Dog breeders face opposition

Email this story Print this story Archives

No comments posted.

By HEATHER LaROI / Lee Newspapers
Saturday, February 9, 2008 9:43 PM CST

MADISON — Wallace Havens knows what some people say about him, that he’s some kind of male Cruella De Vil running one of the state’s largest puppy mills.

His Puppy Haven Kennels, located about 50 miles northeast of Madison outside the tiny town of Kingston, are home to more than 1,000 dogs at any given time.

Business is booming. Havens specializes in trendy hybrids like puggles, the pug/beagle cross that is his claim to fame, Peke-a-poos and “teddy bears” (a Shih Tzu/bichon frise mix). He sells more than 3,000 puppies a year. Celebrity customers have included actors Sylvester Stallone and James Gandolfini.

Havens’ kennels are also the kind of operation specifically targeted by a bill now being considered in the state Legislature. That bill seeks to impose stricter regulations and standards on some larger-scale dog breeders in the state at a time when Wisconsin is earning a reputation for throwing out the welcome mat to sometimes disreputable dog operations.

The sheer size of Havens’ operation is damning enough to some critics, who say that however clean and safe the facilities may be, it’s impossible to provide that many dogs with humane care or to ensure they are properly socialized or get adequate medical attention.

But Havens insists that large dog breeding operations like his shouldn’t automatically be branded puppy mills.

“I raise a lot of puppies … but I think all puppies should be raised like we raise them, in a place like we have,” said Havens, citing the annual inspections by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the large dog runs, the regular veterinarian visits, medical record-keeping, and the always available food and water supplies.

Even critics of Havens’ operation concede that it’s far, far from the worst that’s out there.

“It’s not filthy, rotten, gross like many of them are,” said Terri Woodcock, executive director of the Wisconsin Retired Breeders Rescue club, who has taken in dogs from Puppy Haven over the years that couldn’t find homes. “I’ve gone to a few Amish puppy mills and those are just horrid. They make Puppy Haven look like a palace. Still, there are just so many dogs there. And they’re there for only one purpose, to make puppies.”

Puppy Haven kennels

Puppy Haven is located at the end of a long, winding drive, well back from County B in the rolling rural countryside north of Kingston.

Visitors to the kennels are greeted with the kind of cacophony you’d expect from a place with hundreds of dogs. In the pen after pen after pen alongside each of the several major buildings in the kennel complex, there is endless movement, as the mostly small-size dogs run up and down, jumping, barking.

Taken as a whole, the scale of the operation is staggering. Sometimes it even surprises Havens.

“It was sort of like a hobby (in the early days),” Havens said. “I never planned on having a kennel as big as I have now, but it just kept growing.”

How big is it?

Twenty tons of dog food are delivered by semi-trailer truck to Puppy Haven about every six weeks, and is stored in a special feed house. An Amish worker, using a horse and wagon, then fills the feed dispensers in each pen as needed.

Havens’ kennel is inspected annually by the USDA. A representative at the USDA said that it hasn’t needed to take any enforcement action against Puppy Haven, although on several occasions issues such as loose fencing or drainage didn’t comply to standards.

Getting started

Havens grew up on a dairy farm in Missouri, where stock dogs and coonhounds abounded and family pets were something that just happened when a neighbor’s mutt had puppies.

Farm life accustomed Havens to seeing animals as a livelihood as well as companions. But it was hard not to get attached sometimes, he said. He remembers the pang he felt as a youngster when cows he had helped to milk would eventually grow old and his father shipped them off.

“After being raised like that, you sorta get tougher, seeing the animals go,” he said. “But you don’t like to see them go to be killed. That’s the nice thing about raising pets. I like that better because they go to a home.”

After spending time in the Air Force, Havens worked for a while on a cattle ranch in Wyoming. He first got interested in raising dogs after visiting a pet shop there and noting that 8-week-old puppies were selling for more than 8-month-old calves.

When the ranch broke up, Havens moved to Wisconsin and started working with American Breeders Service, a cattle breeding company.

In 1974, Havens bought his farm in Kingston, where, along with cattle, hogs and assorted exotic animals, he started raising dogs. In the early days, it was miniature schnauzers.

Designer dogs

Curiosity, as much as anything else, got Havens interested in hybrids, the deliberate crossing of two different purebred breeds. This was decades before “designer hybrids” became such a rage.

“I enjoy making puppies that are real pretty and that are going to make a good family pet for someone. I really get a kick out of it,” said Havens, 71, who’d attended University of Missouri under the GI Bill and studied animal husbandry.

Cockapoos — a cocker spaniel/poodle cross — were his first real venture in cross-breeding, driven by demand from a pet store that Havens supplied back then with puppies.

Purebred breeders dismiss the notion, but Havens, like many other hybrid breeders, thinks the hybrid dogs are healthier and have fewer inherited issues like hip dysplasia or heart problems.

“They have twice the gene pool to pick from,” he said. “It’s Mother Nature’s way to pick the healthiest genes, I suppose. You never see corn that’s not a hybrid now. It just does so much better.”

