(Beth Clifton collage)
Two-time offender Moms & Mutts: Colorado rescue hit with license suspension
ENGLEWOOD, Colorado––Moms & Mutts: Colorado Rescue for Pregnant & Nursing Dogs Inc., a nonprofit organization noted by ANIMALS 24-7 on August 17, 2024 for exemplifying an inherently dangerous modus operandi, “has had their license suspended by the state,” reported Steve Staeger and Amanda Kesting of 9News television in Denver on February 28, 2025.
(See What’s stupider than rehoming rabid pit bull puppies? Denying the risk.)
(Beth Clifton collage)
$2.5 million puppy import business at risk
Moms & Mutts: Colorado Rescue for Pregnant & Nursing Dogs Inc., located in Englewood, a major Denver suburb, frequently imports pregnant dog mothers and litters to Colorado from Texas.
Closed for the next 18 months but still actively fundraising, Moms & Mutts: Colorado had income of $2.5-million-a-year in 2022, the most recent year for which IRS Form 990 is available.
On August 7, 2024 Moms & Mutts: Colorado reported discovering rabies in a litter of 11 pit bull mix puppies advertised as “shepherd mixes” at a July 20, 2024 adoption event held in Sheridan, Colorado.
“The rabies-positive puppy came to Colorado from Texas,” KDVR television news in Denver reported.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Dead skunk
Founder Aron Jones “said the puppies were surrendered by their former owner who lives near Dallas, and it’s believed a dead skunk had been found on the property.”
Jones told KDVR at the time that “The puppy had tested negative for distemper, and we knew that the [skunk] remains had been sent for rabies testing, which takes less than 24 hours, and we did not receive any calls or anything,” so Moms & Mutts Colorado presumed the skunk had tested negative, overlooking that no news does not mean good news.
The pit bull puppy had not yet been vaccinated against rabies, but even if vaccination had been done, explained Tam Garland, retired head of the toxicology section at the Texas A&M Veterinary Medical Diagnostic Laboratory, via the ProMED [Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases] alert listserv, vaccinating a puppy under six months of age conveys no immunity, because the puppy’s immune system is not yet mature enough to produce anti-rabies antibodies.
“We must be in Colorado, Toto.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
Multiple violations
The Colorado Department of Agriculture in December 2024 announced that Moms & Mutts shelter had voluntarily agreed to an 18-month probation, after the agency found multiple violations of the state Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act.
Moms & Mutts: Colorado “was ordered to pay fines and could not have any further violations or failed inspections,” Staeger and Kesting of 9News reported.
“The shelter was notified on February 13, 2025 that they had failed two further inspections and that their license was being suspended. They were ordered to immediately surrender all dogs in their care to other shelters or rescue organizations,” Staeger and Kesting continued.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Symptoms of either distemper or rabies”
“According to the summary suspension filed by the Department of Agriculture, the shelter imported a litter of puppies from Texas that were infected with hookworm,” a contagious intestinal parasite, “on December 7, 2024, and failed to isolate them, Staeger and Kesting said, “increasing the risk of cross contamination.
“More than a month later,” Staeger and Kesting narrated, “one of the puppies, named Jag, became severely ill with symptoms of either distemper or rabies. Jag was euthanized on January 29, 2025, the document says. The Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment took the puppy’s body to the Colorado State University Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratories for testing to determine if the puppy had rabies.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Squash & Momma Twinkle
“The suspension alleges,” Staeger and Kesting summarized, that Moms & Mutts: Colorado failed to isolate Jag’s littermates following their possible exposure and that some of the staff’s personal dogs were allowed to enter the same room as the puppies, all observed during an unannounced inspection on January 30, 2025
“Also on that day, two dogs from the facility, Squash and Momma Twinkle, escaped out the front door.
“The complaint alleges,” Staeger and Kesting said, that “when four of the other puppies were taken to an emergency vet the next day,” Moms & Mutts: Colorado “failed to inform the veterinarian that the puppies may have been exposed to distemper or rabies from their close contact with Jag.
Aron Jones, president of Moms & Mutts: Colorado.
