7 years ago mum, naively, was spurned by a puppy farmer. You can look them up Kottage Kennels, though be warned, the pictures are horrible. Word locally in the dog community (DP has a standard poodle from a responsible breeder, and is involved with the community) is that he’s moved on from the Kottage Kennels brand and works from somewhere unknown, but a lot of the Pets4Homes listings in the area are apparently from him.
He’s likely part of a large betwork these days, using fake family homes as fronts. The front for my mums puppy was that it was apparently bred by two happy, healthy working Spaniel dogs on a farm. Turns out, the puppy farmer had borrowed a real farmhouse with land, had taken mum and pups there, and another male dog, and made it appear like they all lived there (for the sake of selling the pups), and not in a delapidated barn by the motorway. Her Spaniel puppy, (believed to be 8 weeks), died 5 days after coming home. It suddenly let out and agonising scream, had a fit, and dropped dead. It suffered. My mum had bought the puppy as a comfort after losing my dad, and having an incredibly tough time, and this incident left her absolutely traumatised.
She immediately rushed the dead puppy to a vet for answers. So many issues I can’t even list, but had a huge, swollen, painful looking belly from worms and a very excessive amount of eye discharge. It was also only 4 weeks old. My mum chose not to do autopsy.
On Sunday, on Facebook, a family friend posted a video of her kid receiving a puppy for their birthday. It’s an upsetting video. Puppy is in a box in the front garden (in these temperatures ffs!!!!), with paper over it, and they spend 5 minutes in their toasty living room playing a game with the kid (to guess the present) whilst the fucking dog freezes outside. Kid eventually clocks it’s a puppy, and runs outside screeching at the top of their lungs, yanks the pup out of the box, and then proceed to bicker with their siblings about holding it.
I was already incensed, but it gets worse. Later on they posted more pics and I recognise the distended belly as a worm belly, and it is no way an 8 week old pup. It’s a Sheepadoodle apparently.
I have messaged her, but she hasn’t seen it yet. I haven’t told her my true thoughts, because I expect I’d be blocked and not listened to, I’ve just said “His belly looks wormy” and framed it as friendly advice. I cannot believe the fucking stupidity. I don’t know for sure if it’s the same people my mum got her dog from but that doesn’t make a difference tbf. In 2016 I admit even I hadn’t heard of puppy farming, and my mum certainly hadn’t, but it’s 2022 now and there’s been lots of press on it and high profile incidents. There’s no excuse!