Did Pet Works in Grossmont Center Buy from Puppy Mills? Papers Offered to Council

The puppies are gone. Only some fixtures and furnishings remain to be sold. So Richard Fuller says Pet Works—his 10-year-old business in Grossmont Center—will close for good in the next two or three days.

"I'm not ready for retirement. I'm only 82," says Fuller, a downtown San Diego resident.

Targeted by weekly protests, Pet Works will soon see its 23 employees out of work—due mainly to the poor economy, Fuller says.

"It's been a mess. Just ran out of money," he said in a phone interview Monday. "I've never had a business that failed."

But he concedes that his "forced retirement" is partly thanks to Stop Puppy Mills San Diego, a group led by Sydney Cicourel of San Diego, a 59-year-old artist from Seattle and former police officer who says she moved here 1 1/2 years ago.

Cicourel and Fuller have been battling via signs on windows, pickets and newspaper interviews, disputing a single question: Did Pet Works buy from "puppy mills"? Such breeders, mainly in the Midwest, have been accused of raising diseased animals in horrific conditions.

In the phone interview, Fuller vigorously denied buying puppies from such suppliers. 

In a later phone interview, Cicourel said she had proof—and would share it Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 14, when the City Council hears her group's proposal for an ordinance regulating pet-store dog sales.

"We absolutely do not [buy from puppy mills]," said Fuller, who insisted that he also opposes such unscrupulous breeders. "They said we do. [But] you can't prove a negative. They never have been able to prove we have."

Fuller says that every one of his puppies, bought through USDA-licensed breeders from states including Arkansas, Iowa and Kansas, would get daily checks at his store—their stools inspected, and weight and temperatures charted as if in hospital conditions.

"We've sold a lot of puppies to a lot of people and have a lot of happy customers," he said. Among his more recent sales—some at half price: French bulldogs, Great Danes and dachshunds. "The last one is going home today," he said Monday.

Pet Works is one of four San Diego County pet shops listed as "accredited" by the local Better Business Bureau's Yellow Pages.  But the link to its listing is dead. Elsewhere on the BBB website, however, Pet Works is shown as "out of business" with six complaints noted—one advertising issue, one contract dispute, one on customer services and three about guarantee or warranty.

"BBB processed a total of 6 complaint(s) about this business in the last 36 months, our standard reporting period," the site says. "Of the total 6 complaint(s) closed in the last 36 months, 2 were closed in the last 12 months."

San Diego Superior Court records show Pet Works Inc. as a defendant in East County small claims court five times since 2003, including twice in 2008 and the most recent on Oct. 15, 2010, when Fuller was sued by Rodolfo Vega Nava.

Fuller said he's owned the pet store since 1995, when it was at University Towne Centre in San Diego. He's also run a Midas muffler franchise and had an auto shop restoring vintage Jaguars, he said.

With his store closing, he said, pet-seekers will turn to sources in the East County backcountry, where breeders get "zero supervision, and inoculations are not started at 6 weeks [old]. ... That's what the protesters will accomplish. ... If they want to stop puppy mills, they've got to go to the puppy mills."

Cicourel sighed upon hearing Fuller's account.

"They play with words," she said of Fuller and others she accuses of buying from puppy mills. "All [these] stores do the same thing. They're very sneaky, cagey. ... He says that to everyone. It's very dishonest. It's all about greed. The man has made so much money. He chose to be in the animal cruelty business."

She disputed Fuller's contention that closing his shop—the only one targeted for protests in San Diego County—would send buyers to unregulated breeders.

"For him to say I'm forcing people to these horrible places, it's not true," Cicourel said. "[Owners like Fuller] don't care about inbreeding, genetic disorders. If you've got the cash, you got the puppy."

For his part, Fuller says, "I don't want to retire. I get awfully bored. [But] at my age, I'm too old to start something. I feel very bad for my employees."

Cicourel offered no sympathy.

"I'm not putting anybody out of work," she said.

He could have stayed open and gone with the "humane business model," she said. "He chose to put his employees out of business."

When she appears next week before the City Council, Cicourel says her group and sponsoring partners Companion Animal Protection Society and the Animal Legal Defense Fund will provide "undercover video footage" and other documentary evidence that support their puppy-mill contentions about Pet Works.

But the package of documents that the City Clerk's Office is preparing for Tuesday's agenda packet—inspected by La Mesa Patch—provides few smoking guns.

The 70-page "Ordinance Proposal Report to Prohibit the Sale of Non-Shelter-Obtained Animals in the City of La Mesa" contains Pet Works breeder information, USDA inspection reports from breeders used by Pet Works and "interstate small-animal certificates" for dogs bought by Pet Works.

It also compiles online reviews of Pet Works, many of them complaints at such websites as Yelp and Kudzu.

But a sheaf of small-animal health certificates—indicating suppliers for Pet Works—aren't directly linked to puppy mills.

An example is Nebraskaland Pets of Atkinson, NE.  The package contains eight certificates covering 28 dogs from 8 to 12 weeks old. But Nebraskaland is not shown on a page listing "breeders used by Pet Works for whom complaints were filed by consumers through petshoppuppies.com regarding puppies purchased at Pet Works from 2005-2010."

The package includes 13 certificates indicating that Ann Nolan of Van Buren, AR, supplied 34 dogs to Pet Works in Grossmont Center between late 2009 and July 2010—but lists only one reference to a sick Yorkshire terrier bred by Nolan.

The package contains four inspection reports of kennels by the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. But the reports—for operations in Missouri, Iowa and Kansas—aren't tied to any government sanction of Pet Works.

According to one page, "We have documented proof of the purchase of puppies made by Pet Works from three Midwest puppy mills. We have undercover video footage of two puppy mills from which Pet Works has purchased puppies."

Another page, titled "Pet Works, La Mesa ... Puppy Mill List," offers the names of 31 breeding operations but noted only that these breeders were the subject of complaints "filed by consumers through petshoppuppies.com."

Petshoppuppies.com is now petshoppuppies.org. It is a 501(c)3 tax-exempt nonprofit organization based in Newburg, MO. Its latest Form 990 report to the IRS, from 2008, is posted here.

In the phone interview—and before La Mesa Patch inspected her group's package for the City Council—Cicourel said she could prove that dogs sold by Pet Works were obtained from puppy mills. La Mesa Patch asked for proof of five, and Cicourel said she would check with CAPS, the animal protection group.

In his interview, Fuller said his store website had been hacked—with a photo posted of a disfigured dog. The site has since been taken down, but an archived version can be seen at archive.org.

According to Cicourel's materials, 10 cities in the United States have passed bans against stores selling dogs not acquired from an animal shelter. They include six in Florida, one each in Nevada and Texas—and two in California: Hermosa Beach and West Hollywood.

"We urge the city of La Mesa to stand up and say 'We will no longer allow businesses such as this to cast a dark shadow over our beautiful community!' " said the package. "Ghandi said, 'The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.' "

Pet Works owner Fuller, meanwhile, hopes to make progress selling the remaining contents of his store. Office furniture, fixtures and lights are available at a deep discount, he said.