USDA Breeder List - Please Check for Potential Puppy Mills Here!

[Kjhebel]

Originally Posted by myia

Wish I came across this list earlier. I bought a puppy from Melissa Barnes from Arkansas. Speaking to her she seem genuine and caring at first. But found out after I purchase a puppy from her she wasn't honest. Had quite a few problems with my puppy...Melissa claimed not to have known about it, but overall he's doing well and healthy.

Originally Posted by havanese

I second what you say. She sounds so sweet, southern draw, and a mom. She is not honest. She has no medical knowledge and does not have public record of a nursing license as she says. She breeds sooo many puppies different breeds, google map her farm, and then read the usda inspector report. Havana silks and all her other names stink of puppy mill. My dog had issues, she gave me another dog, he has issues. He dogs are very cute, she is very dishonest.

I have no choice but to reply to this quote from Havanese. Even though she is banned from the site alot of damage has already been done. I tried to get this removed thru administration due to the # of false accusations it contains but i was told that they will not remove post no matter how damaging they can be. Even though a member can be banned the post are still left on there. I am not a USDA licensed breeder. My website is havanasilks and i am mainly a breeder of havanese. I privately sent a message to this person requesting more info and also explaining the law of criminal slander she would not tell me who she is. She said she could not remove it and she would ask administration to take it down. My nursing license is in my maiden name so that is why she could not find me. I am not a puppymill. I am a responsible professional breeder. If you are looking at this post then more than likely you have googled my name. Please call me if you have any questions about this post. Blogs like this can be very damaging and slanderous.. Anyone can ruin your reputation in a matter of seconds. There is always two sides to every story so please keep this in mind as you read this horrible post.

[jackandjillsmom]

Several years ago I bought my first little Yorkie from Melissa. He was a happy healthy little guy, and still is. She was very helpful from day one. I had lots of questions after his adoption and Melissa was very helpful. I have since adopted my happy, healthy little girl from Melissa. I have reffered her to many people and I will continue to do so, Thank you Melissa for providing me and several of my friends with wonderful, loving, happy, healthy family members.

[cssi2m]

Originally Posted by myia

Wish I came across this list earlier. I bought a puppy from Melissa Barnes from Arkansas. Speaking to her she seem genuine and caring at first. But found out after I purchase a puppy from her she wasn't honest. Had quite a few problems with my puppy...Melissa claimed not to have known about it, but overall he's doing well and healthy.

Hi,
I just joined yorkie talk because I, too, bought a puppy (havachon) from Melissa Barnes. Mine is a mix between a Chocolate Havanese -her father, and mother was a Bischon. Mon Chouchou is totally white, has an underbite (no big deal) but she has the worse allergies that I've seen. Her ears are constantly infected with yeast infections (ie vet trips, different meds trying to keep this under control) and she was even sedated once for him to flush out the ear canals to see what is happening when she is infected.

Her ear canals are so small (much too small for her breed) and that coupled with seasonal allergies are making this really difficult for her to deal with. Other than that she is the best little dog, wonderful temperament, loves everyone, every animal, even bugs. She won't even kill a salamander.

I did want to state too, that after I bought Chouchou was when I learned that Melissa had so many dogs, she had 40 breeds or so. I thought, there is NO way that her kids can play with all of those dogs and puppies as she claims, but maybe they do. I am not her so I cannot say for certain.

We live 11 hours away from Melissa. At my request, she met us at a fast food joint with Chouchou. She was nicely groomed, smelled beautifully, and was the cleanest little puppy that I have ever seen. So there are many things that I can say and a few negative.

We took her to the vet the next morning,after our 22 hour non-stop trip, and he stated that she was the cleanest and seemed to be one of the healthiest puppies that he had ever seen. So there are some things to consider about Melissa Barnes.

I do NOT in any way support Puppy Mills, I am completely against them!!! Chouchou filled a void in our lives when our Poodle/bischon mix died a year bef at 16, therefore she has been an absolute god send to us. We can travel and take her anywhere. She loves everyone, and everyone loves her because of her beautiful almost hazel colored eyes and her white hair.

