HUNTINGTON BEACH – The city may ease into a ban on selling cat and dogs in the city while it works with animal activists and pet store owners to find a way to promote pet adoption services.

City Council members at their meeting on Monday considered prohibiting the commercial sale of cats and dogs in the city, but after testimony from the families and supporters of two local pet shops, city officials decided they would tweak the plan.

Pet store owner Donald Foster told the council they are willing to work with the city. But he said a ban would be bad news for his family’s business, Pets, Pets, Pets, which has been in the city for 23 years.

“We’ll be out of business in two years,” he said.

The council directed city staff to draw up a new ordinance for consideration that would include a two-year phase out of the commercial sale of cats and dogs. Mayor Don Hansen, Mayor Pro Tem Devin Dwyer and Councilman Matthew Harper cast the dissenting votes.

The city will work with animal rights activists and pet store owners to come up with an ordinance that could include allowing adoption services at the two pet stores and helping owners ease the transition. The ordinance will have to come back to the council for consideration.

“This is a win-win situation to me,” Councilman Joe Shaw said.

The ordinance was brought forward by Councilman Joe Carchio on March 19 in an effort to ensure no puppy mill pets were making their way into Surf City.

More than a dozen animal rights activists supported the move, but almost an equal number of people came out to support the city’s two pet stores: Pets, Pets, Pets in Five Points Plaza and Animal Kingdom at Warner Avenue and Golden West Street.

Huntington Beach is the fourth Orange County city to take up a discussion on the possible ban in recent months. Laguna Beach and Dana Point are considering the possibility as a preventive action; neither city has retailers that sell pets. Irvine City Council members passed a ban in October.

Pet stores that get their animals from puppy mills or other facilities that are considered inhumane have been controversial for several years as federal regulators have uncovered the poor conditions in which many of these animals are kept.

Often the animals are scrunched in cages that are not cleaned. The animals are not walked or let out and are often left to live in puddles of their own feces and urine.

Foster and his partner, August Court, said they get most of their dogs and all of their cats from local families, but Councilman Keith Bohr challenged this assertion.

“When I visited your store, 100 percent of the dogs there were from outside California,” he said.

The shop owners said they get some of their dogs from the Hunte Corp., a commercial puppy broker based in the Midwest.

“The Hunte Corporation is one of the most notorious puppy mill distributors,” said Janet Kohl, animal cruelty expert. “If (the shops) want to stay in business they need to do the humane thing: they sell supplies, they sell food, they work with animal welfare organizations and they do adoptions.”

Supporters of the pet stores said they believed both shops to be reputable businesses that are active in the community and care about the animals in their stores.

Both stores have been in the city for more than 20 years.

“I think the reason we’re still in business is because we genuinely care about our pets,” said Anna Chong, whose family owns Animal Kingdom. “My family has poured our entire lives into this store. We treat these animals like they are our own.”

Contact the writer: 714-796-7953 or jfletcher@ocregister.com

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