Jan 31, 2006 11:38 pm US/Central
County Won't Pull Permission For Kennel
Little Falls, Minn. (AP) ―
Despite a widespread outcry spread by the Internet, Morrison County commissioners have no plans to withdraw their approval of a proposed 600-dog breeding kennel.
Calls and e-mails from as far away as California have flooded into county offices since the kennel was approved last month. Animal-rights organizations have posted alerts on their Web sites. An online "Stop the Puppymill in Morrison County" petition has collected more than 9,000 signatures.
But County Administrator Tim Houle told the St. Cloud Times for a story for Wednesday's editions that the county board doesn't plan to reverse their decision.
Houle told the newspaper Tuesday that "95 percent or higher" of the correspondence has been from people outside of Morrison County, which is in central Minnesota, northwest of the Twin Cities.
"This is really a classic case study in how the Internet has changed your capacity to reach out and touch the government, whether it's your government or not," he said. "This is a new kind of democracy."
But it's local taxpayers who would bear the financial burden if the board reversed its decision and was held responsible for expenses incurred by Gary McDuffee, the kennel operator, Houle said.
"That's a decision that only the residents of Morrison County are going to be on the hook for," he said. "At this point, the board has no plans to put it back on the agenda."
The county board last month approved a conditional use permit that would let McDuffee operate the kennel on 40 acres in Belle Prairie Township, Minn., a rural area northeast of Little Falls, Minn.
McDuffee wants to breed small dogs, and has said the animals will be well treated. He has said he has 25 years of experience as a dog breeder, and has promised that the dogs will receive individual attention and socialization.
But the proposition has generated criticism because of its large size and because dogs kept outside would be "debarked," a surgical procedure that reduces the volume and pitch of a dog's bark.
"People want to engage in a larger societal debate about whether dogs ought to be bred and raised in this way," Houle said. But it's a discussion better suited for the state or federal level, not about an individual kennel permit, he said.
Most local governments handle breeding operations as land-use issues, said Dan Paden, researcher with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
"They don't have the power to strike them down based on cruelty alone," he said. "It does raise the larger issue of state and federal legislation."
(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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