Puppy scams are not just you being scammed out of your money, it can be worse than that. Many times I hear from someone who buys a puppy only to have it die within 2 weeks. They are never reimbursed for any money they spent plus, they are heartbroken.

Breeders also are not always honest about what breed the puppy is or what size it will be when it is full grown. You should never tell a breeder what size you are looking for, instead, you ask them what size they have, that way you may actually get the size you want.  There is less chance that they will lie to you.

Be careful when shopping for a puppy and make sure you read the article below, it may help you. Or, just buy a puppy from me! They are holistically raised, very healthy and I am an honest woman!

When people don’t buy from me and buy elsewhere they love to call me and tell me about how they were scammed.  It’s very sad and I hate to hear it. It’s pretty much everyday that I hear stories about how people got scammed.   Many call and tell me their puppy is dead 4 days later or 2 weeks later.  I am very serious.  They are so clever, these scam artists.  The puppy buyers never get reimbursed for vet or hospital bills.  They do not get their money back for their dead puppy either.  I have many tell me they were scammed 3 times!  That’s horrible!

I get scammed too, oh yes, it has happened.  I get the exact same emails with the exact same sob story, it’s for my kid, I’m deaf, they go on and on. I am not a heartless person, but it is usually a scam when they pull at your heartstrings with a sad story.

Some of the stories they tell me in these emails are quite elaborate. They tell me how they will be paying me for the puppy, when it is not even up to them to decide that. I get to decide what form of payment I will accept, not them. They can easily scam you with a money order, cashiers check… for instance.

All they say I have to do, in these emails, is send them my full name, address, etc…  did you want a social security number with that too?  Keep in mind, this is a person who is buying from me.  Oh, and they will send a shipper to my house, um yeah, uh huh. Then they like to finish it up with a God bless.  Sometimes, if I am in a playful mood, I send them the address of a police station.  They can send their scam to them.

This is a scam I found quite by accident. Someone stole a picture of my Maltese and is selling it as one of her Maltipoos. I wonder if any of the other puppies are hers.

When I researched this person, she had 4 phone numbers, 2 are old, she had many many many breeds, usually no pics, doesn’t answer her phone, her puppies are very cheap and of course they are AKC. SCAM!

This is her ad below where she is selling my Maltese.
*Maltipoo Puppies
Gorgeous Maltese-Poo Puppies Looking for loving homes and laps to warm. Solid or parti color to choose from. Standard toys or very tiny toys. Home raised and well socialized and genetically
Healthy!! All ready spoiled rotten!! Puppy pad trained and well started on housebreaking.Shots and dewormed. $650.00 Cash only. Serious inquires/buyers should call or text 517-416-996six or 517-270-38 sixty four. ***Located in Jackson/Ann Arbor area. Will not respond to emails. “A Good Dog Is The only True Love Money Can Buy”

In the dog breeding world, we all know which breeders are running scams, this is because we hear stories from customers.  Sometimes I explore some of these breeders and I am shocked by what I find.

There is a woman who I researched a bit who is selling puppies on line. She also has a house she is selling, although she may be legit with that one, but she is offering money to help you get out of debt and one other business. I am sure they are all scams, since it looks to me like her puppy ads are scams.

Always remember, nothing is free, there is always a catch. If something seems too good to be true than it IS too good to be true. Trust your instincts!  I think the way they scam you is, they lure you in with a low price and who doesn’t want to pay less, but you do get what you pay for.

One lady who I talked to said she spoke with some dog breeders and she wondered if these people even had puppies!!  I laughed because it was funny, but oh my gosh, she had a good point!  How do you even know?

I love the ads where the puppy is only $200.00 or $500.00 and they offer free shipping! They would LOSE money doing this. I am sure if you call them they have a nice story to tell you and a bridge to sell you too.

Recently, my daughter found an ad where a man was selling AKC Maltese puppies, and for starters there were 6 of them in the litter, it just doesn’t happen.  They usually have 1-3 in a litter.  Plus, they were very scrappy looking, they seriously looked like Maltese mixed with West Highland White Terrier, or even Chihuahua.  How would you know they were a mix?  I bet most of you wouldn’t know.

