In 1996, Natalie Peplin-Sobelman bought 10 to 15 puppies from a Rolla, Mo. couple and then listed the puppies for sale in St. Louis newspapers. Until they were sold, the 36-year-old kept them in the kitchen of her Creve Coeur home.
She called her business Puppy Love, and it quickly expanded. To house the dogs, James Sobelman, 43, built an eight-cage kennel in the garage. Soon she added services, moving from middle-man into pet production—breeding dogs and selling the puppies. When Peplin-Sobelman learned that high-end cats could command up to $800 a head, Tallia Jean Cattery was born.
It wasn’t long before the home hosted about 30 dogs. The couple experienced marital problems, and in 1998 Sobelman left Creve Coeur, moving to a farm about 60 miles south in Blackwell, in St. Francois County. Four months later, they reconciled. Peplin-Sobelman, their children, the dogs and cats moved to the country.
When the dogs numbered about 80, he had a pole barn built and rented it to his wife. She also spent approximately $17,000 constructing a puppy breeding house.
Though the cats also were kept on the property, they were housed in a separate trailer. They multiplied to about 30, but Sobelman alleged in court documents that “the cats were harder to raise than the dogs” and that they “seemed to be disease-ridden and she had too many to manage.” In 2001, Peplin-Sobelman moved the cats off the farm altogether and to another parcel of property purchased by her husband.
After the cats moved, Peplin-Sobelman applied for and received a commercial breeder’s license for Puppy Love. She didn’t mention Tallia Jean Cattery or the cats. But Sobelman alleged in court documents that licensing caused problems for his wife, making it “hard for her to manipulate American Kennel Club papers”—a practice that he claimed she did “on a regular basis … For example, if one dog died.”
In late 2001, his wife let the cats’ condition slip, Sobelman later alleged. “Her care of the cats deteriorated to the point where she would only go to the trailer where the cats were living every one to one-and-a-half weeks. She said she had let them all out of their cages and was providing one large community food supply.”
In January 2002, Sobelman moved out again. According to court documents, when he visited the farm, “he would find horrific conditions including situations where dogs had resorted to eating each other for nourishment.”
The cats weren’t doing any better. The Daily Journal in St. Francois County later wrote that the cats were mired in urine and feces. Some were missing eyes, others were missing limbs.
In early 2002, Puppy Love and Tallia Jean Cattery were raided by the St. Francois County Sheriff’s Department, accompanied by Missouri Humane Society investigators. All the cats and at least 25 dogs were seized. Another 100 were left behind.
Even after the raid, Sobelman alleged it was “not uncommon … [to] … find as many as three to four dead dogs in the kennel.” Peplin-Sobelman continued selling the dogs, allegedly meeting her customers at gas stations or fast food parking lots. Sobelman claimed his wife sold sick animals and pets that weren’t properly registered with the AKC. If a customer bought a sick or dying pet, they had little power to force a refund.
The Better Business Bureau, in a press release, backed up Sobelman’s statement. A family bought a Cairn terrier puppy from Puppy Love on July 7, 2002. Twenty-two days later, the dog was dead.
When the family complained to Puppy Love and Peplin-Sobelman about their dog’s death, the vet bills and the trauma it put their children through, they received an e-mail dated August 2, 2002, from Puppy Love: “Sorry you could not nurture a puppy … Maybe you should not have one … You let the puppy die after three weeks of your supposed care … Sorry that you let yourselves down and had to crucify the breeder to make yourselves feel better….”
The breeder wasn’t crucified. She was, however, indicted. On November 25, 2002, Natalie Peplin-Sobelman and James Sobelman were charged with 62 counts of animal abuse stemming from the February raid.
Puppy Love wasn’t about loving puppies. It was about cutting corners and care, an example of a bad breeder engaged in one of this state’s big businesses. One-third of all licensed commercial breeding and broker facilities in the nation is located in Missouri.
Because of that size, “as well as having the largest number of responsible breeders, we also have the largest number of irresponsible breeders,” says Diana Vuylsteke, Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation board member and partner at the Bryan Cave law firm.
The product most often sold is purebred puppies. The breeders range from mom-and-pop backyard or basement operations to large corporations with facilities for thousands of animals. However, the only ones required to get a license are breeders who have more than three females that can reproduce.
The reason given for Missouri’s popularity within the breeding industry depends on whether the person supplying it is a whistle-blower, inspector or breeder.
Ledy VanKavage, a lobbyist for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a nonprofit organization, says, “I think it is because of a lack of sufficient regulation. The Agriculture Department looks at this as a business, as something to promote.”
