Woofs & growls

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, November 1995:

PETA staff were told in
May that the group would relocate
to Seattle early next year––but vice
president and chief decision-maker
Ingrid Newkirk apparently reconsidered
in August. While a PETA
spokesperson advised Bruce Ramsey
of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer i n
early September that the move was still
on, senior staff have reportedly been
scouting office space in Virginia
Beach, a suburb on the Virginia side
of Washington D.C. The present
PETA headquarters is in Rockville,
Maryland.

Operating from a Chicago
post office box, the apparently
newly formed National Herpetological
Alliance claims “Herpetology and
herpetoculture are under assault,
oftentimes from a misinformed public
and many times from radical animal
rights organizations.” No officers are
listed by name, and no telephone number
or street address is given. The style
and rhetoric are reminiscent of Joan
Dahlberg-Meisenholder. Initially identifying
herself as an animal rights
activist, operating from Portland,
Oregon, Dahlberg-Meisenholder
fought successfully to abolish decompression
chamber euthanasia and urged
support for convicted Animal
Liberation Front associate Roger Troen
(see Letters) during the 1980s. She
added attacks on animal rights to her
usual denunciations of humane societies
in mid-1993 with two editions of
a tabloid newspaper called Roseland’s
Sizzle , published from the Chicago
area, with pet trade advertising
obtained, several advertisers told ANIMAL
PEOPLE, under false pretenses.
In mid-1994 she apparently surfaced
again, as “J. Sizzle,” a snakefancying
anti-animal rights activist participating
in America Online discussions,
but vanished soon after other
participants posted her history.
Responding to a store
owner’s inquiry about a donation
can left by an unknown group called
the Animal Welfare League, with an
unlisted telephone number and a mail
drop address, investigator Jeanette
Rilling of the Bucks County SPCA in
Lehaska, Pennsylvania, discovered
the AWL was registered with the state
Commission on Charitable Organizations
on August 22, 1995––and that
the registrants were Sheri Gould and
Alan Deitschman, apparently husband
and wife, owners of Puppyland, a
Philadelphia pet store. “In 1991-1992
they opened a satellite store in
Quakertown,” Rilling recalled.
Receiving frequent complaints about
“sick dogs and unsanitary conditions,”
the Bucks County SPCA and state
departments of agriculture and health
cited Gould and Deitschman, who
were convicted of cruelty to animals in
1993. “Gould appealed and was found
guilty at the county court level,”
Rilling added. “The American Kennel
Club was notified of Gould’s conviction
and her registration abilities were
pulled. The AKC has recently been
reminded of Deitschman’s conviction
and is acting upon it.”
Probably by blind coincidence,
the AWL set out donor cans
just as the Pennsylvania Animal
Welfare Society, a non-sheltering
advocacy group with a similar name,
retitled itself the Federation of
Animal Advocates, while retaining
the old name as a corporate umbrella.
The title change coincided with a leadership
dispute that landed in court last
July when two different factions
claimed to head PAWS/FAA.
The North American
Animal Liberation Front Support
Group has reportedly changed coordinators,
moving from Victoria, British
Columbia, to Willowdale, Ontario, a
suburb of Toronto.