About a month before I moved down here last year, both this household and the Compound lost their family dogs. Both dogs were well into their elderly years. Brian and Mom opted to put off getting any new animals until Knickknack has shuffled off her mortal coil. She’s ancient and held together by her anger and hatred of everyone. If they added another animal into the family, there’s a very good chance she might become immortal.
On the other hand, the Compound is almost never without a dog. His parents started looking for a new dog after the holidays. Honestly, we’re surprised they’ve waited that long. They’re trying to adopt one from a rescue, but they only want one particular breed, and they want a young one. Recently, they found one they liked. They had a meetup with the rescue and the dog, and put in an adoption application. Unfortunately, the application was denied due to their age.
Brian’s Mom called mine yesterday evening. They’d found a dog they liked with a breeder in Texas. Everything she told my mother about this breeder seemed sketchy.
- The dogs they have “available” are about $1000 cheaper than any other breeder. This is supposedly because they’re expecting more puppies and they need to adopt out these puppies ASAP.
- All dogs come with free shipping. Yay! And for an extra $50 they would have someone escort the puppy in the cabin. The puppies are listed at $500, and you currently can’t even get a flight to that city for less than that. There’s no fucking way they’re sending those pups on flights.
- She gave Mom the URL of the breeder’s website. There’s a spelling error in it.
Raise the red flags.
Something must have triggered her warning senses as well, because I don’t think Brian’s mom would have called Mom about it otherwise. Mom told her we’d look into it, and she would call the Better Business Bureau about them. I can’t find the website, and I’m not sure if it’s due to a spelling error on my part or hers. Googling for the breeder isn’t returning any results, and I can’t find any social media presence. A few minutes later, she calls back for some reason. Mom tells her we’ll be over in the morning to look at whatever website she’s looking at. Eventually, after about 15 minutes, I found the breeder’s website. Now all the warning bells are going off.
- The website’s header image is taken from a wallpaper site, and the “breeders” left the watermark on it
- The English is nearly on par with the labels at our local Chinese buffet
- Almost any company, let alone a dog breeder, will usually have some type of “about us” page on their website. This one only has a page that lists their available pups, a bunch of testimonials, and a contact page.
- They have 30 puppies available for sale, all 10 weeks old, which seems absolutely insane to me for any responsible breeder, especially one claiming to have new puppies on the way.
If that wasn’t enough…. I wanted concrete proof this was a scummy puppy scam. I found the cutest puppy they had “available”, with the most typical coloring of the breed, and did a reverse lookup on it. According to Google, that dog is at least 5 years old at this point. Mom called Brian’s mom and broke the news to her. Thankfully, she hadn’t gotten to the point of making arrangements or paying for the dog. However, she had been in early stages of things and had been in contact with them. Mom is worried the “breeder” will harass Brian’s mother.
We feel bad for bursting her bubble, but I can’t imagine how bad we all would have felt if they’d actually paid that person.