I spoke with a woman who said that she bought a Maltese who ended up being very sick and ended up dying.  She was never able to contact the breeder.  Her vet that she took her sick puppy to, contacted the dog breeders vet and he said he never heard of the breeder, she’d never been there.  The breeder made it look legit though, she had a brochure from her vet and she also had a vet record book, but it was blank.  She used it  just to make herself seem legit.  So sad.

I am leery of people who have higher priced puppies but no website. I don’t trust them.  They cannot even take the time to make sure you have the information you may need to take care of your puppy.  They are looking for the easiest way to make their money and do not care about you or the puppy they are selling you.

I am leery of people who do not even bathe their puppy before a picture. Wow! I seriously wonder if the puppy ever even gets a bath.  I think those puppies are from puppy mills.

Then there are the breeders who do not even have a picture of the puppy they are selling you. Why not?  I think they don’t even have the puppy or it is not theirs.  My pictures have been stolen many times and someone tries to sell it as their own.

What about the ads where there is no picture and they only want you to text them?  I heard recently from a woman who said every single breeder she called wanted her to send them her email address and she said they can then hack into your accounts that go through your email.  I saw one ad where they said to text them only and to make sure you specified which breed. They probably have quite a few different breeds, but they don’t want you to know that.

I wonder what this ad is about?  This is how they want you to contact them:
TEXT ME DIRECTLY AT 917 410 219O WITH YOUR EMAIL. If you DON’T TEXT your EMAIL, we WON’T RESPOND.

I know a breeder who has 80 dogs, yes 80, and she takes care of them herself.  They all live in cages. She turns on a radio nice and loud when people are coming to her house so they can’t hear them barking, she told me all of this.  Her house is a beautiful home in an affluent neighborhood and if I named the city, you would surprised that she could even do that there.

I know a breeder who keeps one set of parents in the house and never breeds the mama so she looks gorgeous. THOSE are the parents for every litter, if you know what I mean. How would you know if they weren’t?  I am sure it is the same thing when you see gorgeous parents on a website. Parents of puppies are not gorgeous.  This breeder told me this is what she does.

What about the ones who stick the dog on the grass and get far away from it and snap a picture. You can’t even see it.  They don’t want you to see it too closely.

When you are on an advertisers website looking for puppies, always click on the breeder’s name, you will find it somewhere and see when they joined or how long they have been a member.

Why would you do this?  If they just signed up a day ago, which quite a few of them have, then they are just selling their puppies and getting out of there, resigning up with each litter.  They are selling crap puppies OR maybe they don’t even have any puppies and they just want your money.  You can also go under Member Details and click on User Name, that will tell you when they joined.  Try looking under their name where it will say something like: Member Since and then how long they have been with them.

How about this one guy who is a pretty big breeder and he obviously does something to the eyes of these puppies so they look ginormous! Photoshopped!

Some breeders want to sell that puppy asap, before it get’s sick on their watch, so they have a very low price to get it gone quickly.

Some breeders will lie about the age so they can sell it before it get’s sick too.  How do you know what age a puppy really is when you look at it, either in person or in a picture?  Can you tell the difference between a 5 or 6 week old puppy and an 8 week old puppy?  Probably not.

What about the different breeds?  How do you know it really is a Maltipoo?
I saw one breeder had the same puppy, same background, etc… and she had it advertised as 3 different breeds.

Two of my adult daughters who have grown up with their mama, me, raising puppies, decided to go in together and get a French Bulldog for breeding.  You would think they would know what to look for.  You would think they would know the signs that a breeder is going to scam them. They paid $1800.00 for a puppy and it is of the poorest quality and has issues.  The dog was supposed to be a pure breed and even came with AKC papers, but it is not a pure breed. This they found out because the woman is in a lot of trouble now because of it and there are quite a few who are retaliating against her.  They were scammed and it is not because they are not intelligent young ladies, it is just that the scam artists are very clever.

