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HomeMy WebLinkAboutJustin Kerr 8.18.211 Danielle Marshall From:justin@puppylandwa.com Sent:Wednesday, August 18, 2021 4:59 PM To:Danielle Marshall Subject:Puppyland - Retail Pet Sales D-194 My name is Justin Kerr, from Roy, justin@puppylandwa.com I am the owner of Puppyland. We are family owned and operated with several of our siblings working in store day to day, we love what we do. The most important thing I would like to clarify here is, Puppyland does not support puppy mills in any way. We are people, and we each have a heart too. Our goal is to show people that pet stores can be good. We work with breeders who genuinely care about their dogs, give them the space, love and care that they deserve. Our breeders do health testing, provide proper vet care, and go above and beyond requirements for their dogs. We regularly visit these breeders to make sure they stay up to our own personal standards, we want to see for ourselves. Please, take a look at how many retail pet sale bans exist across the country, there are hundreds. But at the end of the day what has it achieved? Nothing, because bans are not the answer. We need practical fact based regulation - not over regulation. Online sales, local unregulated breeders, and people that essentially run an unregulated pet store out of their house will thrive when Renton residents have no where else to turn. One thing I would like to point out, is the animal rights groups you hear from do not want you to pass an ordinance to improve what we do, they want to either outright ban or to regulate us out of business, there is no reasonable or cooperative side to their argument, simply emotion. We are grateful for the regulations we do have, but the proposed regulations set an unattainable standard. What happens when Washington’s requirements contradict another states requirements? Every state has a constitution, and that constitution prevents cities and counties from regulating each other, this may indirectly be a violation of another states constitution. This also may violate the US Constitution’s commerce clause AND the equal protection clause. These suggested city regulations simply do not make sense, many are already existing in some form and we are already regulated by King County Health Department. To add the city of Renton regulating us is unnecessary and could potentially contradict the county’s rules leading to bigger issues, who would we really answer to? If there is any area of concern about a specific animal - animal control has authority also. This is an overburdensome regulation with no improved outcome. If X amount of people can care for 50 dogs, then 2 times the people can care for 100 dogs. Who would we answer to brings up another concern - the requirement to post breeder information online. This encourages these same animal rights groups to take it upon themselves to regulate us, or harass our breeders just as we have endured over the years. We have received death threats, had our pictures and personal home addresses posted online - all while on these animal rights groups have posts with numerous vulgar comments about us and our customers and explaining how we should be treated and dealt with. We have had windows broken and our personal property set on fire. Do you really want to be on the supporting side of an animal extremist group? I would hope that the city of Renton would not do something like this to encourage this type of aggressive behavior. While Washington’s breeder requirements are good, states with significantly more breeders have taken the initiative to greatly increase requirements for breeders over the years well above USDA standards, because it was needed. According to the Humane Society themselves - only about 4% of the dogs came from a pet store in 2017-18, so realistically how are we the cause of these problems? We are regulated and inspected, meanwhile rescues can go unchecked and operate as they choose, even buying from the same breeders the claim to want to stop sometimes. Rescues have been known to misrepresent, sell sick animals and sometimes flat out lie to future pet owners, but were not here today with an attempt to fairly and equally regulate pet stores AND rescues, just pet stores, the small 4% of total pet sales. Thank you for your time, please do not move forward with any of the proposed language. I hope you can see that sometimes the loudest opinion in the room is not always the best choice. Justin Kerr Puppyland 913-963-9125 CAUTION: This email originated from outside the City of Renton. Do not click links, reply or open attachments unless you know the content is safe.