Puppy Mills Go Underground with Alene Tchekmedyian and Melody Gutierrez

I was just saying before we started recording that this is an issue that obviously a lot of people care about who are listening, but probably don't know a lot about. And one of the reasons for that is one of the very few successful legal efforts of the animal protection movement in the past few years has been the ongoing effort to close down retail stores selling cats, and of course particularly dogs, we're talking mostly about dogs here.

So this is pretty disappointing news that very sadly, as too often happens when it comes to animals, this hasn't worked out as well as people probably imagine it has, and it hasn't done much to shut down the puppy mill industry.

Now, California passed such a law, right? Can we start there? And can you tell us when and exactly what that was?

Alene Tchekmedyian: Yeah. So California actually was the first state to do this, and that goes back to 2017. They passed a law that banned the retail sale of commercially bred puppies in pet stores. That went into effect in 2019. And then later when there was this whole issue about commercially bred puppies being passed off as rescues, and still being sold at pet stores, they closed the loophole on that as well.

You know, it definitely did sort of have an impact on, you know, these bulk shipments to pet stores, we weren't really seeing that, but what we did see is that one of the unintended consequences was that this puppy market ended up being pushed a little bit further underground.

And we saw these brokers, these resellers, stepping in for pet stores as the middlemen.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, probably going underground was not a really good step in providing for the welfare of animals, as you certainly uncovered. So when somebody in California wants a purebred puppy, what do they do?

Do they see an ad in the paper? Do they go to what they think are reputable local breeders, like the lovely woman down the street who has a few golden retrievers or something? Is that how this starts, when somebody wants a puppy?

Melody Gutierrez: Yeah, what we were finding is that people turn sometimes online.

So Facebook Marketplace, Recycler is another publication online, Craigslist, and there they'll advertise a locally bred dog that's a purebred, with paper sometimes. In other cases, people are going to other local breeders who advertise on their own websites, and have reviews.

And so the people we were talking to said you know, I thought I was doing my due diligence and, you know, this ad said all the things that I was looking for. I was looking for locally bred, I was looking for somebody who doesn't have a lot of dogs.

They'll use language like, spoiled, these puppies were spoiled. These dogs live in our house. First and only litter. All of these keywords that for someone who is trying to be conscientious about where they're getting their dog, this hits to those points, but unfortunately in our investigation we're finding those are often misleading or just outright a lie.

Mariann Sullivan: People were trying to do the right thing, but they just were not suspicious enough. What do the transactions look like? I know they probably vary a lot, and you mentioned one that was in a parking lot, which sounds like that must have seemed pretty skeevy. But are they all skeevy?

Or does the transaction itself take place in a nice place and everybody thinks everything's fine?

Alene Tchekmedyian: Yeah, we talked to people who bought dogs from parking lots, but also went to facilities and were able to see where the dog presumably lived, at least they were told that. The parking lot transactions, you know, those often came from those Craigslist ads or the Recycler ads and the person would, you know, meet them in a parking lot.

One of the people that we focused on in the story, her name's Monique Matthews, she often met people in parking lots and would give aliases, like not use her real name, you know, bring out the puppy and then the person is just, you know, some of them even told us like, Oh, I saw several red flags, but the puppy was so cute and I instantly fell in love with it that I sort of ignored those and push those to the back of my mind.

But in those transactions also, she would often do a cash only things, no real receipt or contract. There was one contract we reviewed where the seller's name was nowhere on the contract.

Mariann Sullivan: I'm not sure we would call that a contract, but, uh, yeah.

Alene Tchekmedyian: Yeah. So it just had the buyer's name and information and nothing from the other side.

Melody Gutierrez: I'll also add that a lot of the people that were buying, it was like last minute meeting in a parking lot, right? They actually sometimes thought that they were going to someone's house And then it was like an excuse at the last minute. Oh, my son is sick. Or, you know, all of these ways where they like... initially, like, you know, if someone's told a parking lot, they might be suspicious.

