To be annoyed people still buy/sell animals on gumtree

lastqueenofscotland · 2017-11-22T10:10:22+00:00

A girl who I am friendly with has proudly announced yesterday she went to see a dog she saw on gumtree... spotted it and went to see it the same day. Designer cross breed. Never owned a dog, works full time, didn't see any parents of the puppy, literally turned up, thought it was cute handed over the money and took it home. Owns nothing for the dog... now 24 later panicking about what the poor 9 week old thing is going to do home alone for 10 hours a day [sad] Aibu to wonder why the hell people STILL do this?!

c3pu · 22/11/2017 10:13

Unfortunately you can't fix stupid.

Ellendegeneres · 22/11/2017 10:18

10 hours?? A 9 week old? Fucks sake, that poor puppy.
I think I'd be less concerned about where people buy them and more concerned over how little thought people put into bringing a baby animal home and it's ongoing care.
At 9weeks it will be too young to have had its jabs, so won't be suitable for doggy day care, best she can hope for is to find someone to rehome the puppy to or someone who is home all day and prepared to do her job- toilet train it and play/keep it company all day.

MargaretCavendish · 22/11/2017 10:19

Gumtree itself isn't really the problem, though, is it? If it didn't exist she wouldn't have suddenly become a responsible dog owner who did lots of research into proper breeding practices (or, better still, just went to a rescue). There are lots of ways in which people breed and buy irresponsibly; the internet has probably made it easier, but not created the issue. If Gumtree stopped accepting animal listings it wouldn't suddenly go away.

Original poster

lastqueenofscotland · 22/11/2017 10:20

Margaret I agree but i think in this case the Internet made an impulse buy a lot easier.
I feel so sorry for the poor mite

OP posts:

mustbemad17 · 22/11/2017 10:24

There's a massive campaign amongst rescue folk atm to ban the sale of animals on sites like scumtree & Facebook. It is far too easy for somebody to find an ad, pick up a dog or cat etc & then use the poor soul for baiting. On top of that you get idiots like your friend who buy a dog on a whim.

I'd love to see the day when online buying/selling of animals is banned completely. But then to do that we'd have to get rid of bastard ByB & pet peddlars. No doubt that poor 9 week old pup will end up back online because she doesn't know what to do with it

MargaretCavendish · 22/11/2017 10:31

Yes, I can see the impulse side to it - that is a very fair objection.

We actually got our older cat off Gumtree, which I'm not proud to admit - he was 'free to a good home' because they desperately needed to rehome him. He was an adult (and a moggie), not a kitten. The woman rehoming him did want to see our house before she'd agree to us taking him, so I think she was trying her best to make sure he wasn't going somewhere dodgy - she also asked for text updates on him for about a month after we took him (though obviously couldn't have done much if we hadn't sent them). Of course the first thing we did was take him to the vet for a full check-up, and it turned out he wasn't as up-to-date with his jabs as she'd claimed, but otherwise well. I am glad we have our little darling now, but of course she didn't really know where he was going, so while our story ends well it's hard to disagree that it's not a great idea in general. I think she genuinely didn't know what else to do, though - she said she'd asked a local shelter and they'd told her they were full.

mustbemad17 · 22/11/2017 10:36

That's the other side to the problem; rescue places are full to bursting. I have ended up with all sorts of animals in my house because owners would not wait either for a rescue space or for a rescue to find a foster/adopter.

To say we are meant to be a nation of animal lovers, we really suck on the whole

MrsA2015 · 22/11/2017 10:40

My mum was browsing gumtree and saw a kitten who she thought looked abused so she bought him. He was riddled with fleas and underweight. Usually have rescue cats but this time none were FIV so she couldn’t take any others as she needs and indoor cat due to living arrangements

foxinthegarden · 22/11/2017 10:41

No YANBU. I desperately want to see the day that platforms like gumtree and Facebook finally banned the selling of animals. No one should ever be permitted to advertise a living creature on platforms like these. I work in rescue and we constantly have to step in to stop vulnerable dogs being advertised as either free or cheap because a high number of scumbags will constantly monitor these sites looking for free/cheap dogs to use as dog bait in dog fighting. Unfortunately we can only help when we have capacity and when the owners won't try to hold out on us and manipulate a rescue shelter into a bidding war, so we lose a lot and I dread to think what happens to them.

It's a vile practice and tends to attract either genuinely malicious buyers or just uneducated idiots who think they can get an animal and then leave it to fend for itself all day while they go work or fail to meet it's basic needs. (No offence intended to those few responsible owners out there who have found their animal this way, but as a general rule it attracts people who shouldn't own animals in the first place.)

MargaretCavendish · 22/11/2017 10:42

I have ended up with all sorts of animals in my house because owners would not wait either for a rescue space or for a rescue to find a foster/adopter.

To be fair to the original owner of our cat (who I felt very sorry for - she was in floods of tears when she left him, and her messages in the months afterwards were upsetting) she just couldn't wait - as far I could glean it, it seemed like her relationship had broken down leaving her in a wretched financial state and she was living in her mum's house temporarily as her only option, and her mum wanted the cat gone ASAP. She seemed to be completely desperate - she clearly adored him, seemed to be going through a terrible time generally, and I think was frantic about what to do about the cat.

Ilovelampandchair · 22/11/2017 10:47

I got my cat and my dog off gumtree. The cat I had a lot of competition for, she was/is an absolute beauty and came about because someone's pure bread escaped and got pregnant😅 The owner chose me because she liked the sound of my set up. It is a very lucky cat.

The dog is a purebred, amazing dog. Perfect enough for showing and has a wonderful temperament. I had to meet the breeder (he wanted to get me), detail my home etc. and from my perspective I had to see the dog with its mum (and grandmother and siblings) in its home.

