Locals testify in Denver this week
A campaign led by locals unhappy with the treatment of sled dogs at Snowmass Village’s Krabloonik restaurant and kennel has sparked a state review of regulations governing tethering of the animals.
Working animals, including dogs that pull sleds, are overseen by the Colorado Department of Agriculture’s Pet Animal Care Facilities Act (PACFA). Though permanently chaining animals is illegal, PACFA allows sled dog operations to obtain a waiver to keep their animals tethered.
Krabloonik, the largest dog-sledding operation in the lower 48 states, has such a waiver and keeps its 250-plus dogs on 5- to 6-foot chains when they are not pulling sleds. They remain tied up for the duration of their eight-month off-season.
Through a series of public meetings in Denver, PACFA’s rules committee has re-drafted the tether rule to mandate that any waiver-holding kennel submit an annual “plan for training and conditioning” the animals.
However, the Snowmass anti-tethering activists, Voices of Krabloonik, had been pushing for a mandate that dogs be taken off of their chains for at least 60 minutes everyday. That stipulation has been removed from the draft language.
In a news release sent prior to a PACFA meeting held Tuesday, Voices member Leigh Vogel wrote that the state organization “has turned its back on the dogs waiting for change” and said the new draft rule is essentially toothless.
Voices of Krabloonik modeled its campaign from one in Nevada that successfully lobbied the state Legislature there to require that working dogs cannot be chained for more than 14 hours a day.
PACFA must submit any rule changes to the Secretary of State’s office by June 16. A final public meeting will be held on the topic, which will most likely be in early August, according to PACFA administrator Kate Anderson.
Anderson said less than two dozen of the 1,800 licensed breeders in Colorado apply for the waiver to tether their dogs, but the relatively small number of such facilities has produced an outsized public debate.
“There is a lot more interest in that issue than others,” Anderson said. “In the grand scheme of PACFA this is small. But it is important to everyone and we are interested in hearing from both sides.”
Along with testimony from the anti-tethering contingent, Tuesday’s meeting included presentations from breeders, the Humane Society of the United States, a representative from the Federation of Dog Clubs, mushers and sledding operators — including Krabloonik general manager Guy Courtney.
In a prepared statement, Courtney urged state regulators to perform both a scientific study of how tethering affects dogs and an economic study of how stricter tethering rules might hurt the sledding business, “to make certain that a change to the current tethering portion of the rule is not made without detailed examination.”
He provided them with a 2001 study by Cornell University researchers that found “no evidence that tethering was any more or less detrimental to dog welfare than being housed in pens.”
As Courtney and Krabloonik owner Dan MacEachen have long argued, working sled dogs do not have the same biological needs as pets.
“Without exception and as demonstrated, tethering Alaskan-bred sled dogs is the best possible way to maintain a dog sledding facility,” Courtney’s statement reads. “It is, quite simply, the safest environment for these athlete animals ... .”
Courtney on Wednesday reiterated that the dogs at Krabloonik are not the sort that “stay indoors, lie at your feet, look pretty, and shed ... You don’t treat an Alaskan sled dog the way you treat a short haired Chihuahua.”
A public inspection by several veterinarians in the fall of 2008 concluded the Krabloonik sled dogs were in good health. The kennel had failed a PACFA inspection in May of that year and was found in violation of 10 state regulations.
A second change under consideration by PACFA for the tethering rule would bar operators from getting waivers if they are not in full compliance with PACFA regulations. That could lead to Krabloonik losing its waiver — because they have not remedied all of their 2008 violations.
Snowmass Village’s Krabloonik has long been a source of consternation for some locals and visitors upset by the dogs being chained up.
Voices of Krabloonik formed after the kennel’s 2008 inspection failure, with the aim of changing the operations there. They formed an advisory committee and gained cooperation from MacEachen, but their partnership fizzled in March of last year.
Aspen Animal Shelter director Seth Sachson, a former musher who has called for more humane treatment of Krabloonik’s dogs, unsuccessfully attempted to buy the kennel from MacEachen, who has run it for more than three decades.
Sachson runs a rehabilitation program for former Krabloonik dogs where the shelter staff re-trains the working dogs as house pets. The program was founded after public outcry over MacEachen shooting and killing old and weak dogs at Krabloonik. MacEachen ceased shooting dogs in 2005, though the practice remains legal under PACFA regulations for working animals.
In addition to the tethering waiver rule change, Rep. Kathleen Curry sponsored a bill that would tighten the state’s animal cruelty laws under PACFA. The bill failed earlier this year in committee hearings.The Humane Society had pressed hard for more stringent animal cruelty laws and in a December news release, it specifically singled out Krabloonik as evidence of “a larger regulatory problem in Colorado” regarding working animals.
They also called for background checks on sled dog operators applying for waivers, in part because Krabloonik’s MacEachen pleaded no contest to an animal cruelty charge in 1988 but was nonetheless licensed after PACFA was formed in 1994.
Two police inquiries targeted allegations of abuse at Krabloonik last year, including claims from a former employee that MacEachen himself beat a dog in November, but authorities declined to file criminal charges.
If the Krabloonik reformers don’t get what they want out of the PACFA rule review, they’ve said they may push for a Snowmass Village ballot question asking voters to create local laws restricting tethering.
andrew@aspendailynews.com