Last Wednesday we got a rescue puppy. His name was Chester and he was a beautiful 7 month old American/English staffy. The lady we got him off assured us that he was great with kids and that he'd been around her 2 1/2 year old son.
When we went to see him it was all a bit strange. The other rescue places we'd been in touch with came to inspect our house and bought the dog to our house, but this lady didn't care what our yard was like, wouldn't bring him to our house and when we went to see the dog she wanted us to take him straight away. Silly us thought nothing of it.
She said that she wanted us to take him straight away so that it was less disruption for him because he'd been from his foster carers house to her house and if we didn't take him straight away he'd have to go back to his foster carers house (the foster carer was there when we saw him and he had only been at the rescue lady's house for about 1/2 an hour so I'm not sure why she thought it'd be too much disruption for him).
I told her my main concern was if he'd be okay with the boys (who were both with us) and she said that he's fine with kids and has spent time around young children and babies.
Taking him straight away was really inconvenient as we had nothing for him. No food, no bed, no lead etc. Tiger had to go to the shops to get everything for him that afternoon. Another thing that should have rung alarm bells for us is that when we called to ask what food he ate, she said that she didn't know!
We got Chester home and he was a beautiful, gentle dog but he wasn't at all interested in the boys, he wanted to spend all his time with me. This was contrary to what the rescue lady had told us, so we figured that he might just need time to settle in.
It didn't take us long to realize that she hadn't been honest with us and that Chester had spent little to no time around young children. As a result of this, Chai was scared of him (Chester was not at all aggressive towards him). He also had fleas.
By Friday we'd realised that Chester wasn't the dog for us and we arranged to return him. Part of getting a rescue puppy is that you get a two week trial and if it doesn't work out you get your money back. When Tiger dropped Chester off, the lady told us that we wouldn't get our money back until Chester had been re-homed!
As you can imagine, we were not at all happy with that. We didn't have the cash on us when we'd picked up Chester so she'd asked us to pay it off her vet bill, which we did. We contacted the vet and they said that they would give us the money back but it wouldn't happen until Tuesday because of the long weekend.
When Tiger dropped Chester off he mentioned that he hadn't been very good with kids and her reply was "well he hasn't spent any time around kids"! If we'd known that we never would have taken him! I have no idea why she'd lie to us about something like that.
We are both really annoyed with how the rescue lady handled things and we won't be dealing with her again. It would have been awfully unsettling for Chester and it's extremely irresponsible to lie to people about how much contact an animal has had with young children. I hate to think how things could have turned out, thankfully nothing awful happened.
As if that wasn't bad enough, Tuesday Tiger rang the vet to make sure our refund was going through and he got another lady who said that they couldn't issue us a refund. Tiger then contacted the rescue lady to give her our account details and ask her to put the money into our account. She'd previously said that she had an adoption on Tuesday night and she'd give the money to us then. When Tiger contacted her she said the adoption was Thursday. He questioned her on that so she abused him and accused him of threatening her! Thankfully this was all via sms and Tiger has kept the messages just in case she tries anything else dodgy.
She's also said that she'll do her best to make sure we can't get another rescue dog. Really? Considering the way she's dealt with us I'm assuming she doesn't have a great reputation, so I doubt anyone will take any notice of her. If they do and we can't get a rescue dog we'll buy a puppy from a breeder, which defeats everything that the rescue places are all about.
The whole thing has been a learning experience and as a result we've now decided that we won't get a dog until Eljay is walking. We also won't be dealing with this lady again!
Unfortunately we will also be very hesitant about getting a rescue dog as it's been so difficult. From places not calling us back to this, I think we'll just contact a breeder when we want a puppy.
