The Dog Merchants

by Kim Kavin

  “In twenty years of law enforcement,” Babcock told reporters, “it’s one of the worst homes I’ve ever been into.”

  Then came the truly shocking news from WLKY News, WBIB News, and WDRB News: The breeder charged with animal cruelty was named Laura King. Her references, if anyone buying a Poodle puppy from her had asked, could have included Metropolitan Veterinary Specialists in Louisville, where she worked as a veterinary technician during evening hours. Plenty of dog owners knew her and trusted her, based on the care she had given their pets, and she apparently thought she could maintain that façade, having called her boss to describe her sudden absence from work not as involving a possible jail sentence but instead as a family emergency. Her colleagues found out about the charges only by seeing the story on the local news. They’d been aware she was a Poodle breeder, but nobody had ever visited the Paoli home. The people who knew King and worked with her—every last one of them an animal care professional—said they were as stunned as everyone else to learn what appeared to be the horrific truth.

  A lot of dog lovers trust people like vet techs and might look to them and veterinarians first when it comes to locating a responsible breeder. Buyers think they’re up to speed because they’ve seen the commercials on television and the advertisements imploring everyone to be on the lookout for irresponsible breeders trying to make a fast buck by keeping hundreds of dogs at a time living in squalor. Nobody wants to support the so-called puppy mills, so dog lovers look for people selling dogs who seem small scale and honest, and who come with a good reference from a trusted friend or veterinarian.

  That may have been a reasonable practice in the past, but nowadays, the world’s worst small-scale breeders know it’s what the buyers are doing. Sellers are adapting their business practices and marketing stories accordingly. The least responsible are making themselves look an awful lot like the Colleen Nicholsons, to the point that buyers often can’t tell the difference when handing over cash to bring a puppy home.

  Despite the huge scope of the breeding business worldwide, many of the people dealing in purebred puppies are still tiny, independent producers. Consolidation has not yet come to this industry the way it has in others, and because so many of the breeders are freelance operations, they often end up doing business however they please. The AKC and the Kennel Club in Britain each have inspection programs that purport to give buyers some kind of a legitimacy guarantee for breeders who turn out just a couple litters of puppies a year, but criticism reigns on both sides of the Atlantic about how few breeders the associations ever actually inspect. In 2013, the AKC acknowledged that it had no idea how many breeders in America owned AKC-registered dogs and that it had just nine inspectors covering the entire nation. Also in 2013, the Kennel Club released data in Britain showing it had inspected less than 4 percent of breeders admitted into its Assured Breeder Scheme that year, and that 90 percent of new breeders—nine out of ten—who had previously registered at least five litters of puppies, and who had been given the right to use the “Assured Breeder” label when talking with customers, had never been inspected at all.

  Even breeders sanctioned by these groups as experts can turn out to be charlatans who keep adult dogs in miserable conditions while selling their puppies as top grade. It can go on for years. In January 2013, the AKC reported that it had stripped the dog show judge and Chihuahua breeder Margaret Ann Hamilton of all privileges for a decade. The action came after authorities in Washington State searched two homes and, according to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Issaquah Press, found about a hundred dogs living in feces-covered stacked crates, walking in neurotic circles from constant confinement, and desperately in need of medical care, some so badly malnourished their jawbones were decomposed or gone. Yet like the accused vet tech in Indiana, Hamilton had outstanding references as a small-scale breeder if anyone buying a Chihuahua puppy from her had cared to ask.

  What’s even scarier for conscious consumers trying to buy dogs from responsible sources is that operators like King and Hamilton were reportedly working alone, or at most with the help of a spouse. In some parts of the world, animal welfare advocates say this game of tricking buyers of purebred puppies has expanded not only across city and state lines but also national borders, and it is now best described as multinational organized crime, or a “puppy mafia.” Buyers are on the lookout for massive mills or farms when the new problem is sometimes a network of irresponsible small-scale breeders working together—in a way that can be invisible to regulators who, like buyers, are watching for larger-scale abuses.

  “Not all of these are about mass breeding farms,” says Julie Sanders, the United Kingdom manager for Four Paws, an international animal charity with offices throughout Europe as well as in South Africa and the United States. “Some of them are about dealers in Eastern Europe having as many as three thousand breeders, and they are collecting from different breeders because they need puppies on the go at different times.”

  Sanders has had a front row seat since UK officials relaxed the nation’s dog import laws in 2012, bringing them in line with European Union standards. Before that change, a dog could get a rabies shot and then had to wait six months (the disease’s incubation period) before entering the United Kingdom. The regulation was relaxed to make it easier for everyday people to travel across borders with their pets, and it created a loophole now being exploited to sell far younger puppies from Eastern Europe, where animal welfare laws are looser. The targeted buyers are unsuspecting, high-paying people in major Western European cities such as Amsterdam, Berlin, and Madrid, and ultimately throughout Britain.

