Hey, everyone. This is Alex Schumann, the host of Smokescreen Puppy Kingpin. I am speaking

today with a couple of people from the group Caps, which stands for the Companion Animal

Protection Society. Now, you get to hear their videos and evidence they collected in the

podcast, but you don't get to hear much from my interviews with them. So we wanted to

offer this bonus episode. I'm joined by the founder of Caps, Deborah Howard, and Pete

Paxton, one of the undercover investigators for Caps. And I should note that he is so

undercover that Pete Paxton is actually a pseudonym he uses so that he can take on different

identities when he's investigating pet stores and breeders. Thank you both for talking

with me today. Deborah, you are based in California where a lot of these rescue puppies ended

up coming. Can you tell me how you first discovered the scheme? Oh, there were certificates

of veterinary inspection going to patch up in California from a Hobo canine rescue. This

was probably the spring of 2018. So they were testing it out before the law actually was

in effect. And then we went to investigate like Escondito Pats, which was owned by David

Salinas, was one of the first ones to use it. And you're the only group that's done these

undercover videos where you capture pet store owners and breeders talking about how they

sell puppies. Why do you think getting those things on video is so important? I love the

Caps does that when there's a debate around this, it takes different paths. One of the paths

that it takes is that we're simply making stuff up, right? That we say they're getting from

puppy mills, but they say that they're not. Well, he said he said, what are you going to do

with that, right? So out of all of that, the first thing to discuss would be who's telling

the truth. And the way that you know that is you get right up there in person with a camera,

covert mic, and you ask them, where do your puppies come from? And you got to be specific, right?

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