Font ResizeLITTLE FALLS, Minn. - A Minnesota dog breeder whose kennel application sparked protests and a lawsuit has plans to auction more than 100 dogs and may be going out of business.
Gary McDuffee opened his kennel in Little Falls in 2007 after receiving a permit to have up to 500 dogs.
He was registered to sell 135 dogs Saturday at an auction in Seneca, Mo., and has plans to auction more in December and February. A Southwest Auction Service posting on the Internet says McDuffee is going out of business.
"Gary has been in business for many years, but he feels it is time to sellout," the posting says.
But animal rights activists, including Wade Hanson of the Animal Humane Society, say they fear McDuffee is not going out of business but trying to rid himself of older dogs. Thirty-six of the dogs listed for auction Saturday were at least 4 years old. Fifty-two were puppies.
McDuffee, 56, a retired special education teacher, declined to comment. His contact for the auction, Seneca breeder Caryl Freeman, said she assumes McDuffee is retiring.
Nancy Minion, a Woodbury activist who has lobbied for legislation regulating commercial breeders in Minnesota, said animal rescue teams hoped to buy many of McDuffee's dogs.
"We don't want them going from one puppy mill to another," she said. "We've already failed these dogs once."
McDuffee's kennel application had sparked a lawsuit from his neighbors, complaints about his plans to surgically debark some dogs and an
Morrison County commissioners eventually approved the application with conditions including that McDuffee could not debark dogs or use shock collars to control noise.
Dog breeding has become a multimillion dollar industry, fueled in part by growing demand for designer pets. It has been affected by the recession, although small breeders are more likely to have lost business than large ones who advertise online, such as McDuffee, said Carol Krout, an animal rescue volunteer from Fort Dodge, Iowa.
"People can't afford to buy pets they can't take care of," Krout said.
Prices at an Oct. 31 auction in Columbus, Ohio, were much less than at previous auctions, said Mary O'Connor-Shaver, head of the Coalition to Ban Ohio Dog Auctions.
"We've been getting a lot of dogs from Minnesota at our auctions, many of them supposedly going out of business," O'Connor-Shaver said. "But they quickly change their minds."
Information from: Star Tribune, www.startribune.com
