As you know, animal mills are commercial breeding facilities that mass-produce puppies and kittens for resale. Mills are generally filthy, overcrowded, and the animals living in them don’t receive proper veterinary care. These facilities form the foundation of the inhumane pet shop/puppy mill cycle—a mix of perpetual animal abuse, consumer fraud, and overcrowded shelters.
CAPS has developed an integrated program to fight this horrific cycle. Our program is called the Pet Shop Campaign. It’s a nationwide approach that seeks to alleviate the inhumane treatment of animals in pet shops and mills. It also discourages the purchase of animals from retail and online pet shops, encourages adoptions, and aims to create a more humane industry model—where pet shops offer rescue and shelter animals instead of those bred in mills.
The campaign has a number of components, including investigations, information gathering, consumer complaints, video production, consumer outreach, legal actions, and legislation. We also have project-specific campaigns for particular geographic areas where we might be working on pet shop legislation.
I’d like to share with you how CAPS is implementing its ongoing Texas Pet Shop Campaign, where animal advocates have been trying to pass state legislation to ban the retail sale of dogs and cats.
State Legislation
Texas currently has 38 pet shops, including nine Puppy Dreams and eight Petlands. A number of pet shops opened after the state legislature passed a law in 2023 that restricts municipalities from generating ordinances that differ from or exceed state law in specified areas. Although the law grandfathered in the 17 existing pet shop ordinances, a statewide ban is now critical. Due to its large geographic size, Texas, sadly, has room for many more puppy-selling pet shops. CAPS has been working with Rep. Jared Patterson on statewide legislation to prohibit pet shops from selling dogs and cats. While a retail ban has been unsuccessful so far, we will continue our investigative efforts in order to provide legislators with comprehensive and persuasive evidence.
Pet Shop Investigations
When starting our Texas pet shop investigations, we first had to determine which breeders and brokers were selling to the state’s pet shops. We mostly used Certificates of Veterinary Inspection (CVIs), which are health certificates filed by veterinarians whenever a puppy crosses state lines. CVIs reveal a puppy’s breeder or broker, as well as the puppy’s destination, such as a pet shop or an internet customer. Brokers obtain puppies from licensed and unlicensed (based on number of dogs) breeders and resell them to pet shops. Breeders can also sell directly to pet shops through an online brokering site called PBT Marketplace. Texas doesn’t keep CVIs, so we obtained them from certain Midwest states with the most puppy mills.
After listing the pet shops and their respective breeders and brokers on a spreadsheet, CAPS researched USDA and state inspection reports for those facilities (the latter reports obtained through public records requests). Our lead investigator then went undercover into 21 of the state’s pet shops to track down more information and to determine what those pet shops were claiming about the sources of their puppies. You can read his reports on Texas pet shops here (enter Texas in report search box).
Consumer Complaints
CAPS has an online complaint form for consumers who have purchased sick or dying puppies/kittens or who were defrauded by pet shops or rescues. After consumers fill out a form, CAPS educates them on their rights under state laws and their legal options, such as taking the pet shop or rescue to small claims court. CAPS also uses these complaints to obtain more breeder and broker information in our targeted areas.
CAPS found a post on Facebook from a 20-year-old woman who had purchased a $10,000 French Bulldog from Find A Pet in Humble, Texas. She financed the puppy, who will ultimately cost $22,905 with financing. Her veterinarian said that the puppy was only 4-weeks-old and will require surgery for being too brachycephalic and for luxating patellas.
Puppy Mill Investigations
Our investigator then traveled to Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and elsewhere to see some of the breeders supplying Texas pet shops with animals. All of the facilities he visited, no surprise, were revealed to be puppy mills. In the case of SouthPaw Pets, a Missouri-based broker selling puppies to Texas, it turned out that we had already been to some of its breeders when we investigated Petland stores in Wichita, Kansas.
To support our Texas work, CAPS created a video exposé about SouthPaw Pets, which we featured on social media. The largescale brokers J.A.K’s Puppies, Select Puppies, and Pinnacle Pet, also sell to Texas pet shops.
Video Exposés
Using our pet shop and puppy mill evidence, CAPS’ video producer recently put together video exposés on Petland franchises, Puppy Dreams stores and other Texas pet shops. For social media, our video producer created trailers.
Education and Outreach
Educating Texas residents about the perils of pet shops is imperative. We are reaching them through social media, traditional news outlets, and our website, where the public can watch videos and read pet shop reports and blogs. For example, our lead investigator wrote a detailed blog about Texas Petland stores.
In addition to our pet shop outreach, CAPS’ public relations professional has successfully placed our spay/neuter PSA on 22 Spanish and four English television stations in Texas and is currently reaching out to more stations across the state.
