Were dogs or Shakopee pet store neglected?

Were a pair of shelties named Jasmine and Jasper neglected at a Shakopee pet store?

Ask Jane Letcher, a prison worker who stopped by the Eagle Pet Center and became so disgusted at the conditions in which the two dogs lived that she slapped down $250 for them and a cat, then promptly turned them over to the Minnesota Valley Humane Society in Burnsville, paying the fees required to leave them there.

After she and others complained to Shakopee police, officers visited the downtown pet store twice this week -- most recently on Friday, accompanied by an investigator for the Humane Society who probes cases of neglect and cruelty.

Investigators found nothing that could be construed as criminal, but they did advise the pet store owner, Ed Dressen, that he needed to clean the shop, Shakopee police Capt. Jeff Tate said

Dressen, for his part, pooh-poohs claims of neglect or cruelty. His real problem, the investigators told him, is one of perception, which he could address by sprucing up the shop.

It's an old-school pet store, dark and smelling a bit of dog in the back room. Fish tanks have smears on the glass and rusting frames, and the ceiling has water spots and missing tiles.

"I always make the animals the first priority, and the dusting last," Dressen, 57, said during a break from vacuuming his shop Friday, not long after police left. "I would like this place to be immaculate, but there's a lot to take care of here. It's not like we're a hardware store where you just dust off the merchandise."

Police have received about a dozen complaints about the store in the past decade, but none led to charges.

Dressen insists his animals are healthy, especially the fish, which are his biggest sellers.

But Letcher saw it differently. She saw bird cages, she said, with greenish drinking water and poopy floors, a dead fish in a tank, dogs that seemed crazed after being cooped up in cramped, dirty kennels, and a couple of birds that appeared in bad shape, with missing feathers.

Dressen told police that the birds had come to him malnourished and he was nursing them back to health. The fish that the woman thought was dead was actually a dormant coy, he said as he gently brushed the still fish with a tiny net until it swished its tail.

Dressen and Letcher say they're glad the two Shelties and the cat have moved on. The cat, which was in good shape, has been adopted. And the shelties are in a foster home as they await adoption.

"I'm sure the recession is curbing his business," Letcher said, "but the animals shouldn't suffer for it."