The Art of Puppy Flipping
The brokering of puppies and kittens to pet shops is a real industry. Brokers have government licenses and are the source of most of the puppies and some of the kittens that are for sale in pet shops, If you think animal flipping – buying puppies and kittens from mills to resell them to pet shops – is a strange business, then welcome to the world of the pet trade. It only gets weirder. Problems with brokers include veterinary fraud, zoonotic disease outbreaks, fraudulent rescue organizations, and animal cruelty. And, of course, there’s the fact that the brokers buy from inhumane breeding facilities also known as puppy and kitten mills.
As CAPS’ lead investigator, I have investigated puppy and kitten mills for CAPS for more than 20 years, These undercover investigations included working undercover at dog breeding and brokering facilities. I’ve also worked undercover at just about every kind of factory farm and slaughterhouse. My experiences have taught me that the puppy industry is like any other kind of commercial animal industry. It exists for profit. Therefore, when animal welfare collides with profit, profit wins out. The nature of commercial animal industries is that you want to sell as many animals as possible, which means that you want to breed, raise, and ship as many animals as possible. That means there will be disease risks no matter what type of animal. The industry works at a fast pace where concern for the welfare of individual animals falls by the wayside.
As, Bs, and Ts
To explain these problems, I’ll give concrete examples while also explaining some of the technical aspects of puppy brokering. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) gives three kinds of licenses for anyone involved in the process. If you have a Class A license, you can breed animals and sell them directly to pet shops, to brokers who sell to pet shops and to online buyers who don’t see puppies in person. If you have a Class B license, you can do everything allowed under a Class B license, but you can also sell animals you did not breed yourself. If you have a Class T license, you can commercially transport animals. These licensees all work together, with the Class A licensees breeding animals, the Class B licensees buying and reselling them, and the class Ts getting the animals to pet shops.
Where Does it Go Wrong?
Imagine you have a puppy mill. Odds are that you live in the Midwest where raising animals for profit and dealing with the USDA is a normal part of life. You want to sell your puppies wherever you can but selling them one at a time is difficult and time-consuming, especially if the puppy mill is only one part of your farm business. That’s where brokers step in. They’ll pay you less per puppy than a pet shop but will often buy entire litters at a time and already have connections to stores. They also have transport connections or transport the puppies themselves. Basically, you just hand off the puppies or kittens and forget about them.
Now, imagine you’re the broker. Tiny eight-week-old puppies are coming in from breeders, going out to pet shops, and orders are coming in as quickly as you are filling them. You’ve promised the breeders you’ll keep buying their litters, you’ve promised pet stores you’ll keep them full, and you are making money in the process. And then a puppy gets sick. Maybe more than one. A deadline is threatened by weather. Activists pass laws to prevent you from selling puppies to pet shops. What do you do?
Many choose to break the law. Remember, profit wins out in this game.
Fraudulent Rescues
When municipal ordinances or state laws ban the retail sale of dogs and cats, breeders and brokers can still fraudulently profit from the sale of puppies, as long as the puppies are rescues. In these instances, USDA-licensed brokers and their employees and pet shop owners have set up nonprofits, obtained puppies from the usual puppy mills in the nonprofits’ names, and then sold the puppies as “rescues” to the stores. That’s right. It’s just that blatant.
Jolyn Noethe and Kimberly Dolphin run J.A.K.’s Puppies, Inc, a USDA-licensed broker (USDA number 42-B-0271) in Britt, Iowa, which sells to pet shops in numerous states. After California passed a state law in 2017 banning the retail sale of dogs, cats and rabbits, the two women created a nonprofit called Hobo K-9 Rescue at the same address as J.AK.’s Puppies..
Noethe and Dolphin were already selling to two Chicago pet shops to circumvent that city’s retail ban ordinance when they starting testing Hobo K-9 Rescue in California pet shops in 2018. The Pet Rescue and Adoption Act (AB 495) went into effect on 1/1/19. CAPS provided evidence from my April 2018 undercover investigations of the California and Chicago pet shops to the Iowa Attorney General’s Office, which started an investigation.
The scam was so obvious that I couldn’t help but personally go to Britt, Iowa to visit the address for Hobo K-9 Rescue. I saw a sign on the door that said the office was J.A.K.’s Puppies. The front door was locked, but the back door was open. When I walked in, I saw two women working at desks. When I asked them where the dogs were for adoption, the got nervous and would only answer any question I asked by telling me to talk to Jolyn before they ushered me out, locking the door after me.