But in some of these cases, they didn't find out they were meeting in a parking lot until right before. And that was particularly evident during the pandemic when people really weren't going to people's houses.

Mariann Sullivan: Of course. Yeah. But also that story that you told, Alene, that I'm sure as soon as you see the puppy, you're just in love.

I mean, they're puppies like even if you're suspicious. I think there might be some kind of an impulse, I mean, I know people have bought puppies in pet stores because of that, I better get this puppy out of here. You immediately form that like, you know sense of responsibility toward this little creature. I'm sure that happens a lot.

So, where do these puppies actually come from? I mean, the implication is that they're bred out in the backyard or in the lovely barn or something next to somebody's house and they have two dogs or whatever. I imagine that's frequently the kind of story, though you can correct me if I'm wrong, but where do they really come from?

Alene Tchekmedyian: So the way we put this story together is by examining these import records to California. And so pretty much anytime a dog crosses state lines, they need a vet where they are originating from to sign off on their health and attest that they are healthy enough to travel and that document has the place where they came from and where they're supposed to go.

And so we initially had heard from someone that we were interviewing, Mindi Callison of Bailing Out Benji, she regularly pours through these documents and she had said to us during an interview on a completely different story that she had noticed dogs, what she called it, disappearing in California.

And that really struck us. And when we asked her what she meant, she had been noticing that some of these import documents had listed addresses in California that don't exist. And so the big question for us was, where were these dogs going? So we wanted to look at the full scope of the puppy trade in California.

So initially we went to California and asked them for all the import records that they had received from other states. And it turns out California doesn't keep these records. And so we had to go to every other state to get these records. And what we were able to find, we ended up examining records for 88, 000 dogs since 2018 coming into California.

Not every single one of those reflects a sale. There's some people that are traveling with their pets or moving that file these forms. But a lot of them did, and they were for, you know, 8 to 12 week old puppies. And we found that the big bulk shipments that we were tracking, a lot of them originated from The Midwest, where there are these mass breeding facilities in Missouri and Iowa.

Those were actually ones where we tried to go visit these facilities. We found, you know, hundreds of dogs, thousands coming from them. And some of them, according to USDA inspections that we reviewed, kept their dogs in worse conditions than others. And some of the resellers that we highlighted in the story got their dogs from some of the pretty bad ones.

Mariann Sullivan: Right. So, I want to go more into that record keeping thing because that just seems like the loophole of the century, where all of these puppies are falling through. And it's just a record keeping requirement, but that's the whole point. You know, you have records for a reason, but before we get to that, people listening probably know a fair amount about how bad puppy mills can be in the Midwest.

And you mentioned Ohio is really a new kind of centerpiece, in addition to Missouri and Iowa and a few other states. Can you just give us kind of an idea of the variations in the kinds of facilities these puppies are coming from and a little bit about their journey from birth to the time they arrive in their new home?

Melody Gutierrez: Yeah, I mean, you can knock on as many doors of these facilities as you want, and you're not going to be let into most of them. So seeing this in person is very difficult, but we did examine a lot of inspection reports. We had photos and videos from those inspection reports.

And then we did attempt to see these in person too. We did go inside one facility that let us in, and I think that that would be considered one of the nicer mass breeding facilities that exists. Like, you know, the family was very open to showing their facility, their dogs.

I think the biggest thing, like my takeaway, was their dogs acted like dogs. They greeted us at the fence. They were wagging their tails. They had a large open yard where their dogs were running around, and that is a stark contrast to when we saw breeding dogs at an auction, you know, the behavior of those dogs was so incredibly different.

They didn't make eye contact, they hid in the back of their cages or they spun in circles. And so when you're seeing this in person, there is a massive difference between what is a bad, like large breeding facility and really like one of the better kept ones.

Mariann Sullivan: So, the puppies are born there, and that can vary a lot, and apparently their mothers probably have them for a certain amount of time, and then they are shipped to various places around the country, and California is one of those places?

