Most people have no idea this goes on. Its a growing issue.
An effort that animal rescuers began more than a decade ago to buy dogs for $5 or $10 apiece from commercial breeders has become a nationwide shadow market that today sees some rescuers, fueled by internet fundraising, paying breeders $5,000 or more for a dog.
The result is a river of rescue donations flowing from avowed dog saviors to the breeders, two groups that have long disparaged each other. The rescuers call many breeders heartless operators of inhumane "puppy mills" and work to ban the sale of their dogs in brick-and-mortar pet stores. The breeders call "retail rescuers" hypocritical dilettantes who hide behind nonprofit status while doing business as unregulated, online pet stores.
But for years, they have come together at dog auctions where no cameras are allowed, with rescuers enriching breeders and some breeders saying more puppies are being bred for sale to the rescuers.
Bidders affiliated with 86 rescue and advocacy groups and shelters throughout the United States and Canada have spent $2.68 million buying 5,761 dogs and puppies from breeders since 2009 at the nation's two government-regulated dog auctions, both in Missouri, according to invoices, checks and other documents The Washington Post obtained from an industry insider. At the auctions, rescuers have purchased dogs from some of the same breeders who face activist protests, including some on the Humane Society of the United States' "Horrible Hundred" list or the "No Pet Store Puppies" database of breeders to avoid, maintained by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
Most rescuers then offered the dogs for adoption as "rescued" or "saved."
Years ago, when more commercial breeders existed, rescuers attended auctions to buy surplus dogs that seemed to be everywhere, longtime auction participants say. But the success of the rescue movement in reducing shelter populations, some rescuers say, has been driving rescuers to the auction market. As the number of commercial kennels has decreased, so has the number of shelter animals k**led in the United States: A February 2017 estimate put the total for dogs alone at 780,000, a steep drop from estimates for all shelter animals that were as high as 20 million in the 1970s.
The smaller populations of shelter dogs make it harder for some rescue groups, especially those dedicated to specialty breeds, to find what adopters want. One golden retriever rescue group turned to the auctions after seeing 40 percent fewer dogs coming in as of 2016. At the auctions, such rescuers describe buying purebreds and popular crossbreeds such as goldendoodles and maltipoos as "puppy mill rescue."
"We have breeders that breed for the auction," says Will Yoder, a commercial breeder of Cavalier King Charles spaniels in Bloomfield, Iowa. "It's a huge, huge underground market. It's happening at an alarming rate."
Many people are unaware of the practice. About 50 of the 86 groups that The Post linked to auction bidders made no mention of auctions on their Web pages, 20 described what they were doing as "puppy mill rescue" or "auction rescue," and 10 mentioned words such as "bought" or "purchased" at auction but did not say online how much they paid per dog.
Leading nonprofit animal-welfare groups, including the ASPCA, HSUS and the American Kennel Club purebred advocacy group, say rescuers are misguided in buying dogs at auction because the money they pay only encourages more breeding on a commercial scale.
"Although they may be doing good things for individual dogs purchased at auctions, it perpetuates the problem and tends to create a seller's market," says Brandi H****r, the AKC's spokeswoman.
Rescuers at the auctions say their purchases save individual dogs and weaken the commercial breeding chain by removing, spaying and neutering dogs that would otherwise be bred again and again. They say donors ranging from average dog lovers to show-dog breeders understand, and financially support, their efforts.
"It's a very controversial thing, for rescuers to buy dogs at auction," says Jeanette DeMars, founder of Corgi Connection of Kansas, who discloses to donors that she buys auction dogs. "Some are of the opinion that you're putting money in the breeders' pockets. Others say you're saving the dogs from a life of breeding. My opinion is that if people are willing to donate and it doesn't take money out of my regular rescue, I will do it."
JoAnn Dimon, director of Big East Akita Rescue in New Jersey, says that buying breeding-age dogs not only cuts into overbreeding but also makes it harder for commercial breeders to profit in the long run.
"That breeder is going to make thousands of dollars off that [female dog] if he breeds her every cycle," Dimon said. "I just bought her for $150. I just took money out of his pocket. I got the dog, and I stopped the cycle."
The majority of the $2.68 million The Post documented was spent since 2013 at Southwest Auction Service, the biggest commercial dog auction in the country, with some additional spending at its smaller, only remaining competitor, Heartland Sales. Southwest originated in Wheaton, Missouri, in 1988, and Heartland was founded in Cabool, Missouri, in 2003, as a marketplace for breeders. As the last remaining government-licensed auctions, they let buyers and sellers see hundreds of dogs at a time and are a legal part of the country's puppy supply chain. They are regulated by the U.S. and Missouri Departments of Agriculture and open to the public.
"I'm not going to lie about this: Rescue generates about one-third, maybe even 40 percent of our income," says Bob Hughes, Southwest's owner. "It's been big for 10 years."