  The numbers during just the past few years show the zeal with which Eastern European breeders are pouncing on the new business opportunity. Between 2011 and 2013 alone, the number of dogs entering the United Kingdom from Poland, Romania, Hungary, and Lithuania rose from two thousand to twelve thousand. Romania, in a single year, had an increase in dog exports to Britain of more than 1,000 percent. Often, Sanders says, the puppies arrive shockingly young and sometimes sick, with forged vaccination papers and whatever else the sellers need to offload them to buyers who think they’re getting a good bargain on a purebred dog.

  Sanders, working with an undercover team posing as wholesale buyers, traced some of the puppies to one typical source: an animal market held every Sunday in Poland next to the regular market selling food, clothes, and other goods. She saw Chihuahuas, Miniature Pinschers, Staffordshire Terriers, Siberian Huskies, German Shepherds, Beagles, Maltese, Yorkshire Terriers, Spaniels, and more, all lined up alongside the goats, horses, ducks, geese, and other animals for sale. The dog dealers had signs claiming to be adoption organizations—which Sanders says makes it legal to sell individual puppies there—but in fact were offering pups for sale en masse, creating the starting point and setting the sales quotas for the networks that transport the dogs to the deepest-pocketed puppy buyers in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and Britain. The numbers of pups coming out of such places can be shocking; one dealer in Slovakia estimated that he alone distributed more than ten thousand dogs a year across Europe.

  “It’s extremely sophisticated,” she says. “We were told when we were doing undercover filming at the puppy market that we had to buy more than ten puppies a month, and we were told to buy more because some would die en route—but not to worry because we’ll still make the money. They allow for a percentage over what you want, which is your wastage. It’s a stressful journey for puppies, from Poland to Europe to the UK. They may not be given food, water, or anything.”

  The puppies are moved by land across Europe on the cheap, in trucks that may have no ventilation nor meet any other commercial standards. They’re then often taken by boat into the United Kingdom, Sanders says, because inspections at seaports are less stringent than at airports. Trucks collect the puppies at the seaport dock, or UK-based dealers meet the shippers on the side of a nearby road, and then the puppies are distributed to private homes throughout Britain, w
ith just a few being offloaded at every stop. That way, they can be made to look like newborns from small-scale, individual breeders and everyday people, who advertise them on the Internet to duped buyers who think they’re giving money to fellow Brits who treat dogs responsibly.

  “We’ve been told that some people try to purchase the breeds that match the dogs they have in the house, so people don’t ask questions,” she says. “Some people give a lame excuse, such as they’re selling it on behalf of a friend. Recently we were told they’re bringing the mothers over with the puppies because the puppies are so young, and so the mothers can be there to sell the puppies, then they bring them back to the puppy farms, which are horrendous.”

  The reality for savvy, small-scale breeders or even networks of them today is that the law, or lack thereof, makes it easy to cut corners pretty much anywhere in the world—and the fact that more and more people shop for dogs on the Internet provides a steady stream of customers to the worst offenders. Websites can be made to look nice when real-life conditions are deplorable. Even trusted online brands, sites many people regularly support with business in other areas, can be part of the problem when it comes to dogs.

  “Next year, we’re targeting classified ad websites, including eBay, in 10 countries where we operate,” Sanders said about a 2016 campaign, explaining that eBay doesn’t sell animals, but it owns a number of classified ad sites worldwide where animals are advertised, including Gumtree in the UK, which is similar to Craigslist in the United States. “Classified ad sites are helping to fuel the trade in puppies with a lack of regulation. They are being exploited by illegal and irresponsible breeders and sellers, with disastrous consequences for the animals.”

  Dog lovers can shake their heads at the magnitude of it all and at the way abuses are infecting parts of their lives they thought were pristine, but the reality is that no matter how many laws are enacted or investigations are done, buyers are often the only stopgap that can prevent the abuses in the first place. They are far too often the only ones in a position to decide whether a small-scale dog seller is a Colleen Nicholson or an international smuggler. No matter where dog lovers look around the world, unless a small-scale breeder is accused of animal cruelty, often buyers are the only ones ever aware that he is selling puppies at all.

  “As long as there is demand, there will always be suppliers,” Sanders says. “If there is money to be made, people will do it.”

  Stefano Paolantoni is the owner of Dell’Alberico Kennel in Italy’s bountiful Chianti region, a place whose residents know more than a little about how to grow and sell products the rest of the world admires. Today, Paolantoni is recognized as a world-class breeder of Lhasa Apsos, Maltese, and Toy Poodles, but he got his start much as Colleen Nicholson did halfway around the world, with a single dog. He then chose a different path, producing more and more puppies year after year, showing how a single breeder can become an international player whose dogs now have ties throughout Europe, in the United States, in Japan, and in Russia.

  As a child during the 1970s, Paolantoni had a German Shepherd he took to field trials, where dogs are judged on skills instead of looks. He heard about the conformation dog shows and became curious, and he met a woman named Annigje “Annie” Schneider-Louter, whose Van de Warwinckel Kennel in Holland had been the first to bring Lhasa Apsos into the Netherlands, from Belgium and England, in 1965. Schneider-Louter was also a Lhasa Apso judge, which means she not only was producing the first litters of the breed ever to be born in Holland, but also was helping to shape the breed standard all across Europe.