Some breeders buy $5.00 track phones and then just toss them after each litter, that way you can’t call them with your puppy problems.  They know you won’t be buying a second puppy from them anyways since your first puppy from them died shortly after or was sick.  This is a very common story.

This is a sample of an email someone sent me asking if this was a scam, see if you can tell that it most definitely is.

DEAR CLIENT 


              WE ONCE MORE WELCOME YOU TO ELEGANT PET SERVICE, FOR THE PAYMENT OF THE DELIVERY FEE FOR YOU FEMALE MALTESE PUPPY,MAKE SURE YOU READ EVERY INFORMATION, COPY IT WELL BEFORE EMBARKING ON THE PAYMENT YOU CAN GO TO A MONEY GRAM STORE AND MAKE THE PAYMENT THERE USING CASH . ALL YOU NEED DO IS FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS BELOW

1.  COPY DOWN THIS ADDRESS PLUS THE TEST QUESTION AND ANSWER ON A PIECE OF PAPER 

RECEIVERS COUNTRY…………….

RECEIVERS FIRST NAME……………….. 

RECEIVERS LAST / SUR NAME…………… 

RECEIVERS CITY / TOWN……………

RECEIVERS POSTCODE………..

TEST QUESTION………………… 


ANSWER…………………… 


AMOUNT…………….

Why are they using the word receiver or client? Why do they ask what country if you are getting a puppy in the USA?  Also, this is for a $500 Maltese, there’s the bait, it’s cheap. It’s too good to be true. $500.00 for a Maltese including shipping? I don’t think so.

The rest of the instructions have very detailed information about how to get the money to them. Oh, and they signed it The Management???

I hear from people just about everyday with a story, please be careful.

One person said, after their dog died, they were scammed 5 times, I so wish I had gotten details from her to share with you. You would almost think she was lying to me, it’s so outrageous!

Think about all the crimes being committed these days, a lot of people are simply uncaring and not nice and will do anything to make a buck.

I had a phone call one day, from a nice woman who bought a Maltese from an Amish breeder in Ohio. The puppy was not very playful, but she thought it was just tired. 4 days later it was dead. She took it to the vet after 2 days, it was very lethargic and had yellow stuff coming out of it’s eyes. The vet tried to save it but couldn’t. The vet said he had never seen so much stuff coming out of a puppy’s eyes, ever.

She found my website first but did not buy from me, she didn’t say why but probably it was the price. Now she is going to buy from me. She is out $800.00 for the puppy that died though, plus all the vet bills. This puppy came with no guarantee.

This is heartbreaking to me because this just shouldn’t be. Please make sure you get a guarantee and remember, a lethargic puppy is a sick puppy. A puppy should be happy, wagging it’s little tail, trying to kiss you and running around playing. I am just saddened by this story and so many others like it I hear about.

Always make sure you go to the breeder’s house, never meet them anywhere. There is a reason they don’t want you to their house.

I was in line at Walmart one evening, waiting to do a return, when I noticed the lady in front of me had a puppy in her purse. The woman was so cute, she was waiting to ask if she could bring the puppy into the store to buy supplies for it, she had just picked it up. I told her I would just go shop, my daughters always used to bring puppies or baby bunnies into the store in their purses. Walmart would be making money off of her after all. She did scoot out of line and shop.

But of course I am looking at this puppy, wondering about the breeder it came from. I was really saddened to see that the whites of this puppy’s eyes were red and not white like they should have been. The puppy was very timid, but of course he was stuffed into a purse, but the worse thing were all these raised bumps on his head, which you could clearly see as he didn’t have much fur, he was a Rat Terrier. They looked like warts, they were quite thick and white.

I asked the nice lady what was wrong with his head and she said it was from the other puppies chewing on his head. Sorry, at that point, I had been breeding for over 16 years, impossible for those to be bites and impossible for them to be where they were if it were true.

My daughter thought maybe they were mosquito bites, she didn’t see them, but no, not bites, unless it was something very big. It was something viral I think and it was just popping out on this poor dogs head. I so wished I had given her one of my business cards so she could have researched on my website, but I really couldn’t get at them in my purse with my arms full.

