E tells me I need to stop reading the pet ads on craigslist. Maybe he's right; more often than not, reading the ads on this site exasperates me and in some cases, drives me berserk. Last summer I read an ad for a guy looking for a male box turtle to mate with his female. Imagine my shock when the picture he posted to display his turtle was actually a picture of my Molly! After I contacted him and ripped him a new one, he apologized and immediately took the ad down. It was a positive outcome but it was the beginning of my increasingly negative attitude toward craigslist posters.
I originally thought it was a great concept: taking advantage of a large internet audience to find animals new homes. Unfortunately, a disproportionate number of the people offering animals for "rehoming" (the Craigslist euphemism for "selling") are not people I would personally choose to get an animal from. For a number of reasons.
Person type #1 is basically ignorant--they are offering "purebread" dogs for reasonable prices. Forgive me for being a snob but I refuse to take a dog from any breeder who incorrectly spells their breed's name. I have seen just about every possible combination of letters for chihuahua, not to mention the ever-popular "german shepphard" and "shit zoo". Person type #1 often finds terms associated with responsible breeding confusing as well; male dogs have been "spade" and female dogs are often "nuttered." Sometimes these types offer hybrid dogs (a blending of 2 pure, but different breeds) and say these pups will even come with papers! Yeah, newspapers!
Person type #2 is a blatant backyard breeder. This person slyly tries to hide the fact that it is the 2nd time this year that he offered pups for sale by posting his ads under different aliases. Maybe you should also change your contact information and the contact person's name. And yes, we recognize the pictures you posted of the parents from the last time.
Person type #3 is a heartless idiot; the worst kind. As you can imagine, this is the biggest group. These people range from those who buy a puppy and a week later offer it for rehoming because "I didn't realize how much work a young puppy is" to those who rehome established pets because they suddenly find out they are pregnant, moving, losing a job, getting a divorce, allergic, or dumber than their pets. I understand that sometimes there are true, unforeseen emergencies (like a pregnant woman being put on bed rest) but the odds just don't seem to match the proportion of ads of this nature. In fact, in the year and a half that I have been reading craigslist, this group seems to have grown exponentially; an unwelcome sign of the growing idiot population. Why do so many people consider animals to be disposable?
Normally, I hate to call people by derogatory names but when it comes to the mistreatment of animals, I will make an exception. Just call a spayed a spade.
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