  When she befriended the young newcomer Paolantoni, he was ecstatic and saw his way into the business under the wing of a seasoned pro.

  “She was my mentor and later became a very important friend,” he says. “She trusted me so much, and she sold me a beautiful male who was already a multi-champion, named Mi-Don Van de Warwinckel. In my opinion, everyone needs to have a good mentor for breeding. This is absolutely the most important thing for having success.”

  It didn’t take him long, with her help, to make his own mark. By 1978, Paolantoni’s Dell’Alberico Kennel was recognized by the Italian Kennel Club and by the FCI, and he imported some additional Lhasa Apsos from the United States to breed Marlo’s Rocky Road, who became one of the most winning Lhasa Apso show dogs in the world. One of Rocky Road’s sons, Ulderigo Dell’Alberico, was named the top all-breed dog in Italy in 1999. Soon, the Lhasa Apso puppies Paolantoni produced had buyers waiting not only throughout Europe, but also in the United Kingdom and the United States.

  That’s not to say he was raking in the big bucks. The total market for the breed remained small, he says, and financial gain never became his focus. Even if he’d wanted to get rich by churning out an endless stream of puppies, there just weren’t enough buyers out there.

  “If you have decided to breed Lhasas, it’s only for passion and for nothing else,” he says. “I think money is the last thing you should be focused on when you decide to breed dogs, even if you breed more popular dogs that can be sold quite easily.”

  Paolantoni next decided to branch out into breeding not only Lhasa Apsos, but also Maltese, which he thought he could improve with help from a partner, Franco Prosperi of Cinecittà Kennel. “At that time, the breed was not so popular like it is nowadays, and the main reason we started is that the breed was not well represented in Italy, which is the country of origin,” he says. “I never thought to become rich with Maltese, and I never thought to breed just to breed. Our goal was to get the same quality I got with Lhasas.”

  They bought some Maltese from the United Kingdom and America, and one of the dogs they acquired had already won championships in the United States and in Europe. His name was Shanlyn Lolly O’Malley, which didn’t exactly roll off people’s tongues in Tuscany with the kind of flair it might have in Dublin, but the dog nevertheless became the foundation male for all the Maltese that Paolantoni has since produced and marketed as the most stylish of Italian dogs.

  His Maltese puppies are now sold throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan, and quite a few of them have become top winners at dog shows worldwide. One dog, Cinecittà Breve Incontro, which he sold to a Swedish couple, was at one time the most-winning Maltese in Europe, named a world champion three times as well as a top all-breed dog in Denmark.

  As the saying goes, success breeds success, and now Paolantoni is further expanding his business, this time looking to the East instead of the West for his foundation stock.

  “I wanted a new goal, and I decided to find a breed I liked, and this was the Toy Poodle,” he says. “Japan and Russia were the two countries where the dogs were the best quality at the moment I started with them, and this was the reason I imported my first dogs from there.”

  He is now working in collaboration with the Japanese breeder Toshinori Omura from a kennel called Smash, whose dogs have earned honors at Westminster, the FCI World Dog Show, and national shows everywhere from Croatia to Denmark to France. Again, Paolantoni says, his goal is not to cash in on market trends, but instead to better the breed standard and ensure the health of the dogs.

  “If you are going after customers who are requiring ‘teacup Poodles’ or ‘mini-Toy Poodles,’ then of course you become a commercial breeder,” he says. “A responsible breeder is not breeding according to the requests of the market. He is breeding to improve the breed and to keep it at a high level.”

  Another thing Paolantoni keeps at a high level is his number of dogs. He has about eighty of them now among the three breeds, although not all of them are still of breeding age. He turns out about twenty litters of puppies a year from a kennel near his home. The kennel spans three levels and encompasses nearly 6,500 square feet. He uses the first floor for grooming with an assistant and for housing puppies with their mothers until they are at least twelve weeks old. The breeding dogs and the older dogs have access to an outdoor garden, while the dogs headed for show rings are kept on the third floor, away fr
om dirt and distractions, and instead get their exercise and training on a large terrace.

  Paolantoni is fine with the number of dogs in his care, and the way he talks about them implies that he does all he can in terms of their health. In fact, he wouldn’t have his business any other way. He’s not the kind of breeder who keeps the dogs until they’re used up and then discards them. He treats them as much like pets as a lot of people who have just one or two dogs at home.

  “At my home, I always have a couple of dogs who are sleeping in my bed,” he says. “I can’t easily keep down the number of dogs because I always keep my old dogs. My oldest dog died when he was over twenty-three years old.”

  And while eighty dogs may seem, to some people, like an awfully high number, it is actually a common sight on puppy farms throughout the world. In those places, far more than twenty litters of puppies a year are being produced—and those dogs don’t always get to live until they’re old. Most of them have never even imagined, let alone been given a chance, to sleep in a human being’s bed, and the only thing they have to do with dog shows is filling the demand created by them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BIG PRODUCTION COMPANIES