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Justice for Oreo

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We find ourselves on GoFundMe to find Justice for our little Oreo and others like us.

Our Story

We are a young couple living on the Kent Coast and enjoy taking in the scenery on long walks, for a long time something has been missing, we’re settled enough to have kids but don’t want to rush into having them until we are 100% ready, so we chose to take on the next best thing, someone to love and care for in the same way and decided on a puppy.

After weeks of trawling through puppy adverts and with a limited budget we found an advert for a Cocker Spaniel/ Shitzu Puppy and started making enquiries with the seller via text, sure enough within a few minutes we were having a conversation over the phone. Everything seemed perfect, microchipped, jabs, wormed and paperwork all in order with the seller also dropping the price from £900 to £850 it was simply meant to be! Wasn’t it?

The seller said that he had one puppy left and was happy to meet us for a viewing. We hopped straight in the car and drove the 115 miles to meet the seller in Buckinghamshire. Arriving at the given destination we made contact with the seller who claimed that he was running errands, would be with us in 10 minutes and to wait by the school as the elderly neighbours were getting upset at visitors during the Covid-19 pandemic! Somewhat naively we believed his reasoning and waited so as not to upset the neighbours, sure enough he arrived a short time later, we asked to meet the mum and he said that’ll mean going to the house and said it wasn’t possible, he got out a beautiful baby boy puppy from the car and presented him to us…



We fell in love instantly, how could we not! He hurriedly put the papers into our hands and took his £850, we should have smelt a rat but with misty eyes we got in our car and drove straight home.

On the journey back we inspected the paperwork and realised that the puppy, now named Oreo was in fact a Jack Russell and not a Shitzu/ Cocker cross as previously advertised. We don’t pretend that we have any knowledge of what a puppy looks like but we had this little ball of joy with us now and we would love him regardless of his breed.

He was beautiful, our goal realised and life changed for the better, we had something to love and care for as much as each other. We immediately contacted the vets to get him booked in for a health check and then took him to meet our families. They too fell in love but noticed how small he was so we reached out to the vets again giving our families feelings on his age.

To their credit the vets contacted us back almost immediately and we took him in, they confirmed he was only approximately 6 weeks old, wasn’t microchipped and that his injections paperwork was also likely to be false, they asked the duty-bound question would we like him returned to the seller, knowing what we did then the answer was a simple no, how could we contemplate returning Oreo to this breeder, a breeder that duped us, effectively falsely advertising everything about him.

6 days into Oreo’s story we found ourselves with a very lethargic little boy who then started being sick, we rushed him to the vets and left him in their capable hands, a short while later receiving a call saying that he had perked up with treatment but that he was still very ill. The wait was agonising although very short as a couple of hours later we received the call that no one wants, Oreo is unable to breathe and will pass away, could they have consent to euthanise him to make sure he doesn’t suffer anymore.

We were heartbroken, what do we do now? We have to get him and give him the send-off he deserves, we arranged his cremation and an hour later he was collected ready for committal.


This is how Oreo was returned to us a day after cremation...
 

So what next?

Wanting to channel our anger and upset into something constructive we have decided that no others should be subjected to what we have gone through and here we are today 4 days since Oreo’s passing.

So many of the sales websites like the ones we looked through have no way of verifying the seller, small puppy breeders aren’t regulated in any way until they have more than 3 litters in a year or advertising themselves as a business breeder.

The law simply doesn’t cover anyone outside of that! Although there is plenty of guidance out there as to the do’s and don’ts there is no accountability and a lot of the sales websites just verify the email address of a seller leaving no paper trail whatsoever.

How are we going to effect change?

We plan to construct a website for trustworthy sellers of unregulated and regulated pets alike, whether you fall into a regulated category or not our aim is to provide a website for sellers and buyers to be contactable before and after pet sales,.

We plan to collect data from both parties which will allow for both to be contacted in the event of a problem or just a kind update of how the pet is getting on, identification and address verification will be a requirement along with the uploading of an individual photograph of each pet to be sold, each advert will then be looked over by a moderator who will then approve or decline the advert after carefully considering all of the guidance given.

Buyers will be able to set alerts to receive a notification as a new seller lists their pet, their feedback will be readily available along with contact options directly from opt-in lists.

Our site will have a re-homing / adoption area which will be accessible to everyone, we plan to match pets to owners based on criteria set by the owner and suggest matches using criteria similar to that of human dating sites. 

Our site will also have a reporting feature which will include facilities for instant upload of reports to be passed on to local authorities and the RSPCA.

That’s it, we truly believe we can change the face of pet sales by doing this, it’s a simple plan and it should solve a lot of the heartache faced by all of the buyers with good intention.

What will the money be used for?

Funding from this page will be used to design a platform for users to be able to sell from, then used to fund the upkeep short term of the site during early stages of development.

Thank you for taking the time to read Oreo’s story and we hope you can help us create this website by donating via GoFundMe and help buyers and sellers across the country buy and sell pets in safe accountable environment.

Our website will be: www.buyapet.co.uk a safe place for pet lovers across the UK

Organizer

Bradley Linton
Organizer

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