Dog buyers’ help sought in puppy mill case

EVERETT — Snohomish County sheriff’s officials are expanding an investigation into a Snohomish kennel that’s suspected of being an illegal puppy mill.

Detectives now want to talk to the potentially hundreds of customers who over the years likely purchased thousands of dogs.

“Anyone who has done business with Wags ‘n’ Wiggles or owner Renee Roske — purchasing a puppy, for example — is asked to e-mail detectives,” sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said Wednesday.

Detectives will review the information and follow up as necessary.

“We want to do as thorough an investigation as possible,” Hover said. “An important part of that is talking to people who bought puppies from Wags ‘n’ Wiggles and finding out what their experience was like.”

Sheriff’s detectives have connected Roske, 44, to a Gold Bar-area home where nearly 160 dogs were seized during a Jan. 16 raid, according to court documents.

Roske has not been charged.

Reached by phone Wednesday, Roske refuted the allegations against her. “The whole thing is ridiculous,” she said, declining further comment on the advice of her attorney.

Roske and her sister, Mary Ann Holleman, are known to Snohomish County law enforcement for “operating illegal and unlicensed kennels for the purpose of mass production of puppies for sale,” Snohomish County sheriff’s detective Steve Haley wrote in a search warrant affidavit.

Haley wrote that the people who lived in the Gold Bar home likely were Roske’s employees. One person involved told Haley that Roske was earning millions of dollars a year from breeding a variety of dogs, the affidavit said.

The two people living in the Gold Bar-area home were charged Feb. 3 with six counts each of first-degree animal cruelty.

A day after the Gold Bar raid, sheriff’s deputies searched Roske’s Snohomish home. They found what they suspect were illegal drugs and seized financial documents.

The Snohomish raids led police to search a Mount Vernon-area kennel owned by Richard and Marjorie Sundberg, who is Roske’s mother, officials said.

Skagit County sheriff’s deputies seized nearly 450 dogs in two separate raids.

The Sundbergs each face multiple animal cruelty charges in Skagit County.

On Wednesday, Marjorie Sundberg tried to petition a Skagit County judge to return their dogs, said Sloan Johnson, a deputy prosecuting attorney in Skagit County.

“The conditions the animals endured were truly shocking to the conscience and should not be allowed to continue in this or any other community,” Johnson wrote in his response to Sundberg’s petition.

The prosecutor asked a judge to require Sundberg to post at least a $200,000 bond before returning any of the dogs.

In Snohomish County, animal control and licensing officials have been investigating Roske since 1996. County officials found kennel violations at her home at least eight times, county records show.

On one visit, officials found dogs being kept in a room dug out below the house, where the entrance was hidden at the back of a closet. Several times, officials found far more than the 25 dogs permitted under county code.

Then, in November 2003, the county tried to pull Roske’s license. She appealed.

A county hearing examiner in 2004 gave Roske “one last chance” but warned any further violations would be grounds for “automatic revocation” of her kennel license, records show.

On Feb. 2, county officials again served Roske with an order yanking her license.

Roske filed an appeal to the latest order Tuesday.

“I want to keep my kennel in business!” Roske wrote in her appeal.