That's something else. Melissa treats the young white pups with antibotics and they never have the staining (tear duct staining). Chouchou stays white all of the time. When I clean off the eye gook, it is still white underneath. I thought that was amazing since that is one thing that ppl often complain about with their (especially) white pups.

Thanks for allowing me to reply. I know it's rather lengthy, I love yorkies but was afraid to get such a small puppy. Plus I've heard horror stories abt large prey type of birds carrying off these small dogs. Mine is 14 pounds, therefore safe. She is only outside for a minute to do her business, then back inside "as an A/C dog", as my husband calls her.

I'm sorry that your yorkie is sick, I hope it is nothing major. You never elaborated on what type of problems it was having. Melissa acted the same way with me, not realizing that there was anything wrong. I plan on emailing some photo's of chouchou to her showing her how her infected ears look and her underbite.

Something that I thought was neat, is I would have loved to see what the litter mates grew up to look like, so I asked Melissa to send pictures to me of Chouchou's litter mates if or when she hears from owners. She told me that she couldn't do that because she looks at photo's from the owners then deletes them. Then she stated that she had too many to keep track of them in that respect. Ouch!

That's another thing that set me off. Hmm, I didn't think that was so hard. When I bred cockatiels, I could show you photo's of the parents, the clutch, the young ones, then photos from owners. Maybe I just cared more???

Hug your puppy for me, at least these are 2 that are not breeders sitting in little cages. Mine is spayed, as all of my pets from my past have been spayed and neutered. People asked me if I would breed her or why I didn't. I told them of her health problems, add in her OCD. She will sit and nurse (suck) on her bed, as if it were her mothers teet. It's the oddest thing. I got her when she was 3 months old, Born March22, bought on June 4th I believe of 2009. It's not as if she was pulled early for me to buy her. Just add that on as another problem, but we can deal with it, it's not that bad.

She 's very smart and can do a lot of tricks. If you go to youtube.com and type in cassi2m (my normal user name) you can look for mon chouchou dog or puppy and you'll see her. She's so pretty and smart too. My user name is messed up for her, it should be cassi2m not cssi2m. I emailed the webmaster and hope that they can correct this for me.

Thanks for letting me talk here,
Cathy
ps sorry for any typo's and length!!

[AMD]

Two newbies join to defend a breeder..
Hmmmm...

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by AMD

Two newbies join to defend a breeder..
Hmmmm...

Lol, do you think they'll stick around?

[gidget529]

she has the worse allergies that I've seen. Her ears are constantly infected with yeast infections (ie [COLOR=green !important][COLOR=green !important]vet[/COLOR][/COLOR] trips, different meds trying to keep this under control) and she was even sedated once for him to flush out the ear canals to see what is happening when she is infected.

Then the poster goes on to say this is one of the healthiest, cleanest pups her vet has ever seen.

I'm confused.

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by gidget529

she has the worse allergies that I've seen. Her ears are constantly infected with yeast infections (ie [COLOR=green !important][COLOR=green !important]vet[/COLOR][/COLOR] trips, different meds trying to keep this under control) and she was even sedated once for him to flush out the ear canals to see what is happening when she is infected.

Then the poster goes on to say this is one of the healthiest, cleanest pups her vet has ever seen.

I'm confused.

I was confused about all that too, but both her and her vet said that she was the "cleanest puppy" they had ever seen. I don't know if they are use to seeing dirty puppies or what? If the main good thing you can say about a breeder is that her puppies are clean, you have pretty low standards.

[bdoodles]

I was worried about buying a puppy online, but in all my searches, I never stumbled onto anything that was cause for alarm... or maybe I was drawn in by her kindness and seemingly sweet southern ways... but I ended up buying from her, and while I won't say it was a mistake (I love my puppy tremendously), I will say people should be warned. My puppy came with such a severe case of giardia that it took 5 courses of antibiotics to treat it. In addition, shortly after getting here we started noticing he had several issues, including bladder stones, allergies, ear infections, and what we believed were behavior issues that we weren't successfully controlling. After hiring in home trainers (weekly for 8 months), taking him to obedience classes, and finally taking him to a Veterinary Behaviorist, all with no success, things kept getting worse and worse until he finally started having full blown seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. We love him to death, but when we showed the vet his papers, she said they were not a true AKC pedigree, but rather from a website that you pay $25 to and can print your own "pedigrees" and that her suspicions were definitely that he's a puppy mill dog. We were had. We love our pup tremendously, but we will be dealing with medical issues and expenses for the rest of his life and it seems we're not the only ones who got a dog from her who have had less than positive experiences. Be very cautious before buying a dog from her!

