The Puppy Palace

The Puppy Palace is a pet store at 2945 Main St, Glastonbury, Connecticut, operated by Loui Soteriou and Sheila Soteriou. The store has been documented by Bailing Out Benji as a recipient of puppies sourced through the Stonehenge Kennels operation in West Point, Iowa — a facility operated by Steve Kruse, who has appeared on the Humane World for Animals Horrible Hundred list eight times.

According to Bailing Out Benji's published investigation into Steve Kruse, The Puppy Palace is listed among businesses receiving puppies whelped by USDA broker Brian Lichirie using dogs from Kruse's Stonehenge Kennels. The arrangement works as follows: Kruse sends his pregnant dogs to Lichirie's facility, Lichirie whelps the puppies and sells them to pet stores under his own USDA license number, and the mother dogs are returned to Kruse for future breeding. Kruse's name is removed from all customer-facing paperwork — every birth record, pedigree registry, and health certificate shows Lichirie as the breeder, not Kruse.

The Puppy Palace states on its website that all puppies come from USDA-licensed breeders. This is technically accurate — Lichirie holds a USDA license. What customers are not told is the documented connection between Lichirie's operation and Stonehenge Kennels.

Connecticut law requires pet stores to provide certificates of origin upon request. Consumers can use these documents to identify the specific USDA license number of the breeding facility and verify that facility's full inspection history using the USDA APHIS public search tool at aphis.my.site.com. Consumers who have already purchased from The Puppy Palace and want to research their puppy's actual breeder can also submit their paperwork to Bailing Out Benji for confidential research at bailingoutbenji.com/puppy-mill-maps/cvi-data/connecticut/.