Complaint Review: House Of Pets Christine Smith allmaltese.com - Chattanooga Tennessee

I bought a teacup maltese from Christine Smith. While searching online for dogs, I came accross allmaltese.com. I saw a female puppy, but it only had a description on the page with the price of $1400 and a box that said "picture coming soon". I saw the picture of a male puppy next to the females description and he looked nice, so I called to get more information on the female puppy. A man answered the phone and said the female was $1600 and that she should be about 3-4 lbs. I asked about coming to pick up the dog and if that would be a problem. I also told him that I would talk to my boyfriend and then call back. I called back about an hour later to let him know that I was interested in purchasing the puppy. At first I told him that I wanted to come pick the puppy up, but then asked him about flying the puppy and he told me that I would have to wait a week and about 2 days bc it is against the law to fly dogs before they are 6 weeks. I actually agreed to that bc I didnt want an unhealthy puppy. He called me back 5 min later to tell me that Christine(the breeder) would actually drive the puppy down to me either on Saturday or Sunday for the same shipping price of $225. I told her that was fine. I then asked if she would take AMEX as a form of payment through paypal and she quickly denied that and said that she would only take western union as a form of payment. I had to call my boyfriend back to discuss that bc he wanted to pay for the dog with his AMEX and western union doesnt take AMEX. We had a couple of problems with western union because they would only take MC and they would only let us wire $1000 a month max. and the dog costs $1825 total. Since we were having so many problems with payment for the dog, Christine took $100 of the price since it costs $80 to wire half the money. She finally came out to say that we could give her the other $725 when she would come to drop off the dog in Florida. Come Saturday, I called her around 11am to find out what time she would be in Florida. She said around 6pm or 7pm and that she would call me when she got to the FL/GA border. She called around 5pm that night when she arrived in Florida. She said that she wanted to get a hotel room and give the dog a bath bc the dog was dirty from the box the dog was in and so she would call me in about 2 hours for her to clean the dog up so that I could come get her. She called me at 7pm to say that she was at the Budget Inn on Tennessee St. in Tallahassee, FL, room 103 and that I could come pick up the dog. Immediatley after arriving to the hotel, my boyfriend and I walked into a ciggarette smoke filled hotel room where the puppy was. There in the room was Christine, a man(probably her boyfriend), and her son was in the bathroom. She handed me the puppy and the puppy was damp bc she didnt have a blow dryer to dry the puppy after her bath. I noticed that the puppy was coughing a little bit as well. At that time, I was kind of unsure about the whole transaction because the puppy didnt seem to be well taken care of. Christine took out a paper with a name of some type of dewormer that the dog has been given, but showed no record of any other shots. Also, this was not an official document with a vets signature or name anywhere on it. Christine then said that she "forgot" the puppies AKC registration papers at her house in Tennessee and that she would mail them as soon as she got back. It even made me more skeptical when I saw the birthdate of the puppy on the papers and it said 10/14. The man on the phone told me that the puppy wasnt even 6 weeks old, but these papers show that she is almost 8 weeks old. This made me even more skeptical. Seeing that we had already Western Unioned the $1000 and she had already picked up the money, we went ahead and took the dog home and hoped that everything would be ok with the dog. Her website says that if we get the dog checked out by a vet within 3 business days and mail her the papers within 30 days of purchase, that she will guarantee the life of the puppy for one year. We purchased the puppy from Christine on Saturday 12/10/05 and had the puppy checked out immediately on Monday 12/12/05. The doctor said that he had done a fecal test and that the results would be ready on Tuesday 12/13/05 and that she has the beginning of an upper respiratory infection. He told us that it ok to take her home, but to really watch her bc it could get bad and to bring her in if it worsened. On Monday night after bringing her home from the vet, the dog looked pitiful. She looked drained and was really starting to cough and wasnt eating and she just seemed really sick. Tuesday morning I brought her in and the doctor said that he had to keep her there because she was really sick. Later that day, I went to visit her hoping that she could go home and the vet told me that she had gotten worse. I told him that I just got the puppy on Saturday and asked him if there was anything that I could have done to cause this sickness and he said NO. He said that the upper respiratory infection has been there and that her problem with her inflamed intestines was from being around other dogs and she probably got it from being around the other litter of puppies that were sick too. This was just the beginning of sickness for this puppy. Everyday I emailed Christine to give her an update of how the puppy was doing and her answer to every email was "if a puppy is sick and not getting better within 24-48 hours, then that puppy needs to be put to sleep". I thought she was crazy to say that. I told the vet what she suggested and he said absolutely NOT. The puppy ended up staying in the vets office from Tuesday thru Friday afternoon. Friday night my mom had to rush the puppy to emergency care because she just fell limp and wasnt responding. She stayed overnight and the next morning we took the puppy back to our vet, in which she stayed there from Saturday morning untill Tuesday afternoon. We would go visit the puppy everyday and she looked horrible. It was really hard seeing a 1 pound puppy look so bad. The total vet costs (without initial visit) was about $1586.00. I didnt think it was fair that Christine sold us a sick puppy, so I emailed her the costs of the vet bill and she replied. We DO NOT PAY VET BILLS that YOU choose to incur. She also said that if I knew the dog was getting sick that I should have returned the puppy after the first vet visit. Unfortunatley that is insane because the puppy was in critical condition and had about a 2 hour window of dying. Im not sure what she expected me to do? Just let the puppy die and then get another sick puppy from her. Absolutely not! She still has not mailed me the AKC papers that she promised almost 2 weeks ago. She is not a fit breeder and does not stick behind her puppies. She just so happens to be unavailable when I call and her boyfriend answers the phone. All I am asking is that she helps with the Vet costs seeing that she illnesses that the puppy had was pre-existing before I got her.

Christy

QUINCY, Florida
U.S.A.