Stores may have to get pets from rescue groups
Under proposed changes before the City Council, San Antonio pet stores could sell only dogs and cats provided by animal control agencies or rescue organizations.
The council could be considering the changes by the end of the month, officials said.
Members of the council’s Community Health and Equity Committee recently approved the changes, requiring that all pet shops within city limits get their cats and dogs from an animal rescue organization, an animal control agency or a county animal shelter.
All animals would have to be micro-chipped, spayed or neutered and given standard immunizations before they are sold.
If the council approves the changes this month, Animal Care
Services Director Heber Lefgren said they could be in effect as early as January.
“I think we’re on the right track,” said District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval, who chairs the committee. “They’re going to put us on a path to being a more humane community when it comes to pet welfare.”
Thinking back a decade ago when hundreds of stray animals wandered the city, and many were euthanized, she added, “We’ve come a long way, but we still have more to go.”
Several pet stores in the San Antonio area already provide only rescue cats and dogs to the public, often working with local animal groups to bring them out to the stores on weekends and for special events.
The changes would affect about a half-dozen pet shops, Lefgren said, and could stop the flow of puppy mill animals.
“Puppy mill organizations are inhumane,” Lefgren said. “The constant breeding that goes on … and oftentimes we don’t know where the animals are coming from.”
Lefgren said these changes
won’t affect small breeders.
“What this does is, in addition to protecting the pets, it sets the standards going forward as for what we want our city to be,” Lefgren said.
More than 3,200 residents responded to an Animal Care Services survey in July 2019. Nearly 80 percent supported a prohibition on the sale of cats and dogs that didn’t originate from a shelter or rescue group.
Back in 2013, a momand-pop pet store in Universal City, Polly’s Pets, decided to switch from selling locally bred puppies to selling rescue dogs from Animal Care Services.
“We thought that, longterm, it was going to be better for us,” said Randy Housely, the shop’s owner.
With even the question of its puppies coming from puppy mills gone, the partnership produced a healthier business model for the store, he said. Plus, “it’s going to be better for the puppies.”
Since then, the store has found homes for close to 1,000 puppies from ACS.
“I think one of the keys to being successful is both of our organizations were voluntary participants in it,” Housely said. “And we went into it both wanting the same result,” which was finding homes for the pets.
El Paso, Austin, Fort Worth, Waco and The Colony — a small town near Dallas — have similar ordinances. Lefgren sees the proposed ordinance changes as “aligning our values with best practices.”
George Pader, the manager of Petland Vineyard, thinks that being forced to sell only rescue animals could be risky.
“We have no idea where they came from, how they were treated,” Pader said.
In a highly publicized case, the Animal Defense League sued the national chain Petland over accusations that it sold dogs from puppy mills. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2018.
Pader said all the dogs sold at his store in San Antonio come from USDA-licensed breeders from across the nation who pass background checks and follow “very strict guidelines.” He said breeder information is provided to potential buyers to be as transparent as possible.
Another proposed change would increase minimum fines for pet sale violations from $100 to $500 for first-time offenses.
Some breeders who sell in illegal locations such as on the side of the road or flea markets consider the $100 fine just the price of doing business, Lefgren said, so a larger fine might discourage that behavior.
“What we are trying to avoid is the mass reproduction and the inhumane care,” Lefgren said.
Since April 2019, ACS has investigated 522 pet sale cases, resulting in 266 citations.
Additional proposed changes to the city code would limit permits for individual sellers and make them available once a year for each animal, and a violation would result in having all pets at the place of sale sterilized.
If passed, other regulations would be amended to allow more residents to apply for assistance from the city to comply with certain violations, such as having a dog roam free.