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1 kennel owner guilty, 1 heads to court
Ronks father, son charged with dog abuse

By SUSAN E. LINDT, Staff
Intelligencer Journal
Published: Feb 02, 2008 12:37 AM EST
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA -

Father-and-son kennel owners faced a district justice Thursday after both
were charged with state dog-law violations at their large-scale breeding
kennels in Ronks.

John E. Esh, owner of Twin Maple Farm, 68 Clearview Road, Ronks, and his
son, Daniel P. Esh, owner of Scarlet-Maple Farm Kennel at a property adjacent to his father's kennel, both had hearings Thursday before District Justice Isaac Stoltzfus.

John Esh pleaded guilty to five summary counts for poor maintenance and
inhumane and unsanitary kennel conditions. Stoltzfus fined the elder Esh $300 per violation.

Attorney Cory J. Miller, who represented Esh and his son, negotiated a deal
with Assistant District Attorney Christine L. Wilson on behalf of John Esh,
who agreed to plead guilty in exchange for having the more serious misdemeanor counts lowered to summary offenses.

Daniel Esh did not negotiate a deal, so Stoltzfus waived his case to court,
where he may plead guilty or face a trial on four misdemeanor counts.
Charges against both Eshes stemmed from unannounced state inspections at
both kennels Nov. 2 and follow-up inspections Nov. 28 by Wardens Drew Delenick and Kristen Donmoyer.

At John Esh's kennel Nov. 2, Bureau of Dog Law Enforcement wardens noted he did not provide the minimum amount of kennel space for 269 dogs on the
premises. Dog feeders were contaminated with feces and debris, cages had
accumulations of moldy feces and food and some enclosures were covered in feces. John Esh also was cited because he could not show proof that 69 of his dogs had received rabies vaccines.

At a Nov. 28 follow-up inspection at John Esh's kennel, dogs were still kept
in cramped cages, and vaccination proofs were still missing.
Three of the violations were graded as more serious misdemeanor counts
because John Esh was convicted of similar violations within the last year.
Like his father, Daniel Esh was charged for violating space requirements for
some of the 498 dogs at his kennel during the Nov. 2 inspection.
In that inspection report, a warden noted one 10-square-foot cage housed six
dogs, making it less than half the size required by state law, as were
several other cages. Daniel Esh also was charged for not cleaning dog feeders that were contaminated with feces and debris, not cleaning dog enclosures that were smeared with feces and not ridding the kennel of rodents.
Daniel Esh also received more serious misdemeanor charges for the violations
because he was convicted of similar infractions within the past 12 months.
The most recent charges against the Eshes follow Gov. Ed Rendell's crackdown on chronically noncompliant, large-scale commercial breeders in an effort to rid the state of its reputation as "the puppy mill capital of the East."

Just seven months before the Nov. 2 inspections resulting in current charges
against Daniel Esh, his kennel passed warden Travis Hess' inspection without
a single "unsatisfactory" mark. Likewise, Hess passed the elder Esh's kennel on March 12 with all satisfactory marks. Since then, Rendell has ordered the hiring of new wardens, including Delenick and Donmoyer, to create a specialized inspection team. With the new inspection team in place, several county kennels have been closed for repeated violations, and a number of kennel operators were convicted of animal cruelty after inspectors alerted authorities to ailing animals observed during their inspections.

E-mail: _slindt@lnpnews.com_ (mailto:slindt@lnpnews.com)