I had to share this, it was so sad and so unnecessary. People are so uninformed, the breeder, the person buying. Actually, the breeder could have been just trying to rip her off, clearly the puppy had some problems.

Please be careful if you are buying a puppy from someone else. I was just emailed and asked to see if someone was a scam and the answer was yes. It was not obvious to the woman who asked me, but it was very obvious to me.  It’s very easy for me to spot.

Here’s a story about another litter I saw.  For starters, every puppy except one, looked sickly and I am sure that if the one who actually looked kind of healthy had lighter colored fur, it wouldn’t have looked as healthy as it did. The dark fur can hide a lot.

It looked like they had quite a few different breeds but just one of each puppy. Why? They had no name and no phone number. Again, why?

Why could I find no information on line about their website? This one I will answer for you, because they just threw it together, trust me, they will remove it and start over again, very soon, leaving no trace of themselves behind.

They had only a few pages on their website. The About Us Page was hilarious, they said they would write more if they had the time. They don’t care, they just want their money and they may not even have a puppy for you, if you know what I mean.

One time a breeder emailed me telling me that there was a man in Louisville KY who was using my puppy pictures, pretending they were his own.  He owns a physical pet store, has a website and had 2 facebook pet pages. She said he was not a very nice man and scammed people.

I can’t recall how she got involved with him, but she warned me to be careful because he threatened to throw acid in her face.  This was when she confronted him in his store. Nice.

He stole pictures of 2 of my puppies and had them on both of his facebook pet groups and had conversations with people about them.  In one of them he was telling someone it was his favorite puppy.  Of course when she got to the pet store he would probably just tell her it was sold already and how about a different one. He had conversations with many people about both of my puppies.

My daughter and I started commenting on his 2 fb groups. Eventually I got a call from someone, the name and number was blocked, and I talked to a woman who claimed to be his wife.  Of course later, he denied that she called me, saying she didn’t even speak English.  I said it must have been a friend or someone making the call for her.  That was how he talked though, getting you side tracked.  It didn’t really matter if it was actually his wife calling me or her friend, he was stealing, lying and cheating. The woman who called me, started defending her husband saying he didn’t know it was stealing to take my pictures and pretend they were his.  I told her I would be calling her husband later.

Before I had a chance to call her husband, he called me and talked in circles, claiming he didn’t understand, yeah right.  I told him, he had until midnight to remove my pictures which I took screen shots of, or I would keep my appointment I had for Monday with my lawyer.

He actually claimed he couldn’t do this since he was at work and DIDN’T HAVE A COMPUTER! Hilarious!  He owns a store, a website and has 2 fb stores!  I told him he better figure it out.  The pictures were removed immediately and shortly later he closed both his fb groups.  You have to be careful.  He’s not the first one to steal my pictures.

One more story and I think they win for being the cleverest.  The lady running the scam, used the address of a vacant house, maybe an air b’nb, probably pretty easy to find an address of a vacant house.  She had the person meet her there and she was outside waiting for them.  She acted like she just popped outside with their puppy.  She did have a puppy though.  She had the customer leave a big deposit, said the puppy wasn’t ready quite yet and that was it.  No puppy for my future customer and no money returned.  They dropped off the face of the earth.

If you have a scam story and you want to share it will me, call me or text me with it, I might want to share it.  This is the thing in life that makes me so mad.  Please be careful!

Vaccines alter the DNA and weaken the immune system. Since immunizations alter the DNA, you have to think about the parents being vaccinated too, they can pass on their altered DNA. It is not enough to just find a puppy that is not vaccinated. Many are given heartwormers before they leave the breeders care and flea preventatives like Frontline. Make sure you do some reading on my website.  Heartwormers are worse than the disease itself and yes, dogs die from taking them.  Chemical flea preventatives kill animals too and cause seizures, burns, the list goes on and on.

If you do end up with a sick puppy and I sincerely hope you don’t, you could always schedule a consult with me, it’s very reasonably priced. True I am not a veterinarian but I have been raising dogs holistically for many years and know what works and what doesn’t and have a head packed with info that I would be willing to share.

 

 

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