"Adoption Day"

My two sisters, husband and I embarked on our journey to Oshawa in order to search for a puppy for adoption. The plan was to go to the Oshawa SPCA prior to the scheduled meeting at the home rescue, but we ran out of time. As we approached the home on Athol St., we all noticed the windows were boarded up on the main floor. My sisters wanted to leave immediately, but I said that would should keep our appointment to be fair. Anyways, I said, we are going to go to the SPCA right after so we will just scope things out first. What was located right across the street from her home gave me false reassurance that everything was legitimate: the Oshawa MPP office.
A cat stopped us in our trek up to the front door. There were two small crates sitting alongside, with blankets inside. Knocking on the door, astounding barking by several dogs began from a room on the left in the main hallway. The rescue owner greeted us and immediately lead us upstairs.

The first room we encountered contained two cats, along with cat food, toys and a scratching post. There were a few cats roaming in the hallway and climbing on top of a table in the centre of it. Three adorable black labs ran up to a gate blocking the doorway of the second room on the upper floor. Hmm....I thought to myself. There were only two black labs posted on the website, but never any mention that there were three all from the same litter...... Looking further into this room was an eye sore. There was newspaper everwhere and a very dirty couch that I thought I would never touch with a ten foot pole! I pet the labs for a couple of minutes, until I was beckoned to come over to the third room.

This was where the two lab/husky/shepp/collie mixes were that she had emailed me about the night before. Again, there was newspaper eveywhere. Dirty floors, dirty walls, dirty kennels. The dogs were cowering in the corner of the room underneath a tv. A couple of the cats proceeded to explore the room in our footsteps. The crazily barking dogs continued in the room below us. This is when I really felt distressed. The filth(you can see how dirty her place is in the above photo), noise and scared little faces was enough to tug at my heart. When the owner stepped out of the room to answer her phone, I turned to everyone and said I have to get them both out of here. There was no argument from my husband, he agreed right away. My sister said she would give me some money just to get them the hell out of there. When Melita returned I told her I wanted to take both puppies, but I said I could not pay the $700 she would require. I asked her how much I could pay her for both. She indicated that $500 would do. Due to the fact that I was originally only going to get one dog, I wasn't carrying enough money on me. Everyone took out whatever money they had and we came up with the $500.

All of us combined had never adopted a dog, so we really didn't know what the norm was in this situation. I thought $500 was a lot of money, especially since she had indicated she only rescued them the night previous. Then I quickly wiped this from my mind, since I reasoned that she could put this money to good use for other animals. I kept on telling myself that this woman really cared about the animals, and she continually mentioned how she did this for the love of animals. My sisters were not so easily convinced....
There was a great deal of talk....we believe to try to deflect any questions towards her. She indicated that all of her animals are vet checked. She told us that one of the loud dogs downstairs included a German Sheppard dog she had rescued that had behavioural problems. She stated she was trying to train him and see if she could place him in some type of law enforcement scenerio afterwards. Lifting up her arm, she showed us some bite marks she said resulted from working with this particular dog. It was then indicated that she would give the two pups an injection. She showed us a dewormer bottle, and so we were under the impression that this was what she was administering. We were told that their booster shot had been administered the night before.

We signed a contract, and a Lawrence-Brimley vet card was stapled to the top of the contract. She said that she deals with this clinic and highly recommends them. This inferred to us that this was the clinic that our dogs had been assessed at. We were given a blank piece of white paper with a distemper booster and leptospirosis vial label applied, with the date of the given vaccinations. I have now discovered that a leptospirosis vaccine is not usually given until 16 weeks of age!! Not all dogs even receive this to begin with!

Walking down the street with the nervous pups, we discussed how we would follow up with someone at the SPCA about the conditions of the home.

We started to worry about what kind of practices had just taken place