But Dave Dillon, Missouri Department of Agriculture’s deputy director, sees it differently. He believes the numbers are high because not all states have licensing requirements and his inspectors are actively searching for breeders to add to the list.
Karen Strange, a pet breeder lobbyist and head of the Missouri Federation of Animal Owners, disputes even the statistics, calling them “falsely elevated.” She claims that the numbers are skewed because large Missouri brokers bring in puppies from other states.
However it’s explained, pet breeding has historical roots in Missouri. Dillon notes it goes back “several generations, especially down in the southwest corner of the state.”
Debbie Hill, rescue and investigations interim director with the Missouri Humane Society, who participated in the raid at the Sobelman farm, says finding unlicensed or unscrupulous breeders is a challenge. In “so many rural areas in Missouri you’ve got all the trees and the hills and the creeks.” That means that investigators are faced with the same difficulties, she says, as “cops trying to do the meth lab” searches.
But the need to find and monitor practices is more urgent than ever. That’s because in addition to creating puppies, they are also imported from other states and other countries. And a recent revelation that puppies imported from rabies-infected foreign countries and brought to Missouri might not have been properly quarantined raises questions not only about animal welfare but human health.
To bring a puppy younger than three months into the United States from a rabies-infected country, the federal government requires the importer to swear on a piece of paper that when the animal is taken home with the owner, it will be confined. That means it will be kept away from other animals, receive limited human contact and outfitted with a leash and muzzle when walked.
The reason for the quarantine is to ensure that the puppy isn’t infected with rabies, a viral disease that is fatal to both animals and people if it reaches the brain. Violators of the quarantine face fines up to $1,000 and a year in jail. Whether it’s one dog or 100, the rules are the same.
But lately, the Illinois Department of Agriculture suspects some of those involved in buying and selling puppies for profit are breaking the quarantine laws, putting both humans and animals at risk for contracting rabies.
“These are people who are in it for their livelihood,” Dr. Colleen O’Keefe, division manager for food safety and animal protection for the Illinois Department of Agriculture, says of the suspects. The puppies usually arrive in the United States at Chicago O’Hare. “They come primarily from Hungary,” says O’Keefe. “They do have rabies there.”
O’Keefe; Carroll Imig, the bureau chief of the Bureau of Animal Welfare for the Illinois Department of Agriculture; the department’s lawyer and its public information officer recently agreed to speak to St. Louis Magazine about the investigation and its connection to Missouri.
Imig was the first to uncover the problem. He compared the signed federal quarantine forms with forms filed with the Illinois Department of Agriculture when a broker wants to ship puppies to another state. He noticed puppies that had recently been brought into the country from Hungary, puppies that were supposed to be confined, were leaving Illinois before the quarantine period expired. And one of the places they were destined was Missouri.
“We do know that there are some that are headed for Missouri and that is all we feel comfortable releasing at this point,” O’Keefe says, though she declines to provide the number of animals in Missouri that might not have been quarantined properly.
However, VanKavage says she’s been told the number of puppies shipped to Missouri that are under scrutiny is approximately 1,400.
According to O’Keefe, there aren’t any known cases of rabies infections yet, but she adds that “even though it is unusual, it is not an impossibility.” She relates an instance in which a family traveling through Spain and Morocco picked up an 8-to-10-week-old puppy infected with rabies. Between 30 and 40 people were exposed to the disease; two people died.
While rabies is the prime concern, VanKavage says imported animals pose other health risks. “What if they have a bizarre strain of distemper over there that we don’t have over here and it gets introduced to the Missouri animals and wipes them out?”
Contemplating the spread of strange diseases by imported animals isn’t simply an academic exercise. In June 2003, a Chicago-area pet dealer sold prairie dogs infected with the monkey pox virus to the public. The prairie dogs were believed to have been infected by an imported exotic African rodent. Monkey pox, a milder form of smallpox, is a rare virus that can jump not only from animal to animal but also to humans. And it did. Cases were reported in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.
And monkey pox is the very reason VanKavage suspects that the Illinois Department of Agriculture is being so thorough with breeders now.
It isn’t just the Illinois Department of Agriculture that’s interested. O’Keefe indicated that in October, they turned the investigation over to the Centers for Disease Control and the United States Department of Agriculture.
Back in Missouri, however, no one seems to know about the potential problem.
Dillon says he hasn’t heard about the issue, “which makes me think that it probably isn’t something that we have been contacted about.”
The responsibility for looking into the problem would most likely fall into the lap of the Animal Care Facility Program, established in the Missouri Agriculture Department in 1994. In addition to overseeing and inspecting commercial breeders and brokers, state inspectors were also charged with keeping tabs on pet stores, animal shelters and humane societies.
