Fort Collins’ only retail pet store has closed, months before a ban on the sales of cats and dogs in stores is set to take effect.
Pet City, which had been located at 3663 S. College Ave., closed more than a month ago, and Nov. 3 was the final day for employees.
Karen Kinnes, the former manager of the store who also owned it more than a decade ago, said there were six employees at the time of the closure.
“I’m really sad. My mom’s really mad,” Kinnes said. “We’ve been doing this for 20 years.”
When Fort Collins City Council started considering a potential ban of retail sales of cats and dogs, Kinnes said Pet City wouldn’t be able to survive it, noting that 90% of its revenue came from pet sales.
In a phone interview, Kinnes told the Coloradoan the store was “on its way out” even before the City Council action.
“Our lease was up,” Kinnes said. “I’m in Wyoming and (owner Becky Mosshart) was ready to be finished, and so it just seemed like it was time.”
Mosshart confirmed to the Coloradoan that she was thinking of selling the store prior to the sales ban for economic reasons.
“I’ve raised dogs since 1981,” Mosshart said in a phone interview. “I’ve never been through an economy like that for the dog business.”
She has owned the store since 2012. She bought it from Kinnes and her husband, who owned the store when it was located in Foothills mall.
Kinnes said they couldn’t afford to move the store out of the mall when it was being renovated, so they sold it to Mosshart, who was one of the kennel owners they worked with. Mosshart, who lives in Kansas, purchased it on the condition that Kinnes would run it.
When it comes to any moneymaking enterprise, Mosshart said “there’s the good, the bad, the good, the ugly.” Still, she said most breeders are good people.
Over many years working with different pet stores, Mosshart said there were some whose practices caused her to drop them.
“I didn’t like the way they handled the phone, I didn’t like the way they handled their puppies and I didn’t want my puppies going there,” she said.
But Pet City was different.
“I just liked the way they handled them, saw very, very few sick puppies,” she said. “They were isolated when they were … there was pretty good protocol about … not passing germs around.”
Fort Collins’ pet sales ban goes into effect May 20 for stores. Another portion of that ban that includes sales in any public place, like a parking lot or roadside, went into effect in early September.
The ordinance’s intent was to diminish the market for pets that come from breeders who don’t provide humane conditions for animals to live in, also known as puppy mills.
But Mosshart said without pet stores, customers will have fewer choices and less oversight. For example, most pet stores offer a one-year money-back guarantee or longer, and if there’s a problem, customers can write a bad review, contact the Better Business Bureau or file a complaint with Colorado’s regulatory oversight program, PACFA.
But without stores like hers, if something goes wrong with a pet store alternative, such as online puppy sales, a customer could sue but would have to pay a lot of money to do so.
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