And a lot of them, as we all know, a lot of puppies from puppy mills are sick. It's kind of amazing that there are any who aren't, but some of them aren't. But what kind of illnesses do they suffer from when they're coming from these really, really bad facilities?

Alene Tchekmedyian: You know, that's a little bit difficult to answer because a lot of the records showed the vet said that they were healthy enough to travel, right? But when we talked to people that bought dogs from some of these resellers, they would often come with parasites, giardia, coccidia.

Those were kind of the common ones. You know, we got some behavioral complaints from people, like, they said that their puppies had severe anxiety and other various behavioral issues. But it's hard to kind of give some sort of over broad, big brushstroke statement making those links.

But those were kind of the common things that we heard from people.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. And you mentioned a few people in your article who kept the puppy, as people will do because they love the puppy, but ended up spending tens of thousands of dollars in vet bills over the years for what were still young dogs because they had various issues, which I'm sure is something that happens a lot.

Speaking of things that maybe happen a lot, I know the numbers, because of what you talked about of the record keeping requirements, the numbers are not entirely clear, but you did manage to track down a lot of puppies that were being shipped.

How big do you think this business is? And what kind of money are people making?

Melody Gutierrez: On the money side, that's hard to tell. I mean, obviously it's profitable for many people who are doing this. When we talk to experts in this field on like how the Midwest came to have so many of these large breeding facilities, they talked about how small farmers couldn't compete with large corporate interests, and so they were encouraged to do dog breeding because it was more profitable than hog and poultry farming, in many cases. And so like that was sort of the evolution into these pockets in America where there is a huge concentration. In one city, West Point, Iowa, we were counting the number of breeding dogs to the number of people in the town, and it was twice as many breeding dogs as the number of individuals living there.

In certain pockets of America, there are definitely these concentrations and so it's hard to say exactly how profitable, but there are people along the way that are also profiting, right? A large facility will often sell to a broker and then the broker will sell, in California's case, there's another broker here that's then buying them and then selling them again.

So like there are so many people in the middle that are also making money. And when you look at the end price of what some of these dogs are selling for, you know, 1000, 2000, we've interviewed people who've paid as high as like 5, 000. So it's a lot of money to be had along the way.

Mariann Sullivan: And everybody's taking their share out. Yeah. So one of the things that stood out for me, you mentioned that they had tried to close a loophole in California's law that allowed, I think it was, allowed pet stores to characterize their sales that were really sales as rescues. But there's still some of that going on, isn't there?

That sometimes these folks who are the final moneymaker in the process, the one who's actually selling the puppies to the people, whether it's on Craigslist or anywhere else, they are characterizing themselves as rescuers. Is that right? And how does that work? And how would people know the difference between a legit rescue organization and a scam?

Because I've kind of heard of people who have told me that their puppy was a rescue. And I was wondering, well, I wonder if they really were. Is this something that goes on to appeal to people who kind of know about puppy mills, but want to rescue an animal?

Alene Tchekmedyian: I think that definitely does happen.

That wasn't a focus of our investigation here. We didn't so much look at these rescues, or people pretending to be rescues, as much. The resellers that we focused on in this story were mostly just advertising purebred commercial puppies. Yeah.

Mariann Sullivan: But I think it is something that people should be aware of if they are rescuing a dog who is a puppy, which, you know, is less likely to be in a legit rescue.

All right, let's get back to this question of the record keeping, because that does seem to be like where the law has really fallen apart here. It seems to be kind of a combination of loopholes in the law itself, some confusion on some people's part whether that's authentic or not, and just some out and out illegal conduct.

As to the law itself, it appears it's still legal to import puppies into California, that's not against the law, it just might be the whole problem, in order to sell them, but the pet stores are now closed. So they found out these other ways to retail them, but they have these record keeping requirements. And this is a California law, but from what I've seen a lot of states have the same or a similar kind of law.

And according to your article, California requires that dogs brought into California to be sold have to have this certificate that has to be issued by a federally accredited veterinarian. I'm not even sure what a federally accredited veterinarian is. What are the things that this certificate has to include?

