Pet Flipping!

This morning, I woke up and grabbed my tablet, to see what I had missed last night on Facebook. As I was scrolling, there was a photo of the cutest dog with a for sale sign next to it. This post was from one of our local news stations. I stop and read what it had to say. It went on to talk about "Pet Flipping". If you are like me, you may not have heard about this. Let me do my best to explain. When someone loses a dog or worse, the dog gets stolen, people resell the dogs for a profit. I  never knew they had a name for this horrible crime. Being in the pet industry, you would think I would have.

I crawled out of bed and got onto my laptop to do some research on this subject. I invite you to google, Pet Flipping and see all the stories. I literally feel sick to my stomach after watching some videos and reading all the stories of this happening.

There was one family, who had lost their dog, they checked online and found a dog that looked like their family pet. They contacted the new owner, went to meet them and the dog. This was their family dog. The price tag to get their dog back, $900. So, they told the person that they had to go to the ATM to get cash. Instead they went to the police. This story has a happy ending, but how many other do?

Then I thought of the lost dog sign we had up at the Dog Wash. We had gone to pick out a pumpkin, at the pumpkin stand close to our house. You know, the ones where people live out of the fifth wheel for a few months (Pumpkins and Christmas trees sellers) We were in my car, which advertises the Dog Wash, They saw my advertisement and immediately told us their Old English Bulldog had been stolen from there. Now, it makes me wonder if it was a dog who has or would be flipped. Bulldogs are not a cheap breed as it is. They haven't got him back yet, that I know of. It is just so heart breaking.

My next question would have to be, what can we do to keep our animals safe? Tags on collars are easy to get rid of. Microchips seem like a good idea. But, it is only good if the person who finds your dog is honest.

I guess the best we can do is keep our pets as safe as possible.