To pass HB 5283, a bill that animal advocates say would stop the sourcing of pets from puppy mills, Annie Hornish, Humane World for Animals’ (HWFA) Connecticut State Director, says she was told by Democratic lawmakers that she must first get a group of Republican legislators on board.
“They’re giving me an impossible task, frankly,” said Hornish. “And they can do it if they want to, that’s the unfortunate problem here.”
The proposed bill would allow municipalities to ban the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet shops, incentivizing residents to purchase their pets from animal rescues, shelters, or qualified breeders directly. Hornish said the bill is necessitated by Connecticut pet shops’ routine procurement from puppy mills, breeders that operate with little care for their animals. As of last week, nine states have now banned the sale of dogs from pet shops outright, Colorado being the latest.
“The issue is addressing the living conditions of where these dogs are bred, and that’s largely in the Midwest, where state standards for animal welfare are a lot lower,” said Hornish. “Unacceptably low, for the State of Connecticut. They can raise animals in filthy conditions, with mother dogs living their lives in cages that are just stacked over each other.”
HWFA’s “puppy mill department” has analyzed Connecticut pet shops’ purchase certificates to verify the breeders from which they source their pets. Hornish explained that pet shop owners must submit these certificates to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) each time a pet is purchased. From there, HWFA cross-checked these breeders for both USDA and State Department of Agriculture reports to see if they had any violations. These findings were compiled in a report, which Hornish shared with Inside Investigator.
Since 2021, Connecticut pet shops have purchased thousands of animals from breeders, some of them unlicensed, as well as brokers, middlemen who purchase large quantities of dogs from other breeders, per the report. The breeders and brokers included in the report were located in Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Arizona, Ohio, Iowa, Oklahoma and Indiana. The report contains photos of these dogs in their locations of origin, as well as the conditions in which they were kept; many dogs were photographed with untreated injuries and infections, kept in small cages overflowing with feces. Most breeders kept over 100 dogs each, and one property in Ohio kept 327 dogs at the time of a 2023 USDA inspection.
“This is just a sampling of some of the pet shops in Connecticut, where they’re sourcing from,” said Hornish. Hornish, a former State Representative herself, has long been an advocate of animal rights. In recent years, she’s faced controversy over a costly legal battle waged between her and the Town of Suffield after her dog was found to have mauled a 95-year-old woman, Janet D’Aleo, to death in 2019.
In 2025, the city of Stamford’s Board of Representatives passed an ordinance to ban pet shops from selling dogs, cats or rabbits, but it was later vetoed by Mayor Caroline Simmons, for fear that it might conflict with existing state law and potentially expose the city to litigation. As a result, Stamford’s city delegation, as well as animal advocates such as Hornish, pushed for this bill to clearly state that municipalities are within their rights to ban the sale of certain animals in pet shops, if they so choose.
As it currently stands, 40 state representatives and three state senators have co-signed the bill. Of those state representatives, 7 are Republicans. In a state dominated by Democratic lawmakers, a bill with any semblance of bipartisan support would seem to be a shoo-in. But Hornish recently learned that this was not the case.
“Several poison pill amendments have now been filed on this bill,” wrote Hornish, in an email sent on April 23 to 41 legislators who have indicated their support for the bill. “We respectfully ask that this bill be left AS IS, with no amendments. It’s simply a local control bill. If a pet shop’s business model is accepted by the local community in which it operates, then nothing will change for them.”
The “poison pill” amendments in question are six different amendments, five filed by Republican lawmakers and one filed by a bipartisan group of legislators, which would repurpose the bill to do anything from restating the state’s current regulations regarding pet shops to including a statewide “grandfather clause,” which would allow current pet shops to continue operating as usual. In the same email, Hornish said that lawmakers “cannot support grandfathering,” calling it “a trick that would protect the puppy mill-to-pet shop pipeline stores.” It might also incentivize pet store owners in neighboring New York, where pet-shop legislation went into effect in December 2024, to set up shop in Connecticut before the proposed bill goes into effect, argued Hornish.
“Municipalities need local control because both the state (DoAG, OAG) and federal (USDA) government have failed them on this issue,” wrote Hornish. “Whether that regulatory failure is due to incompetence or corruption (regulatory capture) is meaningless to the mother dogs suffering and dying in out-of-state puppy mills.”