What's the information that is required to be supplied?

Melody Gutierrez: The federally accredited veterinarian is actually you have to have a special like USDA authorization to sign these import records.

Mariann Sullivan: Okay.

Melody Gutierrez: That's essentially the classification of who can sign these. These forms are issued by those veterinarians, they list who the breeder is or who the dog is coming from, who the dog is going to, and the address, you know, how it's being transported, and in many cases by who, and then did they find anything during this health exam.

So sometimes you'll see a case where they'll say, you know, that there's something wrong with its knee or, you know, but very few, we found, had actual little notations about something about the dog, but they do certify that this is the dog.

This is, in some cases, it's microchip. And then on this form, it'll also say which dogs are traveling as part of this group of dogs to this particular person. So each form can have one to, in some cases, like 20 dogs on those forms that the vet is saying, you know, this is going from this particular person now to this person.

Some of them even list, like, is it a sale? Is this a person traveling? And obviously we looked at some of the records that said traveling and it would be like 20 puppies and, you know, that doesn't feel like that's a traveling one.

Mariann Sullivan: Great vacation. With your 20 puppies. Yeah. All right, so, I mean, aside from the fact that, you know, these might not be completely accurate, it's kind of amazing that they exist, and that this is required by a lot of states, not just California.

But the real problem is what happens to them. Like, this would be a very convenient thing to get when you buy your puppy, to get the certificate, so you had all this information. But that's not what happens, is it?

Alene Tchekmedyian: We didn't talk to anybody who bought a puppy in California who received a health certificate from out of state.

You know, we were able in the story to track one actually Boston Terrier from Indiana to California. And that's sort of the most detailed look at what we have about this pipeline. And pretty much what happened was it was born at a breeding facility in Indiana. It was transferred to a broker in Indiana, which hired a Missouri transport company to truck the puppy to California, and that was a two day drive from Missouri to California where the transporter, the driver left the Boston Terrier in a garage in Norco, which is a small suburb in the Inland Empire area, Riverside County.

And he was actually so struck by what he saw in that garage that he, when he got back to Missouri, called Animal Control in to report what he saw. And so after that two day journey, he walked in, he saw, you know, stacks of cages, a bunch of animals in those cages, dogs and cats. There was like storage tubs with shredded paper lining them instead of bedding, that the dogs were also in.

There was feces everywhere. It was sweltering hot. It was like close to a hundred degrees outside that day. And the AC wasn't working or wasn't on in the garage. And he was so overcome by emotion seeing this that he, you know, not only decided that he would report this to animal control when he got home, he told his boss that he wouldn't deliver to California anymore.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. He's kind of the hero of the story, isn't he? So when did the certificate get drawn up for this puppy and what happened to it? Or what happens to all of them? Or what happens to some of them?

Melody Gutierrez: These certificates, they're drawn up so in the state that they're coming from. And they will follow the dog, because you need these when you're transporting them across state lines.

And what we looked at in California is the fact that once those forms are in California, there's a 2014 law that says in California, you, the importer, are required to take that form when you come to California and turn it into your County Public Health Department. And that's so that these forms are actually meant for disease tracking.

And so that's why public health might be the right source for this, right? Like that's who would oversee some of the communicable diseases that might travel with these dogs. However, in California, you know, importers, either some don't know, some are simply just not turning them in. And the counties had no idea that they were supposed to have these records, or at least many of them that we talked to.

And then when we went to the state, it turned out that a lot of the other states have an automated system where they're just generally sending all of their copies that they get from these animals also to the California Food and Agriculture Department, but in that case, because the state wasn't supposed to receive them, they've been deleting them.

Mariann Sullivan: So there's this great law that requires all this information to be recorded, and then they're just going to places that they're not supposed to go to, or you also reported like in other states, perhaps in California as well, a lot of times they're just destroyed very quickly. There's no laws that are being followed about how long they have to be kept.

So, it's a matter of collecting information and then kind of tossing the information in the trash, right?

