'Backyard breeders' burden county animal shelter

Inexpensive dogs are a dime a dozen in Flathead County. A quick browse through the classified ads and the Mountain Trader might be a dream come true for a dog shopper.

But for Kirsten Holland, all those ads are the stuff of nightmares. Many of the puppies for sale don't sell, and they end up at the animal shelter.

"Flathead County should be ashamed of itself," Holland, the new Flathead County Animal Shelter director, said. "People have this idea that pets are disposable, that they are property. A pet is for life."

Holland said that "backyard breeders" are interfering with her mission to run a no-kill shelter, which means no adoptable animal will be euthanized.

"The goal the public has identified is to run [the shelter] as humanely as possible to reduce the number of animals we put down and to build a more reliable foster home network," Holland said. "That's only going to work if the public understands that there is not a market for mixed-breed dogs."

Selling puppies often seems like a cheap and easy way to make some extra money. It's a rare weekend when someone isn't selling mixed-breed puppies out of a cardboard box in front of Wal-Mart.

"Probably half of those dogs end up at the shelter," Holland said. "They get too many, they don't get the money they thought they would or the puppies grow up and they aren't cute anymore."

Holland said that a woman recently learned about the dangers of buying a Wal-Mart puppy first hand. After buying the dog, she noticed that it was sick. She took the dog into the animal shelter, and Holland tested the dog for parvovirus. Sure enough, the animal had the disease, and the family didn't have the $1,000 to treat their pet.

"They had to have their new puppy put down right before Christmas," Holland said.

One woman who had puppies listed for sale last week admitted that when all of her puppies don't sell, she takes them to the shelter. Her dogs are pit bull mixes, and the female she owns just gave birth to her fourth litter. The last litter was eight puppies strong so she took two of them to the shelter. She said she is keeping a female from this last litter.

"Maybe we'll keep breeding. Maybe we'll stop," she said.

Melisa Crone also had pit bull puppies listed for sale. Some acquaintances of hers stole the young dog to breed her with another pit bull. Crone got her dog back, and now she has 10 puppies to sell or give away.

"There are a lot of people around here who breed pit bulls," Crone said. "You could sell the puppies for $200 at least. A lot of the younger kids want pits. Most people get a female because they want puppies later on."

With the shelter full of dogs and cats, that kind of talk makes Holland visibly angry. She took over as shelter director Nov. 19, and she is a true believer in the no-kill model.

Holland is an animal lover who, with her husband, owns five rescue dogs, five cats, eight horses, a mule and a llama. She worked with the San Francisco chapter of The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and thinks owning a dog is part of the American Dream.

"I think a dog in every house is like a chicken in every pot," she said.

Somehow, Holland has been able to drastically reduce the number of kills while adhering to the county mandate that states she must accept every dog that comes to the shelter.

In February alone, the shelter euthanized 38 dogs and 28 cats - many because the facility was full. Holland, in her brief tenure, has signed off on just 10 deaths: four dogs and six cats. Nine of the deaths were due to untreatable illnesses, and one dog was incurably vicious. The days of putting animals down because the shelter was crowded appear to be over.

But as bold as she is in declaring her mission, she is worried that backyard breeders could derail her attempts to run a true no-kill shelter.

"The next few months are going to be critical," she said. "We need people to understand that you don't breed your pet unless you are licensed."

In order to stop the number of unlicensed pet breeders, the shelter now does not allow pets to be adopted until they have been spayed or neutered. The policy has cut down on people adopting pets and then breeding them.

"I know this community has the ability to reduce the amount of unwanted pets," Holland said. "The shelter is doing well, but we can't succeed if the public doesn't actively participate."

Reporter Michael Richeson may be reached at 758-4459 or by e-mail at mricheson@dailyinterlake.com