With the Iowa Attorney General investigating Hobo K9 Rescue Noethe and Dolphin had to figure out another way to sell to California and Chicago pet shops. They then created Rescue Pet Iowa, fronted by Russell Kirk, in Ottumwa, Iowa.
Using what is known as a pass through, Noethe and Dolphin sold the Rescue Pets Iowa puppies to Bark Adoptions Rescue, created by Amilcar Chavez, who was the owner of two California pet shops (a third store had previously closed due to a city ordinance). Bark Adoption “rescue” puppies were available in a number of the 16 Southern and Central California pet shops selling mill-bred puppies from fraudulent rescues. CAPS investigated all 16 pet shops in addition to three that were using local breeders.
J.A.K.’s Puppies made hundreds of thousands of dollars from the puppy laundering scheme. But CAPS worked closely with the Iowa Attorney General for nearly two years to was shut down Hobo K-9 Rescue and Rescue Pets Iowa. J.A.K.’s Puppies, however, still has a USDA license to broker puppies.
To read more and see the CAPS exposé about J..A.K’s Puppies: CAPS Investigator’s Journal: The Truth Behind J.A.K.’s Puppies
Ray and Alysia Rothman created Pet Connect Rescue, a fraudulent rescue based in Neosho, Missouri, to circumvent the California law. Ray Rothman was a sales manager for The Hunte Corporation in Goodman, Missouri. You may recall that I worked undercover at Hunte for six months in 2004 and investigated around 50 puppy mills which sold to them. After Select Puppies (USDA number 43-B-0314) in West Point, Iowa purchased Hunte, Rothman became a Select sales manager. Pet Connect Rescue started selling to the two Chicago pet shops that had been using Hobo K-9 Rescue and Rescue Pets Iowa after the Iowa Attorney General shut them down.
To read more and see the CAPS exposé about Select Puppies: CAPS Investigator’s Journal: The Truth Behind Select Puppies and Pet Connect Rescue
CAPS worked on lawsuits against Pet Connect Rescue with San Diego animal lawyer Bryan Pease, who obtained a preliminary injunction against them selling in California. CAPS worked with other nonprofits to amend The Pet Rescue and Adoption Act in 2020 in order to close the loophole that was allowing fraudulent rescues to sell puppies to pet shops.
To read a summary of our work in California to combat pet shops and rescues committing fraud: CAPS 2020 Efforts and Accomplishments
Veterinary Fraud
But laundering isn’t the only type of fraud brokers commit. Select Puppies used to be known as the Hunte Corporation (former USDA number 43-A-0123). I worked undercover at Hunte’s Goodman, Missouri facility for six months in 2003 and 2004. There were about three thousand puppies there at a time, and about a third of them were sick at any given moment. After they supposedly recovered, Hunte would ship them off in eighteen-wheelers to go pet stores. But before being loaded onto the truck, the puppies had to be examined by vets.
Whenever a puppy is sent across state lines, the law requires the animal to have a Certificate of Veterinary Inspection (CVI), which a federally accredited veterinarian must sign after certifying that the animal is safe to travel to another state. Vets are supposed to check puppies for signs of illness and do an exam of their overall physical condition before approving the puppy for interstate transport.
At Hunte, the process was done with one goal in mind: efficiency. Workers, myself included, lined up with a puppy in each arm, waiting to go to whichever exam station opened up first. At some of those stations were actual vets. At other stations were kennel workers, without any veterinary training. In addition, the owner of a flea market pet shop in Texas, who used to drive up every week to buy puppies with slight defects (known as B quality puppies), did his own exams. Regardless of who did an inspection, puppies were looked over with a passing glance, sometimes just swiveled back and forth, and the signature of a veterinarian was stamped on the CVI. In short, it was fraud.
Sick Puppies (and People)
Hunte’s veterinary fraud is why when I worked at a Hunte-supplied Petland in Columbus, Ohio in 2006, puppies would arrive sick. Some were rejected by the store, but others began to show symptoms after showing up. Workers would wipe snot from the puppies’ noses and push them into customers’ arms to sell them as quickly as possible.