Alene Tchekmedyian: In California, that's what we found. Nobody's really paying attention or tracking these records. And then every other state has different retention laws in terms of how long they're supposed to keep them, and who's supposed to keep them, and whether or not they're even subject to public disclosure.

There were a few states that told us that these records are confidential. Which, you know, for us, exacerbated this whole black hole of information, because in some of those cases, those states actually shared them with California, and we would have been able to get them from California had they been keeping them, but California deleted them, the states say they're confidential, so there's no way to get those records at all.

Mariann Sullivan: Now, who sends the record to California? Is it the state of origin, or is it the puppy mill company?

Melody Gutierrez: The state of origin. What we found is mostly it's the agriculture, state agriculture departments that have like an automated process of sharing these records with the state where the dog is going.

Mariann Sullivan: I know you were able to get a hold of a lot of these records, and that was why you were able to actually figure out what happened, and we'll talk about that, but the people who are buying them, they don't know such records exist, and they're not given such records.

So the puppies are often, as you pointed out, rebranded as just California bred, which is easy to do, because there's no access to the actual true records. People do that to put people's minds at ease because they'll feel better about the dogs being bred close by at a nice facility?

It's not in any way required by law that they tell people where the animals come from. They're just doing it to make people feel good?

Melody Gutierrez: Yeah, essentially, I mean, there, I think there are people who are buying these dogs who care what the conditions of the parent dogs and the conditions that their puppy were in, that they're aware that there are negative health repercussions from buying from some, you know, facilities.

So I think that they're trying to ask the right questions, but they're being told something that's not true about that. But I also think there's an element of if it's locally bred and in these amazing conditions, I think you as a consumer are willing to pay more and these prices are really high.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. Would you say that the situation is worse than it was when there were pet stores?

Melody Gutierrez: I think that's hard to answer because, on one side, at pet stores, California required what's called a cage card, so you could see who the breeder was. That's more difficult in today's environment, when buying these dogs.

However, like in these records, we did see, you know, a decrease, in some states, of how many dogs were coming in. And when you talk to animal advocates, this is a law that if more states were to pass these and as they are, I think they're trying to disrupt the industry itself.

And this industry relies on bulk shipments and when you can't do bulk shipments to puppy stores, I do think that there is, you know, repercussions and potentially like you're going to see more puppy mills go out of business.

Mariann Sullivan: So the law is actually a good idea. It was just that there's all this information being gathered that would have been useful for the buyers to receive that they're not. So it's not doing nearly as much good, I guess, as it could have. There are a lot of failures here with California's law, but you also talk about failures with the Animal Welfare Act, which a lot of our listeners are probably pretty familiar with, but a lot of the puppy mills you talk about, which are of course regulated facilities, they're not like factory farms, they actually do have regulations about how animals are to be treated, they may be weak, but clearly, a lot of these are really terrible.

I mean, you mentioned one that you managed to get into that was not really terrible. It might not have been perfect. It might not have been how we would want our dog to live, but it wasn't terrible. But a lot of them that you talk about are gruesome, that you were able to get records on, and yet they continue to churn out puppies.

So tell us a little bit about what your investigation uncovered, I know it was mostly through paperwork, and your own feelings about the job the USDA is doing regarding the breeding itself.

Alene Tchekmedyian: Well, I mean, as you know, knowing the Animal Welfare Act, it's not the most strict set of laws or regulations. I mean, it sets kind of a low bar we can have dogs bred over and over for their entire lives. You know, if they're housed a certain way or in groups, they can legally stay in the cage their entire lives. And so that's the set of rules that they're looking at when examining these facilities. And then when they do have violations, like in a case in Iowa, there was a very big mass breeding facility run by Steve Kruse.

He has had a steady stream of violations over the decades. and the largest punishment that he's ever received is a 21 day suspension. And he's gotten two of those. One was last year. And after that 21 day suspension was over, it was back in business for him.

