A Queens home is doubling as a designer-dog emporium, brazenly hawking dozens of posh pooches for as much as $38,000, despite New York’s puppy-sale ban, The Post discovered in a sting of underground pet stores.
The Empire State’s landmark “Puppy Mill Pipeline Act” outlawed the sale of dogs, cats and rabbits in pet shops last December.
But at Tiny Cuties NYC at 28th Street and 36th Avenue in Astoria, customers can still pick up the latest designer canine cross from Taiwan — a miniature “Pomchi,” or Pomeranian chihuahua mix, for $7,800; or a palm-sized “Maltipom,” a cross between a Maltese and Pomeranian, for $8,800; or a teacup “Pomapoo,” a Pomeranian poodle mix, for $9,800, according to the selection currently available for purchase on the business’ flashy website.
The prize pooch on offer is Miffy, a “micro teacup” white poodle that promises to be only 2.2 pounds fully-grown, selling for an eye-watering $38,000, an undercover reporter posing as a potential customer found.
The business is run out of a living room that boasts a fish tank, a half-dozen Louis Vuitton and Hermes purses neatly displayed on a shelf, and photos of owner Jenny Tsai in a pink gown with some of the tiny pups.
It was found through a simple Google search for “puppies for sale NYC,” coming up in the top local results.
Tsai — who showed an 8-month-old, 3-pound Maltipom named Herbie to The Post, and even let the reporter pet it — said she keeps a stable of dogs in the back of the two-bedroom home. Their loud barking could be heard from the street.
“We have 35 puppies here,” Tsai bragged over the yipping and yapping . “And we have another 30 in Taiwan.”
“My family has a kennel in Taiwan,” said Tsai, adding that the dogs are shipped when they reach 6-months-old.
“We’ve sold more than 600 dogs,” she claimed.
“The mom only has one puppy at a time,” she continued. “Because if they have two, one will not survive. They have a C-section, so they are very valuable.”
“Size is the number one factor,” explained Tsai, who said the smaller the miniature pup, the higher the price. At that size, “it’s a miracle basically” that they’re alive, she said.
She also explained that some form of patellar luxation – a dislocation of the kneecap – is “normal” and happens to 90% of their teacup puppies, and advised the tiny dogs steer clear of sudden movements.
“The kneecap is not too strong. It’s just too small to fit everything inside,” she said. “You want to prevent him from jumping. He can run in a flat place but not jumping too much.”
“This is the new designer breed,” said Tsai of the Herbie the Maltipom. “We do our own R&D, so we come out with all kinds of breeds. They’re all tiny and cute, it’s just a unique mix.”
“Our clients, they want a tiny dog . . . something they can put in a Birkin and travel around the world,” she added.
Brian Shapiro, New York State director of the nonprofit Humane World for Animals, was horrified by The Post’s encounter.
“I’ve never heard anything so absurd,” he said.
“This this is a big money big business with signs of puppy mill cruelty behind it,” said Shapiro.
“This is just baffling my mind because I’ve never heard of such intense breeding that ends up in such a horrific physical place for an animal . . . It’s almost like you’re mutating these animals into something so unnatural.”
After the visit, The Post confronted the owner. She denied running a puppy mill.
“We’re not a pet shop,” Tsai said.
“We breed our dogs ourselves, we breed them more than ten generations, and we know their lineage,” Tsai defended. “We don’t do in breeding. We raise them in a family home.”
“We have USDA license, we have our attending vet coming to visit regularly, so everything is fine. We are not like a puppy mill that we don’t know where the dogs come from, or we buy from somebody else. This is all our own puppies.”
“We also do events, we are not only selling puppies,” she added. “We use them for puppy yoga, puppy therapy, so it actually benefits the society.”
She also defended concerns about the tiny dogs’ wellbeing.
“It’s very common for any small breed dog to have patellar laxation,” she insisted. “There’s not too many health issues. The common health issue just in the kneecap. And the remaining puppy teeth, they won’t fall out themselves. The average lifespan is 15 years.”
The store is part of a handful in the city that appear to be operating in a legal gray area – importing or appearing to broker the import of puppies through a foreign pipeline and blurring the lines by operating a large part of their business online.
The Post also found a Midtown pet shop that appeared to be brokering the sale of Korean-bred designer pooches through an Instagram catalog, also specializing in teacup-sized designer dogs, which retailed for up to $4,000.
It appeared to get around the law by not physically holding the pups in store, only saying they could be picked up at the store after they arrive from South Korea, The Post found when it paid a visit to the Madison Avenue shop posing as a potential customer.
New York’s Puppy Mill Pipeline Act states that a retail pet shop, defined in the bill as any for-profit place of business that sells or offers for sale animals, shall not sell or offer to sell dogs.
The text doesn’t differentiate between brick and mortar and online sales, and the law applies to both, according to state Sen. Michael Gianaris (D-Queens), who cosponsored New York’s puppy ban bill.
It was intended to “cut off the pipeline” of animals being trucked into the state from abusive puppy-mill breeding practices, Gianaris told The Post, and instead encourage adoption from overwhelmed shelters.
Puppy mills, often in the Midwest, are high-volume commercial breeding operations that prioritize profit over the health of the dogs, and where dogs are often kept in cramped conditions, according to the Humane World for Animals, who worked on the law.
Since it was enacted, more than 60 pet shops across the state have shut down.
“The amount of illegal puppy sales is down very dramatically, which means the law is working,” said Gianaris. “There’s going to be always some bad actors trying to find ways around it.”
In July, the state attorney general’s office busted Bayside, Queens pet store Vanity Pups after it tried to sell a 10-week-old apricot Cavapoo for $1,800 to one of its undercover investigators, The Post learned.
The store “repeatedly and persistently engaged in fraudulent, deceptive, and illegal business practices . . . in flagrant disregard of the multiple directives to stop their illegal activity,” states a lawsuit filed July 8 by AG Letitia James in Queens Supreme Court, which alleged Vanity Pup’s website continued advertising dogs for sale after the ban.
The case is still ongoing in court, and Vanity Pups has denied the allegations. The business did not return The Post’s request for comment.
“A sale is a sale,” slammed Shapiro.
“Because so much money is involved, you’re going to see people try to find ways to be ‘creative’ and push boundaries.”
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