Gold Bar target of fury over puppy mill case

Published 10:33 pm Wednesday, January 28, 2009

GOLD BAR — The angry phone calls and e-mails keep coming.

Officials in Gold Bar said they are receiving threats from people who think they should have done more to prevent a suspected puppy mill operation found in a rural home near the city.

Here’s the catch: The property where county officials rescued about 160 dogs on Jan. 16 isn’t even in Gold Bar’s city limits.

“It’s not in their jurisdiction,” Snohomish County sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said.

Since news broke about the animal cruelty investigation, city officials have received threatening phone calls and e-mail messages, Gold Bar Mayor Crystal Hill said.

“There were things that said we should be killed,” she said.

The mayor said she didn’t believe the comments were meant to be taken seriously, or that her life or any city employee’s safety was at risk.

The comments suggested that city officials should be forced to live among excrement and in cages, similar to the conditions where the dogs were found, Hover said.

Sheriff’s deputies are aware of the comments and will monitor the situation. They have not opened an investigation to find out who’s making the comments.

“(People are) spouting off and taking their anger out on Gold Bar city officials,” Hover said. “It doesn’t rise to the level of a death threat, legally.”

There are misconceptions that the city should have had its finger on the problem, Hill said.

“It’s a very passionate situation for a lot of people. It’s a horrible, horrible case,” the mayor said. “The fact that it happened even remotely close to our city is heartbreaking.”

Gold Bar, a town of about 2,300 people in eastern Snohomish County, has an animal control officer and takes complaints made within the community seriously, the mayor said.

But that’s not even the point, she said.

The city has no direct affiliation with the home where animals were found living in what’s been described as “deplorable” conditions. The house, which has a Gold Bar street address, is actually about a half-mile outside city limits.

More than 600 dogs have been seized in the past two weeks in Snohomish and Skagit counties in raids connected to the investigation. About 160 dogs were rescued near Gold Bar and nearly 450 more from a kennel near Mount Vernon.

Police also searched two Snohomish homes.

At the center of the investigation are a mother and her two daughters. Officials believe the women may have kept the animals in terrible conditions, covered with urine and feces and barely enough food and water, as part of a sophisticated puppy mill.

No arrests have been made.

Officials have been told the women were raking in millions of dollars a year, court documents show.

“Anytime that there are issues with animals, people’s emotions do run high, absolutely. We hear the good things and the not-so-good things,” Snohomish County Animal Control manager Vicki Lubrin said.

People have donated thousands of dollars and hundreds of pounds of pet food to help the rescued animals in Snohomish County.

There’s also been anger.

Animal rights groups have accused the Everett Animal Shelter, where the Snohomish County rescued dogs are being cared for, of killing other dogs to clear out space.

“We have not put down any adoptable animals to make way for the puppy mill animals,” Everett city spokeswoman Kate Reardon said Wednesday.

Pasado’s Safe Haven of Sultan has offered to help Snohomish County care for the rescued dogs. On Pasado’s Web site, the animal rights group has urged supporters to contact officials to question why Pasado’s assistance hasn’t been used.

Simply put, the dogs are at the center of a criminal investigation and are living evidence in a developing animal abuse case. They need to be kept together for legal reasons, officials said.

“There’s a lot more work to do,” Hover said.

The dogs are receiving excellent, professional care in Everett.

“I can’t say enough about the miracles the shelter staff and their volunteer groomers have done with these dogs. I hardly recognize them,” Lubrin said. “The dogs are responding very well to the care and treatment they’re receiving by the shelter staff and volunteers. It is truly remarkable.”