And so that was pretty striking for us.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah. It's kind of shocking when you start to learn what's really going on. So, just a broader viewpoint, I know your article wasn't about this, but shelters are overflowing, we all know that. I mean, we had made a lot of progress with shelters for a while, and then some people say it was because of all the pandemic puppies or whatever, but a lot of shelters around the country are really struggling. What were your thoughts about how this whole industry works?

Why don't people adopt grown dogs, not just puppies? Why do they think they have to have a puppy? Why do people continue to think that purebred puppies are better when the evidence is so overwhelming that frequently they're very sick, and are certainly not better in any way? Do you have thoughts on why this industry even exists?

Alene Tchekmedyian: That's also a difficult question, but when we were interviewing people who had gotten dogs, you know, a lot of them had fallen in love with a specific breed and were looking for a specific breed or were looking for a certain temperament in their puppy, you know, wanted a young puppy that they could have their whole life.

Those were some of the answers we got in terms of why people go that route..

Mariann Sullivan: Do you think there's any way to, like a big picture, I know small picture I assume you would like to see the record keeping requirements at least a little better arranged, but any big picture recommendations? Where should we get dogs?

Melody Gutierrez: I think that's hard as like, reporters. Yeah, I think we entered this story knowing that there are a lot of people that feel very passionately about rescuing and, like looking at the shelters. And, you know, I talked to a vet the other day who was just talking about the rates in which they're having to put dogs down because it just overcrowding and, you know, how heartbreaking it is to hear when dogs are coming in this way.

But I think that, you know, it's an industry that deserves to be looked at, like, as a whole. You know, whether it's consumer behaviors, some of the regulation issues with how dogs are kept and what the impact that's having on each state. And I think there needs to be a look at the interconnection between every state, right?

Like, whether you're a state that imports more or exports more, I think there's such a connection between each of these states that it really has to be looked at, like, holistically.

Mariann Sullivan: And on a smaller scale, what would you do, I mean, starting with the record keeping requirements, which was really the most ridiculously scandalous. Well, the treatment of the dogs was more scandalous, but perhaps the most ridiculous thing that you uncovered that they have these elaborate record keeping requirements that just seem to go in the garbage.

What would you do there? Like who should get those records?

Melody Gutierrez: We have a story that came out today, where lawmakers are saying, you know, this is absolutely unacceptable. These records must be kept. And so we're still waiting to hear, like, what California will do in terms of keeping these records.

But I think, with these specific documents, like, we found them incredibly valuable for this investigation. When we talk to animal groups, whether it's Bailing Out Benji, or the ASPCA, like these groups say, these records are really, really important to our own investigations.

And so, I think that, you know, there has to be some way of looking at this in California where these records are available. So that conversation hopefully is being spurred and being really seriously talked about right now. I'll point out, this law puts the onus on importers in California, at least. The onus is on importers to turn these records in. And in many cases, if it's somebody who's importing a lot of dogs, they may not want that oversight. So like putting the onus on them, as some of the people who've read our story have said, that doesn't seem like the right move.

That doesn't seem like the right accountability measure. We even interviewed a state lawmaker who, you know, did buy from a website online during the pandemic, and received one of these certificates and had no idea he was supposed to turn it in. And so, when we talk about people don't know about this law, even a state lawmaker had no idea he was supposed to turn that record in.

Mariann Sullivan: It really does seem crazy, but that's a very exciting development that lawmakers do seem to be interested in sorting this out and making more sense of it. Have animals ever, are they part of your beat? Like, do you cover animal stories? And if not, how did you find out about this and decide to, because this was a job.

I mean, this was a lot of work, I can tell. So, why?. And tell us a little bit about how much time this took.

Melody Gutierrez: Yeah, it was 14 months. We're both investigative reporters, but not like on an animal beat. Alene had done some fantastic work, before we worked on this story, on shelter overcrowding and the impacts. That was a great segue to working on this.

But we were working on something completely different that is animal related, and we're still hoping to go back to that story in the near future, but it really came out of this conversation with Bailing Out Benji's Mindi Callison, like when she said disappearing dogs in California, I think we both stopped in our tracks and we're like, What do you mean? Like, tell us more about this!

