Witness: Rebel Ridge Kennel Owner Is First US Dog Importer Prosecuted

GREENEVILLE, Tenn. – A Blountville, Tenn., kennel owner’s trial is the first time a dog importer has been prosecuted in the United States, according to a California attorney who has followed the issue for several years.

John Hoffman has been monitoring the dog-import business since September 2004 when he sued and shut down a California dog kennel accused of importing sick bulldog puppies from Eastern Europe and selling them over the Internet.

Hoffman, who testified as an expert witness Wednesday, told a California television station in an interview two years ago that Gina De’Lynn Price – who owns Blountville’s Rebel Ridge Kennels – was “one of the more notorious of the puppy owners.”

At that time, Price was under FBI investigation.

FBI Special Agent David Bishop said Monday that Price sold dogs to at least 234 people across the U.S. and Canada and that many of them suffered from health problems and had to be euthanized shortly after their owners received them.

“Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do,” Hoffman said Thursday in an interview about how importers work and the difficulty in fighting them. “There’s inadequate regulation here [in the U.S.] and zero regulation.”

He said about 20,000 dogs are imported to the U.S. each year. While most of them are English and French bulldogs, he has heard about people importing Bernese Mountain dogs, Yorkshire terriers, Norwich terriers, and Havanese.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, any dog shipped from overseas must be quarantined for at least four months, but Hoffman said the rule is seldom enforced and that dog buyers are hesitant to purchase an animal that is more than two or three months old.

He said even the buyers themselves are hesitant to take legal action against an importer because the costs of pursuing such a case often outweigh the money the person spent on the dog in the first place.

“When you talk about a two- or three-thousand dollar purchase and the buyer’s out of state, what are you going to do?” Hoffman said in an interview outside the courtroom.

Gate City, Va., veterinarian David Redwine testified Thursday that while Price brought dogs to be examined at his office, she mostly just wanted to obtain a climate certificate – which simply certifies that a dog is healthy enough to be shipped in the cargo hold of an airplane – instead of a full health exam.

He said Price followed his advice if he thought a particular dog needed some medical treatment before it was shipped, but he also testified that several climate certificates Price sent to her customers appeared to have been altered based on the documents showed to him by Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Harr.

The federal prosecutor also has brought several of Price’s buyers to testify during her trial.

Sarah Hostler testified that while she was relatively happy with her dog, she never received the proper paperwork to register it with the American Kennel Club even though she paid $200 for the documents.
Hostler was also upset that Price’s Web site showed pictures of a ridge behind the kennel and claimed the dogs had been raised there. Yet, when the dog arrived at the airport, it had a foreign pedigree, foreign inoculation record and a passport showing it came from an Eastern European country.

“We were floored to see the dog was born overseas,” Hostler said, adding she would not have purchased the dog had she known it was imported. “We actually thought the dog was being raised on her property in Tennessee.”

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