Leo's Story

One day in early February 2007 I was reading through the General Discussion forum on Dogzonline (DOL). To my despair I read about my friend, a Poodle breeder, who was trying desperately to get a dog she had once owned back from some people claiming to have rescued him.

I rang Sivaro and she told me what had happened.

The night before, she had received a strange phone call from some people in South Australia who had Leo, a Miniature Poodle, that once had belonged to her. They went on to say that he was dying from starvation and ill treatment. Sivaro gave them her email address and they sent her some horrific pictures of a severely emaciated dog with visible wounds and cuts. They then gave her a phone number to contact them. Sivaro became suspicious when she found that the phone number given was for a friend 100kms away from were they where. Sivaro gave me the phone number she had and asked if I could work out what was happening.

I rang the number given and got a pleasant sounding man, Robert, who said that he and Stephen had driven non-stop from Adelaide to Queensland to buy a heap of dogs, having already paid $1,700 for all of them. They took their dog trailer that had no partitions to protect the dogs from each other. Robert said that he had only just got into the dog breeding business and had built a big shed for the purpose of mass breeding. He said he was absolutely not a puppy farmer. He went on to say that when they got close to their destination he was instructed to go to a roadhouse where they were met by the Queensland man with the dogs. He said they were given 37 emaciated dogs, some pregnant. Leo was amongst those in the worst condition. They refused to pay for Leo, saying he was going to die anyway. The man told them to just take him for nothing because Leo was of no use to him as he believed he was going to die.

Robert said that on the way back they had a laugh when they bought some dry food and got some food scraps, lettuce and bread, etc., and threw it into the dog trailer with some water. He said the dogs just scoffed the food down fighting for whatever they could get. It was then a non-stop drive back to Adelaide.

They had received some papers with Leo, a vaccination certificate with Sivaro's name blotted out, some falsified vaccination papers and For Sale photos of Leo. He told me that Stephen and his wife held the certificate up to a light and where able to make out Sivaro's name and the vet she went to in Ballarat. They then rang Telstra and got her number. I find this hard to believe as Sivaro's number is a silent one and it is illegal for Telstra to give out a silent number. This is how Stephen apparently got Sivaro's number.

I asked Robert for Stephen's number to ask if I could have Leo. I was told that he couldn't get hold of Stephen. Meanwhile, Sivaro gave me a number for Stephen as he advertised on Petlink quite regularly. He often sold breeding pairs of dogs for the Designer Dog trade. I rang the South Australian Canine Association who gave me Stephen's kennel name...N________. He is a registered breeder of Pugs and Boxers.