The next day, Sen. Julie Kushner (D-Danbury) replied in support of passing the bill as is, as did Rep. Eilish Collins Main (D-Stamford). On April 30, Hornish replied to the chain but directly addressed it to Reps. Eleni Kavros DeGraw (D-Avon) and Raghib Allie-Brennan (D-Bethel).
“I am being told that the bill will only be allowed to pass if the existing 14 stores are grandfathered,” said Hornish. “Statewide grandfathering is problematic because 1) it would prevent Stamford from precisely what they want to do, which is to ban the retail sale of dogs, cats, and rabbits; and 2) we have 14 stores, which is too many for a small geographic state. However, there is a simple solution: An amendment that would clarify that pet shops can both ban retail sales of dogs, cats, and rabbits AND grandfather existing stores if they choose.”
Rep. Jason Doucette (D-Glastonbury) asked Hornish to secure the support of House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora (R-North Branford) and Reps. Doug Dubitsky (R-Canterbury), Tami Zawistowski (R-East Granby) and Irene Haines (R-East Haddam), something she said is “very, very unlikely.” Doucette provided Inside Investigator with the email he sent to Hornish in which he made the request.
“Annie – I would love to see us run the amendment you describe below, but unless you could manage to also get our most fervent opponents to sign on to it (Candelora, Dubitsky, Haines, Zawistowski, etc.) then there is no way our House leadership will allow the bill to be called,” wrote Doucette. “Otherwise, the bill will be a multi-hour filibuster affair and (as has been the case every year) leadership is not willing to invest the time in the final days of session when there are too many other caucus priority bills also waiting to be called and limited time on the clock.”
Hornish believes the bill is important enough for Democrats to flex their legislative muscles to pass.
“The Democrats frankly, they have supermajorities in both chambers and can call the question if there’s a filibuster,” said Hornish, in an email sent on April 23, to 41 legislators who have indicated their support for the bill. “They’re using the excuse of a filibuster to not bring this bill up. It’s unfortunate, it’s very unfortunate.”
Rep. Kavros DeGraw replied to the chain on April 30, saying that if the bill fails, it would rest on Hornish’s shoulders.
“As far as I am concerned, you’ve killed this bill with your unwillingness to compromise,” said Kavros DeGraw. “I wonder how many more of these pet shops will pop up before this bill is ever heard again?”
Kavros DeGraw was one of eight legislators who signed off on a joint amendment that adds a clause to the original bill stating, “no such prohibition shall apply to any pet shop in operation and selling such animals on the effective date of such prohibition.” If added to the bill, it would prevent the City of Stamford from prohibiting the pet shops that this bill was drafted to ban in the first place. Reps. Haines, Zawistowski, Doucette, Allie-Brennan, Nicole Klarides-Ditria and Kerry Wood (D-Rocky Hill) also signed onto the amendment.
Former Stamford State Rep. David Michel, himself an animal rights advocate and former co-chair of the Animal Advocacy Caucus, said that while “it would be convenient to blame advocates for this impasse,” it is the fault of Democratic lawmakers for not using their supermajority to “move a bill that passed committee with bipartisan support.” Michel said that “the real compromise was made the moment we moved from a statewide ban to local control,” and that to add a grandfather clause is “not a further compromise, it is a surrender.”
“No municipality should be forced by state law to protect stores sourcing animals from USDA-registered puppy mills,” said Michel. “No one should be allowed to hide behind a Republican filibuster threat while simultaneously endorsing the Republican amendment.”
In a comment provided to Inside Investigator, Doucette said the bill is “no different than any other bill where there is significant opposition in the chamber.” He called the joint amendment a “good faith attempt to explore a compromise with these opponents in order to move the bill forward in some manner,” as “without some sort of compromise, it is unlikely” to pass.
“When you have members who are fervently opposed, and unfriendly amendments filed on the system ready to be called by those members who oppose it, there is always a high likelihood that bill will take a substantial amount of floor time,” said Doucette. “The Majority Leader’s team will take this into account when planning our agenda each day of session and managing floor time. This is the reality of the legislative process during the final week of session.”
With only three days remaining in session, it is unlikely a compromise will be reached. Inside Investigator could not reach Adam Liegiot, Republican caucus spokesman, to request a comment from Republican lawmakers.
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