Havens now carries about 30 different hybrid breeds.

Coming up with successful hybrids is largely a matter of trial and error, Havens said.

“We’re pretty sure what they’re going to look like after this long a time. Still, we get some pleasant surprises and we get some disappointments, too.”

His latest hybrid success is what he’s calling a miniature St. Bernard — a 20-pound hybrid that actually owes nothing to the St. Bernard except a similarity in coloring.

Havens isn’t revealing how exactly he came up with this ball of fluff.

“With the puggle, we just told everybody exactly how we did it and now everybody and his cousin is breeding puggles,” Havens said. “This time, we didn’t do that. We’re not telling them exactly how we got this.”

Havens’ hybrid pups have been featured on networks like CBS and CNBC and on the pages of the New York Times. His mini St. Bernard was touted as a Top 10 Christmas gift idea a couple of years back in Marie Claire magazine.

Puppies go nationwide

Havens sells puppies directly to customers but most of his business comes from providing animals to pet shops all across the country. He sells to stores from California to Florida and here in the Midwest.

“Some years I make money, some years I don’t,” said Havens, noting the high overhead of a kennel business. “Recently, I’ve been making money … but sometimes so many people get into (a certain breed), you have to sell the puppies cheap.”

Prices vary according to demand, Havens said. The mini St. Bernard, one of the more expensive pups he now carries, can have a price tag of $1,000.

The need for regulations

Two previous attempts to pass dog breeding legislation in Wisconsin have failed, but state lawmakers are now once again trying to come up with ways to regulate the state’s growing dog business.

It’s not easy. The dog breeding world is notoriously Balkanized, and finding consensus has traditionally been difficult.

Still, few argue with the need for setting standards. But there’s disagreement over what those standards should be.

Some people say it’s really about the difference between living and surviving, that meeting basic needs — food, water and shelter — isn’t enough to be “humane.”

Robert Baker, an investigator with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, hasn’t seen Puppy Haven but he’s been inspecting commercial kennels all over the Midwest since 1980.

Stories of squalid living conditions in some puppy mill operations have heightened public awareness of the problem, Baker said, but too often a few cans of paint substitute for substantive changes in animal care.

“It’s just a totally unnatural environment,” Baker said. “The dog really doesn’t care what the place looks like. They just want decent care. That’s the hardest thing to get these people to change, to really care for the animals they’re dealing with.

“Now that it’s become almost strictly profit-oriented, there’s just no incentive for the care of the dogs.”

Feeling the heat

Havens, who refutes any notion that he doesn’t care for his animals, is well aware of the criticisms. So are his employees.

One kennel worker at Puppy Haven, who didn’t want to be identified because of safety concerns, said she’d received threats that her house would be burned down, that she or others who worked there could have their arms or legs broken.

She stays on, though, because she likes caring for the animals.

Responding to charges that large dog operations can’t give animals the kind of personal attention they need, Havens says the dogs don’t miss what they don’t know.

“These dogs all have their little dog family, their pack, in that pen,” Havens said. “That’s all they know and they like it there. Dogs, if they’re always raised with dogs, they don’t want to fool with people.

“Once they learn to be part of a family, that’s different but they have to learn that. These dogs enjoy their life the way it is.”

For Havens’ part, if his kennels may fall shy of what some might call humane conditions, he doesn’t see it.

“We have so many good things that other people can’t have, I think actually it would be better if every puppy was bred in places like mine,” he said.

Indeed, Havens said he thinks it would be a fine idea if a humane society eventually took over his complex because it provides amenities — like large dog runs — that their own facilities may not.

It’s all about the puppies

Havens’ operation is high profile and that is probably a good thing, according to Chuck Wegner, executive director of the Clark County Humane Society. In his rural county about 150 miles northwest of Madison, Wegner said he’s seen too many sorry animals, victims of the state’s lack of regulations.

“(Havens) knows that the eyes of the nation and particularly the state are on him,” Wegner said. “Others, like the people up here, are under the radar. They’re just not being looked at.”

While critics often condemn large kennel operations of doing it just for profit, Havens says that the profit-making motive also keeps his operation running straight.

Sick puppies and sordid reputations, after all, aren’t good for business, he said.

“These dogs really get what they’re supposed to have,” Havens said. “With this many puppies, they have to — or we’d be in trouble.”

In the end, it’s all about the puppies.

People who buy the dogs in pet stores are informed that the pups came from Puppy Haven Kennels, but few ever try to find out about where they were raised or about the parent dogs, Havens said. Most never look beyond the puppy.

Gary Ripp, of Madison, says that the golden retriever he and his wife got from Puppy Haven is “one of the best dogs we’ve ever owned.”

“I’ve seen those puppy mills (on TV) and Wallace’s place is nothing like that,” Ripp said. “We don’t have any children so we’re giant dog lovers. We’re very pleased with his place.”

Contact Heather LaRoi at hlaroi@madison.com.