Owner Pat Youmans said the dogs in the store now have a clean bill of health.
CHERRY HILL TWP. -- For more than a year, P&T's Puppy Love Adoption Center in Cherry Hill has been adopting out only rescued dogs -- mainly puppies brought up from the southern states.
But the pet store-turned-adoption-center hasn't been able to find new homes for any of its 48 dogs since March 19 after the owners learned that at least several puppies had come down with parvovirus.
The highly contagious virus can kill puppies, and is often associated with dogs from puppy mills. In February, Puppy Barn in Springfield Township closed permanently after the SPCA started looking into reports of puppies with parvo being sold.
P&T's Owner Pat Youmans said he shut down his store after two people who adopted puppies informed him the dogs were being treated for parvo. The remaining dogs have been in quarantine at the store and were given a clean bill of health by a veterinarian Friday, Youmans said.
He is waiting for county health officials to give him the OK to re-open, but in the meantime, he faces an online firestorm from angry owners of sick puppies, plus the problem of determining where the virus came from.
They haven't figured it out for sure, but it is possible that the puppies carrying the virus came from a Georgia rescue with allegedly forged documents attesting to their health. That's according to Alan Braslow, an animal rights activist who convinced and helped Youmans transition from a breeder-fed pet store to a for-profit adoption center.
The person who runs the Georgia rescue organization allegedly faked a veterinarian's signature, Braslow said, representing that the dogs had been examined when they had not.
Protester gets shop owner to sell rescue dogs
The Whitfield County Sheriff's Office confirmed that they were investigating allegations of forgery against the woman, but NJ Advance Media is not naming her because it wasn't clear Monday if she had been formally charged or arrested.
Braslow said it's also possible that the dogs were vaccinated for parvo but, as sometimes happens, came down with the virus anyway due to the stress of being transported across the country and then rehomed.
A spreading virus
Braslow said that when Youmans learned two puppies had parvo, he closed and called Braslow and other volunteers to help bathe every dog and scrub down every surface.
"No dogs were sick in the facility," Youmans said. He would never sell a sick dog, he said. "Why would anyone give anyone a parvo dog?"
No dogs were ever sick at Pat's Puppy Rescue, the store he opened in Tom's River last month, he said.
Youmans maintains that he called the owners of every puppy he believed could have been exposed to the virus. He spoke to a total of four people and three of them accepted refunds of their adoption fees, he said.
But when the store posted about the problem on its Facebook page, people who bought dogs that had fallen ill were furious.
Of the eight people who commented, several said they were never contacted, and one woman said staff told her that there was no problem with any sick dogs at the adoption center.
Another person said that the family "lost" the puppy, but Youmans said he has not heard that any of the puppies died. The owner did not respond to a request for comment.
Several owners are also demanding that Youmans pay their puppies' vet bills, which they said are in the thousands.
"Would I love to see Pat be in the financial position to cover those expenses? Yes," Braslow said. "But he's not."
County bans puppy-mill-to-pet-store pipeline
Youmans said P&T's shop is run like a rescue facility, and it does not have a profit margin to pay for vet's bills like a puppy mill-fed pet store might. Youmans said the state's lemon law for dogs requires a pet store to pay vet's bills up to twice the price paid for the dog, but that doesn't apply to places that adopt out rescue dogs for a fee.
He said the best he could do was refund their $500 adoption fee and recommend they use the store's preferred veterinarian who would treat the puppies at a reduced rate.
While the parvo problem surprised both Youmans and Braslow, the latter acknowledged that rescue dogs sometimes have health problems like worms or parasites. Parvo is rarer, but there is no guarantee that a puppy that appears well one day won't be sick the next.
"It can happen, no matter how careful you are," he said.
Youmans said that all the dogs he adopts out are inspected by a veterinarian when they arrive at his store. He and Braslow both said that parvo testing is unreliable so it is generally not done in shelters or by veterinarians unless the puppies are already showing symptoms.
For now, Youmans said he is just waiting for the county health official to return and give them the all clear to reopen.
Camden County spokesman Dan Keashen said the county inspected the store after hearing from the state about a complaint. Youmans said the county official only showed up more than a week after he had already shut down voluntarily and after he had left numerous messages at the health inspector's office.
Keashen said the inspector found a "variety of infractions" and issued a cease-and-desist order, though he declined to be specific about the problems. He said state inspectors will also be "involved" when the county inspector visits to reinspect sometime within the next few days.
Meanwhile, Youmans said he cannot estimate what closing his business due to parvo problems has cost him.
"The money never bothered me," he said. Instead, he said he's more upset about the dogs that had to sit in the store for weeks when they could have been heading to their forever homes.
Rebecca Everett may be reached at reverett@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @rebeccajeverett. Find NJ.com on Facebook.