But in February 2001, State Auditor Claire McCaskill released a highly critical evaluation of the program. The audit found that state inspectors hadn’t fined, revoked or suspended the licenses of commercial breeders for at least two years. During that same period, federal inspectors fined 11 facilities more than $14,000. And while the average federal inspection lasted about 90 minutes, state inspectors breezed through in 15 to 30 minutes.
Moreover, when state and federal inspectors failed to coordinate their efforts and both wound up at a facility on the same day, the state inspector found no violations while federal inspectors found seven, including six repeat violations. Auditors also stated that during their investigation, while accompanying state inspectors, the owner wasn’t cited when a dog struggled to keep its foot from falling through wire mesh flooring.
Underlying the reluctance, the auditor said, was a belief that the state’s role was to “encourage” breeders to improve rather than issue sanctions. That could have been due in part to the fact that the program’s coordinator and an inspector were not only former commercial breeders, but their wives were still in the business, a clear conflict of interest.
The program’s operations have changed since the audit, Dillon says. The employees with conflicts of interest were moved. The program entered into an agreement with the state’s administrative hearing commission to preside over cases, and they’ve seized animals and levied fines, all while working with a limited budget and small staff.
But even with an overhaul and a greater willingness to crack down on bad breeders, it wasn’t the Animal Care Facility Program that shut down Puppy Love.
After the indictment, Peplin-Sobelman’s world collapsed. The couple filed for divorce and their three children, including a special-needs child requiring 24-hour supervision and care, were placed in the custody of the juvenile court system.
James Sobelman made a deal with the state. He agreed to testify against his estranged wife and his attorney prepared a five-page, single-spaced proffer statement, filed with the court, outlining what he’d say if called to the stand to testify.
The St. Francois County assistant prosecutor decided that Sobelman was only peripherally involved in his wife’s breeding business. In December 2003, Sobelman pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of animal abuse and was placed on unsupervised probation.
The following week, Peplin-Sobelman appeared in court. She pleaded guilty to one felony count of animal abuse and the remaining charges were dropped. The judge placed her on five years probation with several conditions. One of those, according to Hill, was that she couldn’t have breeding animals anymore.
Attempts to reach James Sobelman for a comment were unsuccessful, and messages left for his attorney weren’t returned. Natalie Peplin-Sobelman initially agreed to an interview for this story, then declined on the advice of her attorney.
As for the dogs and cats that were seized in 2002, one of the cats recovered from the ordeal and is featured on a Missouri Humane Society poster. The fate of the remaining animals is unknown. The Missouri Humane Society did not provide by our publication deadline the information regarding the number of cats and dogs that were adopted as well as the number euthanized.
The case didn’t end there. Even after the indictment, the conviction, the probation and the prospect of losing her kids, Peplin-Sobelman didn’t follow the judge’s orders.
Hill says that Peplin-Sobelman violated “the terms of her probation; she had more animals than she was supposed to have and she did have breeding animals.”
On July 23, St. Francois County Circuit Judge Kenneth Pratt revoked Peplin-Sobelman’s probation and sent her to prison. She’s now spending four years behind bars at the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostics and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Mo.
Selecting A Pet
The kids have promised a thousand times to feed, water and take care of a dog if only you’d let them get one. The furniture isn’t new anymore and the carpet will need to be replaced in a few years anyway. “OK,” you finally say, “We’ll get a puppy.”
But how can you buy a pet without lining the pockets of a puppy mill?
St. Louis Magazine posed that hotly debated question to several experts, and received a wide variety of answers. From the responses, we compiled this list of recommendations.
- First, consider a mixed-breed puppy. Unplanned pregnancies are still common in the canine community, and many of the puppies end up at the Missouri Humane Society or other animal shelters. Stop by the local animal shelter to see if there’s a dog that will fit in with your family.
- If you’ve got your heart set on a purebred puppy, either because you’re interested in a certain look or you hope to find a particular temperament, consider an older puppy or adult purebred dog instead. Both can be found in animal shelters.
- Another option is to search the Internet for rescue organizations that cater to particular breeds. For example, if you’re interested in a boxer, try the Greater St. Louis Missouri Boxer Rescue.
- If you still haven’t found the puppy of your dreams, ask a veterinarian to recommend a breeder. Before buying the puppy, insist on seeing the facility where the puppy is kept. If possible, meet the puppy’s mother and father. Many breeders can and will accommodate these requests.
- Before you agree to purchase a dog, call the Better Business Bureau to find out if they have any records of complaints against the breeder.
Though this list isn’t foolproof, it can help minimize the chances that you’ll provide financial support to an irresponsible breeder.