Founder says state concern is “Bull crap.”
“The complaint says the veterinarian wanted to hospitalize the four puppies,” Staeger and Kesting paraphrased, “but the shelter opted to have the puppies treated as outpatients,” bringing them back to the Moms & Mutts: Colorado headquarters.
“Three days later, on February 2, 2025, the complaint alleges the four puppies were returned to the emergency vet with worsening symptoms. Three of them were euthanized that evening.”
Moms & Mutts: Colorado founder Aron Jones has repeatedly alleged via social media that the Colorado Department of Agriculture response to the whole situation has been “bull crap.”
(Beth Clifton collage)
“Isolation” in a playpen in an office
Reported Staeger and Kesting, “Jones said the puppies in question were in isolation in an office in a playpen with a tarp on the ground,” although an office does not meet standard veterinary isolation-and-quarantine requirements, with or without a tarp on the floor, “and that the only other dogs that had access to the hookworm-infected puppies were shelter volunteers’ personal pets who take monthly preventative medication that would stop infection.”
This also does not meet standard veterinary isolation-and-quarantine requirements, especially when rabies or distemper is suspected as well as hookworm infection.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Did it before
Jones in a video posted to social media went on to accuse the Colorado Department of Agriculture of targeting Moms & Mutts: Colorado, Staeger and Kesting recounted, “in an effort to make an example out of them and to try to introduce a pending proposed regulation that would prevent puppies younger than 12 weeks old from being imported into the state.”
Moms & Mutts: Colorado, however, had already made an example of itself in 2020, rehoming a rabid 10-week-old puppy named Mabel.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“It makes you feel like a terrible mom”
Recalled one of the adopting family to Danielle Kreutter of KMGH in Denver, “You give your kids a puppy with the most deadly disease on Earth. It makes you feel like a pretty terrible mom. Then you take the puppy away. Then you take them to get a really painful series of shots. That this could happen twice at the same rescue, in the same place, in the same way, just blew our minds.”
Explained Nick Fisher, Colorado Department of Agriculture program section chief in charge of enforcing the Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act, as Kreuter paraphrased, “As of right now, an animal care facility is not required to tell us, the rule makers, if there is a rabies case at their facility. There is also no policy that penalizes facilities or requires them to change operational procedures if there are multiple rabies cases.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“We can self-regulate”
“We don’t know the magnitude of [how often this happens]. This could happen frequently,” Fisher admitted. “When we went to the stakeholders, they were all like, ‘ Oh, we can self-regulate.’ So we gave them the opportunity to do that.”
Argued Robert Jones, husband of Aron Jones, to Kreuter, “Rescues don’t want to have that stigma of bringing in a dog who is sick or has rabies. There is no incentive for them to tell that or get those tests done that show if it’s rabies or distemper or anything else, versus just saying that the dog died.”
Moms & Mutts Colorado appears to be contending that it is being punished for having reported the rabid pit bull puppy discovered in July 2024.
But the extent of potential exposure of both other animals and the public to the rabid puppies rehomed in 2020 and 2024 is why the Colorado Department of Agriculture has introduced a proposed new rule stating, “All dogs, cats and ferrets transferred into a Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act-licensed facility from outside of Colorado must have a rabies vaccine,” plus vaccines for parvovirus, distemper and other domestic pet diseases.
(Beth Clifton collage)
“We want the Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act gone!”
The Colorado Department of Public Health & Environment has already signed off on the proposed new rule.
“The Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act Advisory Committee met in mid-November 2024 and heard stakeholder feedback about the proposed rule,” Kreuter reported. “The proposal, as well as other newly proposed Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act rules, will be introduced at a public hearing sometime in spring 2025, with the final vote on the changes expected in fall 2025.”
Posted Moms & Mutts: Colorado to Facebook, “Help us prevent these people from using Moms & Mutts Colorado as a political scapegoat. If they get their way, rescue as we know it will stop. Dogs will die! Tell the state we want the Pet Animal Care & Facilities Act gone!”
Beth & Merritt Clifton with friends.
What is most assured, though, is that if rabies is translocated into Colorado, both dogs and perhaps people will die.
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