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by bdoodles

I was worried about buying a puppy online, but in all my searches, I never stumbled onto anything that was cause for alarm... or maybe I was drawn in by her kindness and seemingly sweet southern ways... but I ended up buying from her, and while I won't say it was a mistake (I love my puppy tremendously), I will say people should be warned. My puppy came with such a severe case of giardia that it took 5 courses of antibiotics to treat it. In addition, shortly after getting here we started noticing he had several issues, including bladder stones, allergies, ear infections, and what we believed were behavior issues that we weren't successfully controlling. After hiring in home trainers (weekly for 8 months), taking him to obedience classes, and finally taking him to a Veterinary Behaviorist, all with no success, things kept getting worse and worse until he finally started having full blown seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. We love him to death, but when we showed the vet his papers, she said they were not a true AKC pedigree, but rather from a website that you pay $25 to and can print your own "pedigrees" and that her suspicions were definitely that he's a puppy mill dog. We were had. We love our pup tremendously, but we will be dealing with medical issues and expenses for the rest of his life and it seems we're not the only ones who got a dog from her who have had less than positive experiences. Be very cautious before buying a dog from her!

Thanks for posting this, I think so many people think that they can easily spot a puppy mill owner, but the truth is, many seem like wonderfully sweet people, they know they have to convince people that they love their dogs and are doing right by them. I want to remind people, it's not just the puppies that are being mistreated, it's the breeding dogs who live in inhumane conditions, so always visit the breeder in person, a breeder who would sell to you without meeting you in person isn't a good breeder.

[bdoodles]

So true! While I did have a close friend go pick up the puppy in person so he could fly him home in the cabin of the plane instead of him being in the cargo hold, he didn't get to see her "farm" but met her at the airport. He said that she didn't say much to him and just handed over the puppy and papers. My vet of 12 years said it would be very hard for the dog to have had a clean bill of health the day before flying and get here with such rampant giardia. I can't say for sure if its a puppy mill, but I will say that its great advice to not only meet the person, but visit the home that the puppy is from to check for yourself. We love Baxter tremendously and we're the right family for him (since we work from home and can be with him), but its still heartbreaking to watch a 2 year old puppy foaming at the mouth and having full blown seizures.

[Hallelujah]

Thank you so much for this! It's been very helpful in choosing a breeder in my area!

[gidget8260]

Has anyone heard of a breeder named Holly Silkwood in Oxly, Missouri she has some yorkies her name is not on the list but there is another silkwood on the list.
her name is karen.

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by gidget8260

Has anyone heard of a breeder named Holly Silkwood in Oxly, Missouri she has some yorkies her name is not on the list but there is another silkwood on the list.
her name is karen.

These lists only give 1 piece of information, someone with the name of Silkwood, has a large commercial facility that is inspected by the USDA. You should visit the home of your potential breeder and inspect the way the breeding dogs are kept. Do not buy a dog over the internet, because of a hole in the law, those breeders who sell directly to the public, do not need to be licensed or inspected, and run some of the worst puppy mills there are.

[TashiRIP]

Wow I saw a person on there that my aunt checked and so and so their animals but they were always nice people... And I KNOW my aunt wouldn't let their puppies go qualified if they were unhealthy

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by TashiRIP

Wow I saw a person on there that my aunt checked and so and so their animals but they were always nice people... And I KNOW my aunt wouldn't let their puppies go qualified if they were unhealthy

This list shouldn't be taken the wrong way, these are just people who are registered with the USDA. In many states if you have so many dogs you have to be registered. These places are inspected though, but the buyer should do their own inspection just to make sure the breeding dogs are well kept. The worst puppy mills are owned by people who aren't on this list and sell directly to the public from the internet. There is no law that covers breeders who sell directly to the public.