It’s also why at Hunte, I saw many puppies return on the eighteen-wheelers. They had become sick on the way to the pet shops and couldn’t be sold and were put into the sick ward. Some survived to be shipped off a week later. Hunte also accepted some puppies with upper respiratory infections from breeders and put them in the sick ward. What initially prompted my undercover investigation of Hunte was an anonymous letter sent to CAPS from a worker who said that Hunte had buried around 1,000 dead puppies on their land.
But sick puppies don’t just get other puppies sick. They can get people sick, too.
Odon, Indiana-based Blue Ribbon Puppies (USDA number 32-B-0233) supplies pet shops around the country, often exclusively. Blue Ribbon was found to be the source of campylobacter outbreaks in 2018 and 2019, in which more than a hundred people were infected from sick puppies, most sold through Petland stores.
Neosho, Missouri-based Pinnacle Pet (USDA number 43-B-3750, aka Sobrad LLC), is the largest brokerage facility in the country per the company’s CEO. Sobrad also owns Puppy Travelers, a puppy transport company next door, which has six different Class T licenses. In 2018, authorities seized 24 puppies in a Puppy Travelers van at a Florida Petland when they someone noticed the filthy living conditions for the animals in the truck. In a similar incident in 2015, Sobrad LLC was cited for nine puppies dying in one of their transports.
Cruelty
But worse than sick puppies and fraud is animal abuse. For many of us, it’s unthinkable to abuse a dog, much less a puppy. It’s even more to understand why someone would abuse dogs they profit from. But I’ve seen it.
In 2008 I worked undercover at Pick of the Litter Kennels (former USDA nunber (41-B-0159), owned by Kathy Bauck in New York Mills, Minnesota. Bauck was on work release, spending nights and weekends in jail, for doing C-sections on her mother dogs and spay and neuter surgeries on dogs belonging to local residents when I worked at her mill in 2008. During this time, she had about 900 dogs and 400 puppies. She was licensed as a broker but also bred her own dogs for most of the business. Pet stores were her target market.
Bauck’s employees referred to her kennel as a “dog farm,” and treated the dogs there like any other livestock. Dogs were whipped with leashes if they struggled against workers, and illnesses and open wounds were either improperly treated or not treated at all. And just like any other livestock, Kathy’s callous attitude led to dogs and puppies dying of neglect, illnesses and injuries. The lucky ones were shot in the head with a rifle by Kathy’s husband, Alan.
Even after Bauck was convicted of animal abuse and received only a fine and probation and USDA terminated her license, she continued to sell to pet shops in New York, CVIs had the name Kathy Jo Cole, Janet Jesuit (her mentally incapacitated sister for whom she was conservator) and Peggy Weisman, a nearby USDA-licensed breeder who sold to her. CAPS tracked her shipments and investigated these pet shops.
USDA then used our evidence to permanently revoke her license and prevent her husband, Alan, from ever obtaining a license.
Fraud Overlooked by USDA
Clearwater Kennel (former USDA number 41-B-0190), owned by Wanda Kretzman in Cushing, Minnesota, was the largest dog breeding facility in Minnesota, housing more than 1,200 dogs and puppies. As Wanda McDuffee, she had previously owned Happy Tails with then husband, Gary, which CAPS investigated in 2005. USDA fined them $7,000 shortly thereafter.
Kretzman, as the owner of Clearwater Kennel, agreed to pay a fine of $25,000 and relinquish her USDA license, which she did on March 9, 2016. The same day, USDA granted a license to AJ’s Angels, run by Angie McDuffee (see below), to operate the kennel on the same property. Angie is married to Jason Lee McDuffee, Wanda’s son.
During the USDA investigation of Clearwater Kennel, Wanda used the name “Jason Lee” rather than Clearwater Kennel. CAPS investigated pet shops in California and New York that listed Jason Lee as the breeder of numerous puppies, yet he did not appear to have a USDA license. The Jason Lee breeder website was and is identical to Clearwater Kennel’s website, except that there is a photo of an elderly man with a Golden Retriever. The site claimed Jason Lee has been breeding for 30 years, yet he was only in his late 30’s.
USDA Loophole Allows Brokers to Have Two Licenses
The owner of Preferred Canine (USDA license 31-B-0197) is Abe Miller. The physical address for the facility, which is also Miller’s residence, is 29952 CR 10, Fresno, Ohio, although he uses a PO Box in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Miller has a long history of selling sick puppies, violating the Animal Welfare Act, and being the subject of lawsuits.
