy secretary for dog law enforcement in the state Department of Agriculture.


Series of raids


Smith, hired last fall to oversee a revamped and strengthened state Bureau of Dog Law, has begun to crack down on puppy mills. A series of high-profile raids has taken place over the last month, with one, on Dec. 21, resulting in the seizure of 23 sick dogs from Long Lane Kennel in Narvon.

Last week, a state dog law officer charged a Cumberland County couple with 139 counts of animal cruelty for allegedly keeping more than 60 dogs in unsanitary, makeshift pens. Investigators said most of the dogs were malnourished, and many were matted with mud and feces.

Animal lovers have cheered the crackdown. The dog industry has been less thrilled. More than 200 people packed a Dec. 13 meeting of the state’s new Dog Law Advisory Board — Rendell fired the old one — and many attendees were Lancaster County dog breeders, worried that the new laws might shut them down.

"I think [the draft regulations are] written to put kennels out of business, not to make kennels better," said Nathan Myer of Lititz, according to a report in the Harrisburg Patriot-News.

Anyone who wishes to comment on the proposed new regulations has until Feb. 14 to do so. Then the Agriculture Department’s Bureau of Dog Law must respond in writing to each of the comments, before any proposed regulations can be submitted to the Legislature for review.

Lancaster County has 275 licensed kennels, the most in the state. Many of the breeders here are Plain — Amish or Mennonite — and the emergence of dogs as a cash crop has helped keep Plain families down on the farm. Without the income from dogs, “many families wouldn’t be able to pay their mortgages,” said Ken Brandt, a former state representative who’s now a lobbyist for the breeding industry.

Brandt said Myer’s fear is widespread. The proposed new rules, he said, “read as if [the state] doesn’t want any more breeding in Pennsylvania.”

He cited one that stipulates that outdoor facilities where dogs are kept “shall be kept free of grass and weeds.”

“So now dogs aren’t allowed to be on grass?” Brandt asked.

Another stipulates that if an outdoor area for dogs is constructed of gravel or stone, “it must be constructed in layers to provide proper drainage and footing that will not cause injury to the dogs.”

“So now Dog Law’s in the construction business?” retorted Brandt.

“Whoever wrote this is obviously far removed from animal husbandry,” he said.

“They’re treating the dogs like they’re human.”


Other side


But that’s hardly the point, said Sue West, a member of the Humane League of Lancaster County board of directors as well as the governor’s new Dog Law Advisory Board.

“The draft of the regulations is meant to add more detail in areas that are currently subjective,” said West in an e-mail. For example, she said, current law doesn’t address the temperature inside a kennel; the only requirement is that ventilation be added should the inside temperature reach 85 degrees.

“In other words, it could be 102 degrees with high humidity in a barn full of dogs, but if a fan system is running they are within the current stated regulations,” said West.

And while the breeding industry, pet store owners or dog clubs might object to various aspects of the proposed new laws, “We need to be able to have measurable standards that hold up in front of a court or DJ, and we need to be sure that dogs are receiving care that is going to meet all their needs, especially if kept in a facility for a long, long time,” said West.

“Yes, some of the changes will cost money ... [but] why is it asking too much for them to put something back into the business for the sake of the very animals which are making them money?”

But Schaefer and other critics of the proposed new rules say many are so vague they pose insurmountable obstacles to licensed kennels. One, for example, would require that each establishment have a big enough facility not just for all the dogs currently on the premises, but all dogs to be kept on the premises — meaning, Schaefer said, that someone with a “class I” license to keep or breed 26 dogs per year would have to have a facility big enough to handle 26 dogs at one time, even though the license holder may never have more than five or six dogs at any given moment.

Many small or “hobby” breeders who hold kennel licenses — seeing them as the equivalent of the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval — might be prohibited, by local zoning ordinances, from building such a large facility in the first place.

And what she suspects is that many license holders will simply give up their licenses — but “do not, for a minute, think that those people will give up breeding dogs.”

Brandt, the breeders’ lobbyist, also suggests the tough new rules could have the opposite of the intended effect, driving breeders underground in an attempt to evade laws with which they can’t afford to comply.

“There’s a demand out there for dogs,” said Brandt.

“And that demand will stay.”