Back in August my boyfriend bought me a Mini Rex buck when I was at a show buying breeding stock to start up in this breed. I was not with him while he was looking at rabbits, but I told him if he bought me a bunny to make sure it came with a pedigree or at least a partial so it could be worked out with breeding later. He found this REALLY cute buck in the sale barn and he told me it had a pedigree. I had another breeder come up to me seeing we were interested in this rabbit, the "seller" of this rabbit apparantly, and he told me the buck was from very reputable local breeders, King's, Comparts, and Import lines from Canada and that one of the best breeders himself told him that if anyone was going to buy a Mini Rex, the buck we were looking at was the one to get.
I always find it fishy when people don't have pedigrees of their sale rabbits at shows, I admit to doing it a few times because in the rush to get out of the house, I forget everything I need, but this guy had at least 10 rabbits for sale and not a single pedigree for any of them. I liked this buck though and the boyfriend insisted on buying him for me, so he did. I was told I'd get the pedigree in the mail and we actually did.
I showed and bred the buck and he's done very nicely and so far his babies look really good. After getting his babies, I decided I could let him go, so I advertised him for sale on our local group sales list. A lot of people were interested in him! I have a young friend who has recently started in Mini Rex who was online tonight browsing the list and reading through post's when he found one that was rather odd. I'm not going to mention names of posters or my young friend as a courtesy to them. My young friend contacted the poster about his post, as it referred to people in our area advertising rabbits for sale with pedigrees that he knew for a fact (I guess) didn't have pedigrees. Being the nervous youth that my friend is, he asked who he should avoid and what barn was selling these rabbits.
Turns out, it's my barn. It's my buck. My young friend put 2 and 2 together from what the poster informed him of and immediately contacted me with this information. I still don't know what's true or not, because the poster stated we were the ones that bought the rabbit from him, although I know the breeder, what he looks like, his name etc and this was not the person that we purchased the rabbit from. It was a bunny being sold in the sale barn, so perhaps someone else staked claim to such a nice looking animal, who knows what the real situation is because the person selling us the rabbit wasn't the actual breeder of the animal, I have no clue who bred this rabbit.
I showed and bred the buck and he's done very nicely and so far his babies look really good. After getting his babies, I decided I could let him go, so I advertised him for sale on our local group sales list. A lot of people were interested in him! I have a young friend who has recently started in Mini Rex who was online tonight browsing the list and reading through post's when he found one that was rather odd. I'm not going to mention names of posters or my young friend as a courtesy to them. My young friend contacted the poster about his post, as it referred to people in our area advertising rabbits for sale with pedigrees that he knew for a fact (I guess) didn't have pedigrees. Being the nervous youth that my friend is, he asked who he should avoid and what barn was selling these rabbits.
Turns out, it's my barn. It's my buck. My young friend put 2 and 2 together from what the poster informed him of and immediately contacted me with this information. I still don't know what's true or not, because the poster stated we were the ones that bought the rabbit from him, although I know the breeder, what he looks like, his name etc and this was not the person that we purchased the rabbit from. It was a bunny being sold in the sale barn, so perhaps someone else staked claim to such a nice looking animal, who knows what the real situation is because the person selling us the rabbit wasn't the actual breeder of the animal, I have no clue who bred this rabbit.
The big thing that appauls me about all of this, is at the end of it all, my young friend asked the poster if it would be alright that he contact me to let me know the buck I believed to be pedigreed wasn't, and that the pedigree must be fake or some really disastrous mix up occurred. The poster told him to simply pass on the rabbit, and not to say anything to me. This really hurt my feelings in a way, that other breeders wouldn't let me know what's going on with my own animals. I don't want to sell anyone a rabbit that isn't what it's advertised to be, and that was not my intention in this, I believed the animal was pedigreed and that is how I was selling him. For other people to know the truth that his animal has no pedigree and to not want to help me in any way and just let it slide is beyond my comprehension.
I get the feeling they want me to have a bad reputation and fail miserably, because they offered no help. As soon as I got off the phone I was in tears. Not only because the poster didn't want us to find out about our animal, but because someone sold us an animal falsely advertised as well. I don't want to do that to other people, and it turns out, someone did it to me. Which is just terrible, and I'm still shaking from the stress of this situation. If you are a reputable breeder and you find information of this going on, contact the person who is selling the animal! It will help everyone else out in the long run, even the person selling the animal. What hurts even more, is that all of my Mini Rex in the barn, come from this poster/breeder's lines, the very animals that I pride myself on having for those lines, are backed by a breeder who refused to help out another person.
I get the feeling they want me to have a bad reputation and fail miserably, because they offered no help. As soon as I got off the phone I was in tears. Not only because the poster didn't want us to find out about our animal, but because someone sold us an animal falsely advertised as well. I don't want to do that to other people, and it turns out, someone did it to me. Which is just terrible, and I'm still shaking from the stress of this situation. If you are a reputable breeder and you find information of this going on, contact the person who is selling the animal! It will help everyone else out in the long run, even the person selling the animal. What hurts even more, is that all of my Mini Rex in the barn, come from this poster/breeder's lines, the very animals that I pride myself on having for those lines, are backed by a breeder who refused to help out another person.
I am disgusted, and this has made me want to completely sell out of all my animals. If I can't trust people to sell me animals advertised as what they are, or people to help me when something like this happens, how can I trust anyone?
-Domonique
This is why on the pedigree, it says something like "I believe this to be true to the best of my knowledge." It's awful someone lied to you and sold you an animal that didn't have a correct pedigree. But, TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, you were selling an animal with a real pedigree. All babies out of this buck were, TO THE BEST OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE, given true pedigrees.
ReplyDeleteHang in there :(. Based on what you've said in this post, it's NOT YOUR FAULT!
I feel like I was doing just that, to the best of my knowledge I was selling the animal with the information I had on him. I can't be held at blame when I didn't even know what was going on. I was given a pedigree, and that was that. People DO lie, which is what happened to me, or somehow I ended up with another rabbits pedigree that was meant to be sent to someone else? Not quite sure but, I didn't know about it until tonight. It just astounds me people knew about this and instead of speaking up instead told people to not say anything to me about it!
ReplyDeletePeople I looked up to, a huge kick in the gut. I guess it spread like wild fire, it's all over my yahoo group listing, ughhhhh. I'm about ready to throw in the towel. A lot of the hatemail I got was from people who I have spoken to before, who admitted to only being on the show circuit under 5 years, when I've been at it for damn near 14.
I need a drink, :P