Every time, Miller is in trouble, he changes the name of his facility. When Sarasota County held a hearing for the ordinance banning the retail sale of dogs and cats in January 2016, he testified against the ordinance, using the kennel name of Quail Creek. CVIs over the last few years showed him using the names, Comfort Canines and Holmes for Canines. Miller hired a bus to transport at least 30 of his Amish breeders to testify against the ordinance, which passed in January 2016.
The dogs he brokered included those with the campylobacter virus that made dogs and people ill.
Golden Seal Puppies (USDA license 31-B-0193); is next door to Preferred Canine. The address is 29939 CR 10, Fresno. OH and also has a PO Box in Sugarcreek, Ohio. Amishdogbreeders.com lists a John Yoder as the person associated with this address. We suspect that Yoder is a manager for Abe Miller.
Both businesses had filing dates of 2/4/19 by the same registered agent with the Ohio Secretary of State. Both had a pre-license inspection on 2/12/19 and subsequent inspections on 2/10/19 and 1/8/20. We don’t believe this is a coincidence.
Under USDA regulations, an individual or one business (LLC, corporation, partnership) cannot hold two USDA licenses. However, businesses with two different names can each have a license, which is a convenient loophole
Working with Shelters to Try to Appear Legitimate
CAPS worked with the Tampa Bay Times and other media to provide investigative evidence on Sunshine Puppies in Largo, its supplier, Pinnacle Pet, in Neosho, Missouri, and breeders who have sold puppies to Pinnacle Pet. SPCA Tampa Bay was partnering with Sunshine Puppies to provide veterinary care to store puppies.
In addition, the shelter started a program with Pinnacle Pet in March 2024 to offer breeding dogs for adoption. One adopter paid an adoption fee of $700 for a Cocker Spaniel who suffers from trauma. SPCA Tampa Bay was planning to offer “imperfect” puppies from Pinnacle breeders for adoption.
Due to media coverage and outrage from the local community, the shelter has suspended both the veterinary care and puppy mill dog adoption program. The shelter director, who is under pressure to resign, has not promised that the shelter will permanently end the programs.
Shortly after CAPS’ investigation of Pinellas County’s four pet shops in August 2021, a second Sunshine Puppies and Blue Sky Puppies opened. Pinellas County Commissioners banned the retail sale of dogs and cats but grandfathered in the six pet shops in June 2022.
Underneath It All: Puppy Mills
J.A.K.’s Puppies has bought puppies from some of the worse mills I’ve ever seen. One of them is Prairie Lane Kennel (USDA number 42-A-0331), owned by Dennis and Donna Van Wyk in New Sharon, Iowa, which I have investigated three times. I saw dogs and puppies in pens with nowhere to stand that wasn’t in their own feces, dogs in small wire cages, and a dog with an open, infected ear wound. Another facility is Purple Heart Kennel (former USDA number 42-A-0873), owned by Wendie and Doug Dettbarn in Strawberry Point, Iowa, where I saw matted dogs in outdoor pens so cold that their water bowls were blocks of ice.
J.A.K.’s has also bought from AJ’s Angels (USDA license 41-A-0484), owned by Angela McDuffie in Clearwater, Minnesota, which has had as many as 1368 dogs and puppies in recent years. My investigation revealed dogs living in small, raised wire cages, . Many of the dogs were pacing and spinning out of stress and boredom.
Select Puppies buys from AJ’s Angels as well. They’ve also bought from Keith Simler (USDA license 43-A-5864), at whose Missouri-based facility I found dogs in rows of tiny wire cages just like at AJ’s Angels. But most had walls set up by the cages so the dogs couldn’t be seen from outside the kennels, and the dogs had nothing to see but their own cage wire and the dogs next to them. The set-up resembled a prison. Select Puppies has also bought puppies from Billie Alford, an unlicensed breeder in Oklahoma, at whose kennel I found dogs in wire cages and pens filled with debris and sharp metal, water dishes filled with dirty, yellow-brown water, and dogs with eye infections.
