Puppy mill in Hillsdale County under investigation by Attorney General Nessel

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Puppy mill in Hillsdale County under investigation by Attorney General Nessel
Katrina Stillwagon rescued this dog, Grizelda, on Oct. 15. Courtesy | Katrina Stillwagon

Hillsdale residents Paul Steury and Peter Miller have stopped selling dogs at the request of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. They are under investigation for owning and running an illegal puppy mill in Hillsdale County, according to Nessel’s office.

Steury is currently being investigated for animal cruelty and lying to purchasers about his dogs’ health records in a civil suit under consumer protection laws and a criminal suit under animal cruelty laws. His associate Peter Miller has not yet been implicated, or shown to be involved in an incriminating manner, as part of the investigation.   

The puppy mill first came to Nessel’s attention when Katrina Stillwagon, president of the Monroe Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty, filed a complaint in July of this year. Steury approached Stillwagon in a parking lot in February of this year about purchasing his dogs. According to the Attorney General’s Official Request for Subpoena, the dogs for sale were being held in “a filthy, rabbit-style cage and smelled of feces and urine.” Over the next five months, Stillwagon said she purchased 71 dogs from Steury’s puppy mill. 

Dr. Bhupinder Pelia, a veterinarian at the Monroe Veterinary Clinic, diagnosed these dogs with malnourishment and damaged eye-sight from the use of non-veterinary treatment. Some of the dogs had giardia infections, parasites in the intestinal tract that manifest themselves in diarrhea, vomiting, weight loss, and lethargy. Pelia said she determined that the health records of these dogs were likely falsified and these dogs were neither healthy nor vaccinated.

Nessel’s office responded to the complaint with a request for a subpoena.

Stillwagon said Steury called her after hearing about the impending subpoena, and he threatened to shoot the dogs on his property to dispose of evidence. Stillwagon said she “talked him off the ledge.” 

There is no evidence to suggest Steury ever shot any of his dogs.

“Our office visited the property last week with the Humane Society of Michigan. We are able to confirm that they have stopped selling dogs and puppies,”  Nessel’s Communications Director Dan Olsen said in an email.

According to Olson, the required assurance of voluntary compliance has not been provided yet. Steury did, however, meet with Nessel’s office the week of Oct. 14 to provide investigative testimony.

Since 2017, the Michigan Department of Attorney General has received more than 20 complaints of alleged puppy scams. This is the first time that Nessel has taken legal action against an alleged illegal puppy mill operation since announcing her crackdown on puppy scams in April.

“We are now in the process of evaluating our observations from our visit to the property, the testimony provided by Steury and Miller and the documents they supplied as a result of our investigative subpoenas. And we are working toward a resolution,” Olsen said in an email. Stillwagon and the Monroe Society for the Prevention of Animal Cruelty are continuing an independent investigation of Steury’s puppy mill separate from Nessel’s criminal and civil investigations. In reference to the animal abuse, Stillwagon said: “We’re not letting this go.”