While Craigslist can be a valuable tool to re-home and sell pets or livestock, people need to be aware of the things that can and do go wrong.
Scams
Always beware of the many scams perpetrated on Craigslist. If you run an ad and you get an email offering you more than the price you stated in your ad, it is a scam. If you get an email asking to pay with a money order for more than the amount of the pet, again it is a scam, and you need cease all communication with the person.
Many animal dealers use Craigslist to find dogs, cats and horses at cheap or free prices. While they may promise the animal is going to a great home, the reality is they are probably going to end up at an animal auction or re-sold on a different website to the first person with cash. This is especially true for dogs and horses.
Many horses are found by horse slaughter buyers on Craigslist. The kill buyer will pretend to be an individual looking for a good family horse and will many times will even give a fake name or alias. Once they pick your horse up, they head straight to one of the many slaughter auctions such as the Sugarcreek Ohio auction or New Holland Pennsylvania, and sell them to a kill buyer. Or they may keep picking up horses until they have a full truck load to take to the Canadian slaughter houses themselves. Kill buyers are making huge profits by picking up free or cheap horses that they found on Craigslist, and selling them to slaughter.
Recently a Craigslist horse scam made the news when a person going by an alias was pretending to give people’s horses a retirement home when they were actually being re-sold and possibly sold to slaughter. www.telegram.com/article/20110227/NEWS/102270449/1246
Another common Craigslist scam is people pretending to be an animal rescue to get you to “donate” the animal to their care.
Protect Your Animal
While nothing is foolproof, there are some things you can do to try and protect your animal from being sold to a dealer or becoming part of a scam.
Always place your animal with a well written re-homing or sales contract. Be sure to write in your contract that the animal cannot be sold to slaughter or consigned to a dealer animal auction. Most kill buyers or people involved in running a scam, will balk at signing any kind of legal contract. Legitimate homes are happy to provide pictures of where the animal will be kept, references and will willingly sign a re-homing contract.
If you are contacted by a “rescue” always ask for their information such as; incorporation papers for the state they reside in , 501(c) (3) papers and the location and pictures of the facility. Always do a physical check of the rescue if possible, to determine it is a legitimate animal rescue.
While Craigslist can be a viable tool for selling or re-homing your pets, always be cautious and do your homework.
Paula J. Owen: Not Such a Happy Horse Tale: Newstelegram.com