Gumtree is just a tool. You can be responsible using it as a buyer and as a seller.

Ilovelampandchair · 22/11/2017 10:48

Get me= vet me.

MargaretCavendish · 22/11/2017 10:48

No offence intended to those few responsible owners out there who have found their animal this way, but as a general rule it attracts people who shouldn't own animals in the first place

If that was for me then no offence taken - as I said, I'm not proud of it. I do think we're responsible owners, but I've learned much more about the buying and selling of animals on Gumtree since then (we've had our cat two years) and have felt worse and worse about participating in it, even though, as I said, I think in our case it ended happily.

We had originally gone to a shelter, who told us that they don't rehome to our housing estate because they think the roads are too busy. Literally every other house on our road has a cat, and we live near a busyish road, but it's not the M25 or anything! As it turns out our boy doesn't leave the garden anyway - he's a scaredy cat! - but it did seem a bit overzealous to insist that our entire (large) estate should be a cat free zone. That was, incidentally, the same shelter as his owner approached and was told they were too full to help.

Ilovelampandchair · 22/11/2017 10:49

Actually I think gumtree should add warnings and guidelines for buying and selling animals clearly on their site. I don't remember seeing them. But some tick boxes before seeing the info that people have to read might be helpful to the uninformed.

rightsaidfrederickII · 22/11/2017 13:19

YABU and YANBU - to a certain extent it depends on the species

All of my small furries have been Scumtree (or Shpock) rescues, FTGH or a token sum. They've all come in tiny cages with next to no enrichment and invariably crap food. One was being kept in a bucket FFS. They're now in massive cages with plenty of enrichment and top quality food. Invariably they're in that situation because Pets at Home (and for some reason it always seems to be Pets at Home) allow people to purchase live animals on impulse and, lo and behold, the kids get bored and the animals get dumped. Small animal rescues can be few and far between- many dog rescues won't touch them - and there are few other options for rehoming.

I'd never sell an animal via Gumtree but for certain species I'd advocate it over going to a pet shop and adding to overpopulation. For a dog? No, you'd have to be mad as there's so much more that can go wrong.

In the small animal world, pet shops are far worse for impulse purchases as they actively wave live animals under people's noses (even though they might only have gone in for cat litter) and actively misadvise on welfare requirements (e.g. Cage size). At least with Scumtree there's at least a few hours cooling off period between enquiring and collection, and you usually have to go out of your way. In Pets at Home you could go from seeing the animal to walking out with it in 15 minutes. I don't like Scumtree but I fucking hate Pets at Home.

mustbemad17 · 22/11/2017 13:39

PaH are also scraping the barrel when it comes to advocating decent animal welfare, am in agreement there!

ThymeLord · 22/11/2017 13:53

Gumtree is just a tool. You can be responsible using it as a buyer and as a seller

Couldn't disagree more with this statement. Responsible pet owners, who actually care about the welfare of animals, including the parents of their "pure bred" pets, do not buy them off websites like gumtree.

rightsaidfrederickII · 22/11/2017 15:33

Couldn't disagree more with this statement. Responsible pet owners, who actually care about the welfare of animals, including the parents of their "pure bred" pets, do not buy them off websites like gumtree.

There is a whole world of difference between buying from a backyard breeder (bad on so many levels) and rescuing an unwanted pet that a child has got bored of

WhatATimeToBeAlive · 22/11/2017 15:42

Also, if the pup's parents weren't present you can pretty much guarantee that the dog came from a puppy farm and Gumtree is where a lot of these scum sell the dogs. If people didn't buy them there wouldn't be a market for them.

vestedintern · 22/11/2017 15:43

Is it something about the online-ness which worries people, or is it all advertising of pets for sale which is the problem?

As far as I can see Gumtree is just an electronic equivalent of the small ads in the local paper - are they just as bad?

MargaretCavendish · 22/11/2017 15:44

There is a whole world of difference between buying from a backyard breeder (bad on so many levels) and rescuing an unwanted pet that a child has got bored of

Yes, I'd agree with this too. When we were looking for our cat there were a million 'kitten £50' or 'pedigree kitten £400' adverts that we completely ignored as we had no interest in paying money to people who were irresponsibly breeding for profit; by getting an adult moggie being offered for free it was pretty clear that the person we were getting him off was legitimately trying to rehome a pet. It was in fact us who were the risk in that scenario (luckily we turned out not to be!).

missladybird · 22/11/2017 15:50

I got a kitten from gumtree because rescues were unwilling to let me rescue one because I have a dc under 5.

ThymeLord · 22/11/2017 16:11

You have no way of knowing whether you are 'rescuing' a pet that children have got bored of, or, as is far more likely, lining the pockets of a puppy farm or BYB. Responsible breeders just do not sell their animals on gumtree or facebook or similar.

mummymeister · 22/11/2017 16:20

I regularly buy chickens on gumtree and through various local facebook pages. I wouldn't buy a larger or more longer living animal. but, to be honest, you cant go wrong with poultry - we mite treat them anyway wherever they are from.

so can understand some animals being banned but not others. that would then make it difficult to police. so I suppose on balance I wouldn't want a ban personally.

MargaretCavendish · 22/11/2017 16:23

You have no way of knowing whether you are 'rescuing' a pet that children have got bored of, or, as is far more likely, lining the pockets of a puppy farm or BYB. Responsible breeders just do not sell their animals on gumtree or facebook or similar.

Surely you do if you choose an adult pet? There aren't many breeders hanging to four year old mongrels, for instance! The price is also a good indication - anyone asking for more than a token contribution is probably not someone who is first and foremost concerned about finding a good home for a pet who they either can't or won't keep, and so best avoided.