And being able to look at this and what she presented was sort of this mystery, right? Like dogs are disappearing in California. We have these records and we can't get them from California, but we have these records and the address listed as the destination actually doesn't exist.

And the person doesn't seem to exist. The company's not real. And we really took that on as a, Well, can we figure out who is importing all of these dogs under these various aliases? And I have to tell you, like, during this investigation, when the moments when we connected multiple aliases and turned out to be the same person, those were such aha moments that were really pretty pivotal and exciting for us. Like, when you're digging this hard and you overturn something like that, you're like, it's the same person!

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, tell us a little bit about Monique. Monique Matthews, or Matthew, I think that she appeared in various different ways. Can you just give us a little picture of the kind of people that are involved in this?

Alene Tchekmedyian: So Monique grew up in pet stores, actually. Her mom had a pet store, her dad and her stepdad also had pet stores, and then she started her own pet store in Glendora, California, in the kind of the 2000s ish.

Eventually they all closed. She actually had been convicted of neglect for treatment of dogs at that pet store, back when it was open. And so her sort of accusations against her for keeping them in poor conditions and selling dogs that were sick go back pretty far. But after her pet store closed, she started selling dogs online, sometimes she would invite people into her home.

And then we started to see as we kind of tracked her evolution over time, she started to meet people in public places, whether it was a park or a parking lot, and give them all sorts of fake names. In more recent sales, she would actually like cover her hair and put a mask over her face, kind of like a COVID mask.

And we had to wonder why and whether it was to kind of conceal her identity. The car that she drove to some of these transactions in the parking lots was actually registered to a woman who had sold the car to her boyfriend like three years before, and then they never like updated the registration, but Melody actually, when we found out who the car was registered to, called all of the people with that name to find the right one.

And one of them ended up saying like, yeah, that was my car. And I had sold it to this guy and that was one of the big aha moments where we put the pieces together.

Mariann Sullivan: She was connected to those puppies in Norco that you spoke about, right?

Alene Tchekmedyian: Yes, she was behind the garage in Norco and after the pet driver, the transporter called authorities, they did a search warrant and seized all the animals in her home and charged her, prosecutors charged her with animal cruelty. And so she had an ongoing criminal case, which resolved this summer with her pleading guilty to two charges.

She was sentenced, in that case.

Mariann Sullivan: Yeah, but I mean, it was my idea of a slap on the wrist, all things considered. Did you feel the same way?

Alene Tchekmedyian: She was sentenced to 90 days and that could have been served with a work release program. So no actual jail time potentially and some community service.

So that didn't seem very strict for people that we talked to that, you know, bought dogs, sick dogs from her.

Mariann Sullivan: And you did find that at least there was an implication. I, I know that we, we need to take into account that you're reporters, you're not the police and you're not the DA.

So there's a big limit to how much you can find out compared to what they can find out and what they can do. And you still managed to find out an unbelievable amount. And it was just kind of an implication that people were just in and out of this, that penalty is just kind of blew by and that even after penalties were imposed, perhaps business was going on or business ends up going on with a cohort who hasn't been accused of anything. The whole thing just sounded like incredibly skeevy.

Do you feel it would be possible for law enforcement to actually, if there was more interest and people took it more seriously, that this industry could be regulated in a way that was more effective?

Melody Gutierrez: Well, I think if we look at like Monique's case, while those charges were pending in the court, related to what we just talked about with the case in what the transporter had reported. You know, while her case was still pending, we were seeing the records coming in with those same aliases still and we had used the microchip to find somebody who had bought a dog from her while she was under court order to not possess animals.

And the niece was so upset that she actually contacted the person that her aunt had bought from who, you know, her aunt had identified her as Monique Matthews, even though she used an alias. So she had actually set up a buy and her whole point was that she was going to have her sit there.

