| Mad About Manipulative Breeders
This has a bit of backstory to it, please bear with me. A year ago April my babysitter's 20 year-old son was in a serious car accident that left him with severe head trauma. They were almost ready to call him DOA at the hospital, but a neurosurgeon was available to put a shunt in his head to take care of the swelling on his brain. If that surgery wouldn't have taken place immediately upon arrival, he would have died. He's still in a coma, although it is very light; the kind you can come out of at any time. They've tried everything to get him to wake up -- therapy, Ambien, all kinds of brain injury treatments I just can't fully understand or explain, everything. Nothing has worked.
Now for the breeder part. It turns out that one the parents who used to their kids to my babysitter and still keeps in touch breeds half-poodle/half bichon (I think. Something toy, anyway), and has trained therapy dogs in the past. Over the past six months she has daily tried to convince my babysitter that it would be a good idea to get her son one of these mutts (note: I'm not using mutt in a derogatory manner, just calling these dogs what they are. "Designer dogs" my eye) and get it trained up to be a therapy dog. Now the longer the coma has gone on, the more desperate the family has gotten, and they finally gave in to this woman. They paid $450 for a little female puppy they're going to let her train to be a therapy dog, which is going to cost them more money. I am so mad that this breeder has totally taken advantage of people in this way. She has preyed upon people who in a less desperate situation would have never taken this kind of path. I wish I could smack her.
At least my babysitter and her family have had dogs in the past, care for their animals well, and will spoil this little pup even if she doesn't help their cause. But still, there's another breeder profit made. I just want to cry I'm so angry about this.  | 
04-09-08, 11:36 am