I’ve documented numerous puppy mills supplying Pinnacle Pet, including Gordon Everett (USDA license 48-A-2225) in Moline, Kansas, Ruby Shown (USDA license 73-A-2423)in Antlers, Okahoma, and Sandy Wisdom (USDA license 73-A-2733) in Adair, Oklahoma. At their mills, I saw dogs in runs and cages, pacing back and with no outside stimuli to excite them. Such behavior is normal for dogs dealing with anxiety or extreme boredom.
Blue Ribbon Puppies uses numerous breeders that fit the bill of the quintessential puppy mill. In Indiana, I’ve filmed their breeders’ dogs in small, raised wire cages, including John Stoltzfus (USDA number 32-A-0317) in Hagerstown, Indiana, who had a barn full of cages that resembled a dog warehouse. The room was dark, and the sound of a hundred dogs inside was almost deafening. John told me that he should use toys to help his dogs’ teeth but didn’t, and admitted having dental problems for them. Wayne and Karen Miller (USDA license 32-A-0479) in Middlebury, Indiana, had large, Standard Poodles, covered in matted fur, living on cage wire. Richard Wagler (USDA license 32-A-0474) in Loogootee, Indiana had small-breed dogs in cages that more closely resembled battery cages for egg-laying hens than dogs.
Blue Ribbon Puppies was founded by Levi Graber, who mostly sourced puppies from Amish puppy mills in Indiana, especially in the southwest part of the state. CAPS investigated some of these breeders for a story with WTHR, the NBC station in Indianapolis. After investigating an unlicensed Amish woman breeder who had more the requisite number of dogs necessary for a USDA license, her husband called the sheriff. When an NBC reporter showed up at another mill, the breeder also called the sheriff. Neither time did the sheriff deputy find that anything was wrong.
The Blue Ribbon Puppies and Hunte Corporation Connection
Since March of 2015, Blue Ribbon Puppies has been owned by Cinco Rios, a company that is registered as a limited liability company with the Nevada Secretary of State. Cinco Rios is also listed as a foreign LLC with the Indiana Secretary of State. The address for Cinco Rios is Levi Graber’s home and brokerage facility in Odon, Indiana, but the owner of Blue Ribbon Puppies is no longer Levi Graber, although he still runs the facility. Stephen Rook is listed as the managing member.
When Andrew Hunte, who founded Hunte Corporation, retired as president, he turned over the reins to Rook, the husband of Andrew’s daughter, Jessica. The owner of four Petland franchises, including a 23,000 square foot store in Missouri replete with a dog bakery and a shark and stingray aquarium, Jessica was honored as a Petland franchise owner of the year. Once Brian Mohrfeld, the owner of Select Puppies, bought Hunte Corporation, Stephen Rook did not stay on with the company
Brokers Keep the Pet Trade Alive
USDA-licensed brokers are a linchpin of the puppy trade. They will go to any length to keep their puppies in stores, including acting as fraudulent rescues, keeping puppies and kittens in conditions that spread disease, committing fraud, and even engaging in animal cruelty. They rely upon commercial breeders (aka puppy mills) to churn out puppies that their stores demand.
The result is that pet shops convince customers to buy puppy mill puppies, and fewer people adopt dogs from shelters. Meanwhile, many breeders will try to give their older dogs to rescues to make it appear as though they are kind to the animals, but in reality it only increases shelter overpopulation and puts the burden on rescues to take on the costs and rehabilitation of dogs who have never been on a walk, chased a ball, set their feet on grass, heard a radio or television, ridden in a car, or shown affection.
A Simple Solution
But there is a true power that everyone has to fight this problem: adoption. The more people that adopt from shelters and rescues instead of buying from pet shops and breeders, the less breeders will stay in the pet trade. The more people that foster animals, the more lives that get saved. The more people who promote adoption on social media, the more the word gets out that rescue dogs and cats are the best choices for families.
Many animals in foster-based rescues have personalities that are known to their rescuers, meaning that the rescue is familiar with activity levels and knows if the animal likes other animals and children Many rescue dogs are already leash-trained, foster-based ones are house-trained, and fully grown dogs and cats have fully developed immune systems, unlike puppies and kittens.
Please spread the word not only about CAPS’ work but about the animals up for adoption at your local shelter or rescue.. That’s the best way to fight puppy brokers and mills alike. CAPS features at-risk dogs from Kern County Animal Services in Bakersfield on our Petfinder page. We can help arrange transport to other parts of California, Oregon and Washington and have even had rescues fly dogs to Alaska and Alberta.