Hughes said his auction is open to everyone but people with cameras because "our customers don't want to be on animal-activist websites being called 'puppy mills.' "
Hank Grosenbacher, owner of Heartland, says rescuers usually account for 15 to 25 percent of his business. He says he gets fewer rescuers than Southwest because he often bans from his auction rescuers who publicly call breeders "puppy mills."
"At our auction, I think 75 percent of the people who sell dogs, and the rescues who come to our sale, will do things the right way," he said. "The particular rescuers who come to our sale, they're a blessing. For the most part, they buy dogs that breeders don't want, and they're not paying a lot of money."
Hughes says he sees those types of rescuers at Southwest, too, but also those who use auction purchases to rake in huge online donations.
"I honestly think there are very good, responsible rescues that just love the dogs and want to get them out of the breeding industry," Hughes says. "And I think there are malicious, lying, c***ting rescues that are in it for the money and the glory and the funding."
In early February, Grosenbacher's auction brought in $132,000, while Hughes notched his biggest sales revenue ever, taking in more than $600,000. One rescuer, Jessica Land, who helps operate Dog Ranch Rescue and Lone Star Dog Ranch in Texas, paid $8,750 for a pregnant French bulldog at Southwest, an invoice shows. Land declined to comment for this article.
"The French bulldog that Lone Star paid $8,750 to buy in February was pregnant with five fetuses," Hughes said. "An ultrasound showed it. Now, if there's five fetuses worth $2,000 a puppy, that's $10,000 in puppies and the mama's a young female, so a breeder would say, 'I got all my money back in one litter and own the dog for free and she'll produce for another five years.' "
On Facebook, Lone Star Dog Ranch described that purchase by telling followers that bids went up in $25 increments. Nothing was disclosed about the total amount spent.
The rescue-themed post reached more than 2,300 people. Most of them clicked "like" and "love."
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The Southwest auction may be the country's largest, but finding it requires knowing that it's there. It is held behind a gate and down a dirt driveway, in a barn on private property. It is in a part of Missouri so rural that the 2010 Census showed the nearest town - Wheaton - had only 696 residents.
Prospective buyers park in a dirt lot, then go inside to register for bidding cards. They sit in bleachers that surround a table down in front, where dogs and puppies are brought out from a room in the back. Sometimes, the auctioneer puts one dog up for bid, and other times, a whole litter of puppies will be on the table. Some of them play while the people all around put a price on them, and children in the bleachers - whose parents are bidding - eat snacks and watch.
At any given auction, as many as several hundred dogs and puppies might be sold, with bidding starting in the morning and running until dinnertime, even past sundown. At most auctions, various breeders typically offer anywhere from a handful to two dozen dogs, so the mix available for bid can run the alphabet from Akitas and Australian shepherds to wire fox and Yorkshire terriers.
The auction at Southwest on Nov. 22, 2014, was different - and showed that a breed-specific rescuer, flush with donated cash, will pay five figures for a dog.
An Alabama breeder of Cavalier King Charles spaniels was going out of business, so the sale would have more than 130 Cavaliers. There was serious money in play that day from Cavalier rescuers. One rescuer's GoFundMe.com campaign had netted $188,815, and another's YouCaring.com fundraiser brought in $157,955. "Don't Let These Sweet Cavaliers go to a Disreputable Home," a rescuer wrote on the YouCaring.com site, warning donors of the "many other less than reputable breeders at this auction."
For the first few hours that day in Missouri, rescuers won every bid. Then Will Yoder, the Cavalier breeder from Iowa, broke through. He says he does not support or usually attend auctions, so he can still remember the moment that he won two Cavaliers, for $3,600 and $3,950.
"There was just dead silence," Yoder says. "This was, like, the first dog that went to a breeder that day. The pressure was on. The first dog just went to a horrible puppy mill. That's what they're thinking."
As he waited to pay at the checkout counter, Yoder says, a rescuer approached and blurted, "So, how much profit?"
"It was like, they h**e me, and they assume I h**e them, and she just walked up and looked at me," he says. "I knew what she meant: What do you want for your dogs? I looked at her and said, 'I'm sorry, but they're not for sale.' "
Yoder left with his two Cavaliers, but online pleas had already gone out to raise more money to buy his dogs in a post-auction deal. A forum run by Cavaliers Co UK, in Britain, listed the email address of Alabama-based rescuer Angie Ingram and said she was a person collecting PayPal donations.
Comments on the forum emphasized the urgency: "Money is still being donated, hopefully an agreed fee for the dogs can be met with the money that is still coming in!!"
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https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20180412/dog-rescuers-flush-with-donations-buy-animals-from-the-breeders-they-scorn?fbclid=IwAR29qN0Aq00meoDHGza9dc6aWR0VUjKRWlPo7OnaFoGkHK3rOFJ7bE-FBiw