Complaint Review: Sheila Rush Rush Kennels

There had been a Personal Emergency which effected the family and entire staff. Sheila Rush has a dedicated staff of people who have been there for more than five years each. They were all effected by the emergency and thus it took a few more days to receive the puppy. I received the puppy, HEALTHY, BEAUTIFUL, HAPPY HAPPY PUPPY. He is HEALTHY and will be a welcome addition to the family. SHEILA RUSH did a GREAT JOB and PROVIDED A HEALTHY HAPPY PUPPY as I had paid for.

I am very satisfied and I recommend RUSH KENNELS to everyone.

THere had been a family emergency which was unavoidable. Since she has dedicated employees who have been with her for over five years each, they all were effected by the occurrance. When I found out, Ifelt terrible. Upon their return, I received my puppy promply and professionally. They even sent extra items which I did not order to make sure I was happy. Plus they provided an incentive to me. I can not say enough how great that Sheila Rush and her employees are. They are dedicated to providing the best that there is for puppies to the public. They are as dedicated to the puppies as they are to Sheila Rush. Sheila must be an exceptional Lady, Employer to have so many employees as dedicated. The puppy is cute, adorable and everything that I wanted.

As a Cattery Owner myself it is truly sad that there are stories like this one around every corner. Now I'm not saying that this Kennel is actually fraudulant or that they mean to rip anyone off, however after viewing their website I did come across a red flag or two. The first one being that they not only except but encourage deposits being paid before the litter is ever born. That is a huge red flag or atleast it is to me. The reason I say this is because being we are talking about living things, we can't control 1 when and if a female will come in season, 2 we can't control the number of pups that will be born and 3 we surly can't control the color or sex of each pup born.

So because of these reason I strongly feel you should never except nor should you ever place a deposit on a kitten or puppy before it is born because what happens is you will always have someone's money yet they won't have a puppy because either 1 not enough were born and they just happen to be the unlucky ones to have placed their deposit last, 2 the sex or color they wanted wasn't delivered there for again the kennel has their money yet they have no puppy and 3 the chances of your having to wait month after month is truly high because of the other two reasons I have already listed.

Now lets talk about there not being any pictures of the breeding adults or the available puppies on their site? I don't know about you but I find this weird as well. I could be very wrong here and if I am please accept my apologies, however atleast for those of us who own Catteries and breed Cats, we have on our sites all of our breeding adults as well as kittens we have available and if we don't have any available then we list litters we plan to have along with pics and pedigree's of parents for the potential kitten buyer to look at and research. Then you don't even find out the cost of the puppy until you click on the pay deposit link which you then are told the cost of the puppy from the page with paypal.

Now mind you their deposit's being non refundable is standard practice I admit unless the breeder is for what ever reason unable to deliver you the choosen kitten, but when you are putting a deposit on an animal not yet born you don't have this safety net and because you are putting a deposit on an animal not yet born you really also have no time frame in which you should be delivered your puppy which again allows the kennel to keep you hanging as long as they like because after all you knew when you placed the deposit that the puppy wasn't yet born therefor you understood there was a chance your puppy wouldn't be born in that litter.

Now lets talk about this situation, the kennel was contacted by an interested puppy buyer, contact was made and a picture of an actual available puppy was sent via email at which time a deposit was placed. Now normal expectations would be that if this puppy was being shipped via any major airline the puppy couldn't be flown prior to 16 weeks once he/she could recieve their rabies vaccined so lets say the puppy was 3 weeks old Feburary 8th as this report says. Now you would expect the puppy to be ready to be shipped May 9th and being today is only April 28th the puppy wouldn't be ready for shipping just yet, however it was said that the puppy would be delivered via a personal carrier so I would expect the puppy to be ready for it's new home lets say at 12 weeks so which would be April 11th, now that is if the dates and age given in the report are accurate.

Now with kittens we don't allow them to leave before 10 weeks old but the average age is about 12 which allows them atleast two set of vaccines before leaving if started at 9 weeks, yet some breeders start their vaccines at 6 weeks so therefor the kitten leaving at 12 weeks would have all three sets of vaccines prior to leaving if they didn't need to be shipped. Now if I am not mistaken I do believe on average puppies are released much sooner then kittens if not needing to be shipped and I have seen puppies released as young as 6 weeks but lets say puppies not needing shipping are released at 9 weeks which would have been around March 21st?

So I guess my problem with this kennel is the fact that this buyer still doesn't have their puppy? By the time they recieve their puppy he/she will no longer be a puppy but a teenager. The whole purpose of buying a puppy is to have a puppy not a teenager? Now it being said that the delay in delivering the puppy was due to unforseen circumstances of a personal nature I believe that this kennel owner could have stated this to the buyer after their numerous attempts to get in contact with the owner, not to mention I truly feel that because it was on the kennels end there was a delay in delivery, I feel the kennel owner should have been the one calling the buyer and explaining the situation and the buyer shouldn't have been put in a position to have to call and call the seller regarding their puppy.

Now as I stated at the start of this post I do not know if this kennel owner was fraudulant or meant to rip the buyer off, however there were many flags that should have jumped out. Again their being no pictures of adults or puppies on their site that are available, 2 their asking you to put a non refundable deposit on a puppy not yet born and 3 when doing business with someone you don't know you should always, always do your homework on the business and had you simply typed in the owners name or the kennel name on google you would have come across other reports about this kennel and could have made a more informed decision weather or not you wanted to do business with this kennel.

In closing I am happy that things should come to a close by the end of this week and you should have your dog, however I do suggest next time should there be a next time please do your research on the kennel prior to putting a deposit because it is situations like these that give a bad name to all breeders and it just isn't fair but like they say, one bad apple spoils the bunch. Good Luck with your new dog and I do hope I don't come back here next week only to read something else has delayed the delivery of your dog.

Rush Kennels called me and is sending me the dog. They told me that there was a delay in sending the dog. They told me that there had been an unforeseen issue which was personal that had put everything on hold for two weeks. I will receive the dog this last week of April 2008.