Written by Marcos Camargo
On April 2, St. George resident Corrine Nyman presented the St. George City Council with a petition urging the City of St. George to consider banning pet stores from selling puppies. The petition stemmed from concerns among Nyman and others that local pet stores used so-called ‘puppy mills’—large operations that breed and sell dogs on an intensive scale and usually under inhumane conditions—as suppliers. Despite the petition and an email campaign led by Nyman requesting public comment on the issue, Mayor Pike and council members have decided not to move forward with officially putting the initiative on a City Council meeting agenda, which would open the issue for public comment. This decision effectively rejects consideration of a pet store puppy sales ban.
Pike said that after reading and responding to emails he and the City Council received, he didn’t feel a ban was necessary.
“I’ve asked everyone who’s sent me an email, and there have been a number of them, I said, ‘Please tell me, give me an example, of a pet shop… that you believe purchases puppies from an unsavory place… from a puppy mill for example’,” said Pike. “And so far, no one’s been able to do that.”
Pike said that responding to emails hasn’t been the only action he and City Council members have taken regarding the petition to ban puppy sales in local pet stores.
“What we have done,” said Pike, “is we’ve had a council member, Michele Randall, make a site visit to one particular pet store here. Just on her own, she decided to go and check it out and talk about their policies and procedures, and frankly, she was quite impressed.”
Nyman, however, said she doesn’t think the City has investigated the situation closely enough. She said that as far as she knows, investigations have never looked at the actual paperwork of any animals.
“The thing that frustrates me is that they haven’t done an investigation,” said Nyman. “They’ve gone in, and they’ve looked around, but they haven’t asked for any paperwork. They went in and pretty much said, ‘Yeah, everything looks good. They are taking care of the puppies.’ Ok, that’s great… but that really has nothing to do with what we’re fighting. We’re fighting whether [puppies] are coming from puppy mills or not, and since the place was clean… and they couldn’t see any mistreatment of the animals they were, from what I understand, unable to ask for any kind of documentation or paperwork.”
Nyman also said that she is frustrated with the St. George City Council decision not to hold a public comment session.
“We want [this issue] to at least be put on the agenda, so that it can talked about, and so that people can make statements in hopes that maybe we can sway [the City Council],” Nyman said.
Pike says that despite the City’s decision to table the initiative, he and the council still take seriously issues of animal mistreatment.
“We want to say, ‘What’s really the problem, or what could be the problem? And let’s try to get after that and do things that would make the public aware’,” Pike said. “And that’s one of the things that I’ve pled with people when they’ve contacted me: use your knowledge and your time and energy as you see fit… to educate the public if you see something you don’t like.”
– St. George woman to petition City Council to ban puppy sales in pet stores
– Petition to ban puppy sales under St. George City Council consideration
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