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Amish dog breeders face opposition

Thursday, December 20, 2012

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

A “dog rescuer” who claims responsibility for alerting the Ontario SPCA and local township authorities attention to a farm kennel in Perth East township, says Amish have no place in the dog breeding business.

Kimberley Thomas, who operates Kismutt Small Dog Rescue in Oxford County, says kennel operators who don’t have heat, electricity and running water in their facilities can’t keep them sanitary as required by the Canadian Kennel Code. “They do not have the means to properly run a kennel,” Thomas said outside the chambers of Perth East Council in Milverton in Western Ontario, on Tuesday evening.

At issue is Perth East’s withdrawal of a license to run a kennel in the Mornington ward. Menno and Viola Streicher, an Amish couple, had hoped council would reverse an earlier decision to withdraw their permit to operate a dog kennel. That’s not what happened at Tuesday night’s council meeting, even though roughly 50 supporters filled the council chambers, and Cindy Moyer, president of the Huron-Perth Landowners Association, spoke on the Streichers’ behalf.

The Streichers have run a municipally licensed kennel since 2009, after Menno Streicher had a heart attack. The operators, and Moyer, claim that recently the township’s standards changed. Thomas counters that the standards were not properly enforced previously.

Thomas says that for more than 10 years she has purchased “culls” and injured dogs from facilities that were unheated and unsanitary. She says these kennels typically have rough concrete floors that can’t be properly sanitized. “There are no drains in any of these barns and the bylaw says there has to be drains.”

She denies being part of any animal rights group, insisting “I am not an animal activist.”

Thomas said she faces far stricter standards herself with her dog rescue facility. Thomas says she alerted the municipality and the Ontario SPCA to the situation.  ‘I have been in every one of these barns in 11 years,” Thomas says. “They call me to pick up their unwanted cull dogs. . . . I go in the barns to pick up the dogs. So I see the conditions.”

“The Amish have been far too long getting away with it.”

Viola Streicher says Thomas has never been in their kennel, to her knowledge, nor have the Streichers sold a dog to Thomas.

The township plans to go ahead and remove the Streichers’ dogs on Thursday. The Streichers had been given a month to dispose of their 30 breeding dogs. They said they hired Ottawa lawyer, Terrence Green, who has written a letter to the municipality. The Streichers stress they are not suing the township; the municipality has been warned that it will be responsible for taking care of the dogs if they are seized.

Thomas says she also has a lawyer who has written a warning letter to nearby Wellesley Township in  Waterloo Region.

“We did everything they told us to. It wasn’t good enough I guess. It was for a few years,” Viola says.

“We don’t want to fight. We just want our rights to keep our dogs,” Viola says. “We love them.”
According to a report prepared for Council on Sept. 4, the township has about 20 licensed kennels and “many . . . do not have electricity, heat or hydro due to their cultural beliefs and heritage.

However, these kennels have chosen alternate sources of energy to compensate for the lack of ‘modern’ technology,” including wood fueled furnaces or thermal/radiant heat from livestock housed below. The Streichers’ dog kennel is over a hog barn.

The Streichers want to keep the dogs at least until charges brought against them by the Ontario SPCA are dealt with. The couple is to appear in the Ontario Court of Justice in Stratford on Jan. 13 to answer to nine charges each. The couple face charges that among other things, they caused an animal to be in distress, and that they failed to provide sanitary conditions and adequate light and ventilation. Viola Streicher says two dogs had been injured while fighting but were under veterinary care.

“Kennels are required to provide an ample amount of natural light for the animals, which must be approved by either the By-Law Enforcement officer and/or an OSPCA agent,” says the municipality’s Sept. 4 report.

In a statement read during the Tuesday evening meeting, Chief Administrative Officer Glenn Schwendinger said the rescinding of the township’s permit to run a kennel granted to the Streichers had nothing to do with the charges that were laid by the Ontario SPCA.

“The Amish way of life and culture is not being discriminated against,” Thomas insists.

“They gave us a license. We had the same license ever since, the same ventilation ever since,” Viola Streicher says. Other kennel operators “are very afraid.” BF

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