And then she told us, she was like, you know, I set up something and my only recourse for me, like, is really just, I'm going to have her sit in a parking lot and think she's making a sale, but when she told us like where she was, we showed up, or at least Alene did. And we did this like confrontation in a parking lot, like where she's under court order not to possess animals, we see her trying to sell an animal. And so I think that, you know, like when we talk about enforcement, it's those records that we were finding, you know, the ones that were deleted and not being turned into counties, you know, do offer a way to enforce some of these laws.

And we did see this in some of the previous cases, where authorities would question like, you know, we think she's getting these dogs from a puppy mill or from out of state, like, you know, we think she's buying these dogs, but we don't know if she is. And these records offer a chance to kind of put that puzzle piece in there.

Mariann Sullivan: And you also mentioned the microchips. Now, I don't think all the dogs have to be microchipped, so it's not a consistent thing. But it is an incredible tool. I mean, there are a lot of tools that allow these animals to be traced, and for law enforcement or regulatory agencies to really get a good oversight of this business. But as so often happens with animal issues, there's a lot of talk and then things tend to fall through the cracks.

You did unbelievable work with these records, because you actually set up a database with the ones that you were able to find to help people find their own puppies. Is this something the state should be doing? That you would like to see the state be doing?

I don't usually interview reporters, and I feel a little bit like you like to report on things and not make policy recommendations so much outside the article, and I get that. But you know more about this than anybody now, so, I'd just be interested in your thoughts.

Melody Gutierrez: With the database, something that could be replicated, in other states, and the idea of being able to provide some transparency in an industry that really thrives in the dark. I mean, the only reason that you can resell a dog in California and call it locally bred is because how else would the person know?

And in the cases where microchips are available, that is something that could offer insight. And, were you duped? Were you duped into thinking that your dog was, and did you pay extra, like for this dog that you believed was raised in these like specific conditions and it wasn't? Like, so I do think that this offers something that could provide some transparency in this, in this market.

And I think that that would be valuable. And I thank you for the plug on the database cause, I won't go into too much detail, but like the amount of effort that took for Alene and I, and then, and our colleague, Sean.

Mariann Sullivan: Well, there are 88, 000 records, right?

Melody Gutierrez: Not in the database. That's how many dogs we counted.

We did count all of those dogs, and create spreadsheets in order to do that. But in this database where you could put your dog's microchip number in and see if it was part of this, like, trade into California, some of those records actually are from people who bought at pet stores in 2018 before the ban went into effect in 2019.

And so, you know, it's several thousand, microchips are in there, but it's definitely a labor of love to be able to create that and give readers an opportunity to see like were their dogs part of this trade?

Mariann Sullivan: Well, I would say it's even more than that for me. And you guys don't have to say that.

I think it's a model. If, if two reporters from the LA Times can do this, the state of California probably can do it. Probably somebody who could set up a database. The information exists. The information is on paper. The dogs could be required to be microchipped, to be honest. If they're going to be imported into another state, that seems like that could be done.

And then everybody would know everything about where these dogs came from. And I think you've created a model for how the state of California could do a much better job without actually that much work. All the information already exists. It's just a matter of like organizing it. It's crazy that in some ways the situation is worse.

Because you mentioned that pet stores used to be required to give people this information. They should have to get it now as well. You have uncovered a huge scandal in my opinion, and I'm really grateful. to you for doing it. And, though we have focused on California, as you pointed out, this is not a California issue.

It's happening everywhere, and there's just no reason for it. Absolutely no reason for it. If people just know what happens to animals, they're willing to behave differently. Is there anything that I should have asked you about it that I didn't?

Melody Gutierrez: No, I mean, we'll continue to follow this story, and we're obviously looking for any kind of tips and things.

And so we, you know, have our email addresses are easy to find. It's our first and last name with a period in between at LAtimes. com. We're on Twitter if you want to reach out that way. So any and all tips welcome.

Mariann Sullivan: That would be amazing. I hope that people uncover a lot of scandals and that you guys cover it all.

Thanks so much for telling us about it today.

Alene Tchekmedyian: Thank you. For the interest.