Vigil on Kennels Follows Animal Activists’ Raid

A Sun Valley kennel has been put under 24-hour guard by city animal-regulation officers after a break-in there this week by pet owners who contend that they were misled into giving away their dogs and cats.

Some pet owners found their pets at the kennel, which is federally licensed to sell animals to research laboratories.

The Los Angeles Department of Animal Regulation, which has guarded Comfy Kennel since Tuesday, is investigating the kennel’s owner for operating the facility without a city license, Lt. Robert Pena said Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has entered the case with an investigation of the kennel’s records on animals it has obtained and sold for research.

And a zealous group of animal activists has put another Sun Valley kennel, Budget Boarding, under its own 24-hour surveillance. Budget Boarding and Comfy Kennel are owned by Barbara Ruggiero of Sylmar, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

The case is complicated, Pena said, and animal-regulation officers probably will continue guarding Comfy Kennel until more questions are answered about the kennel’s operators and the animals in their charge.

“This is so unusual,” said Pena, a longtime department veteran, of the 24-hour guard. “In 15 years, I’ve never had to do it.”

The events leading to the break-in started about two months ago when the same man answered several newspaper ads paid for by people who wanted to find good homes for dogs and cats, according to members of a group called Last Chance for Animals.

Bill Dyer, spokesman for the group, said the man told the pet owners he wanted a pet of his own and could offer it plenty of space on 10 acres he owned in Agoura or Chatsworth. The man obtained pets from at least 11 households in the San Fernando Valley, Dyer said.

When one pet owner tried to contact the man after she had given him her dog, she learned that he had given her a false telephone number and address, Dyer said. She located other people who had given their pets away under similar circumstances.

The group concluded that the man who had picked up the dogs took them to Comfy Kennel on Norris Avenue and Budget Boarding, a block away on Bradley Avenue.

A spokesman for the USDA in Sacramento said Wednesday that Ruggiero has been licensed since October to sell animals to research facilities. But Pena said there is no evidence that any of the animals given away by the Valley pet owners were turned over for research.

However, the owners of five dogs and one cat, given to the man fitting the same description, said they recovered their animals from Comfy and Budget.

One of them, Vanessa Havens, an apartment manager in Van Nuys, said she recovered one of two cats from Budget Boarding during business hours. The other cat is still missing, she said.

Axel, the cat she recovered, was found wearing a USDA identification tag. Dr. James D. Roswurm, chief veterinarian for the USDA veterinary service in California, said the tag indicated that the animal could have been headed for a research facility.

Ruggiero is licensed so it would not be illegal for her to sell animals for research, Roswurm said. But the department will investigate whether the kennel is meeting strict bookkeeping requirements, he said.

Five other cats and four dogs were seen wearing such tags at Budget Boarding Wednesday afternoon. Last Chance for Animals had already begun a round-the-clock surveillance of the facility to prevent animals from being taken to labs, Dyer said.

On Monday night, a group of pet owners broke into Comfy Kennel by lifting the door to a chain-link fence off its hinges. Five people came out with dogs they said they had given to the same man.

Max Newman of Granada Hills brought out two German short-hair pointers. The dogs still wore collars with tags imprinted with Newman’s address and telephone number.

Times free-lance writer Mike Wyma contributed to this story.