We came across a sweet dog on my Facebook feed and inquired about her. After spending a few days…read moretrying to get someone to answer us, we were finally able to learn she was still available, so we said we wanted to adopt. After already committing to her, they mentioned in passing, "oh, you know she had heartworm, right?" We were told that she had been treated and all we would need to do is retest in a year. If she was positive, they would continue to treat her. What they did not mention is that they "treated" her with a treatment not recommended by the American Heart Worm Association, that allows the worms to continue causing damage for up for up to 18 months, or that she would need to be on exercise restriction for the entire treatment. She also received only one round of slow kill treatment, and protocol for that method is for 3 rounds. She has developed a heart murmur in the short 2 months she has been with us, and 3 vets have recommended the treatment endorsed by the AHA. I reached out to ask about it, and LLL said no, they will not treat with that. They did agree to send more meds to us for her using the slow kill method they use, but it has not happened and it seems now they are ghosting me. We are now on the hook to treat her for heart worm the correct way, which will cost $1500-2,000. I was clear when we adopted her that this is not an expense we were ready to handle. We completely trusted that they were being honest and up front about the treatment she was receiving, and we should not have been so trusting. Technically they did treat her. But not with an approved treatment, not a full course of a non-approved treatment, and with a treatment that is continuing to cause her harm. We can't make her suffer like that, so we're figuring out how to pay for these treatments on our own.
When she was being transported from Texas to Minnesota, they also asked adopters if anyone could pick them up in Missouri, because the transport van the dogs were in broke down. I volunteered with another person. They gave us the van that was here in MN and we were off. They never checked our backrounds or licenses. We were not given insurance information or anything, and two hours into the trip the van we were driving broke down. We had to figure out how to repair it. And when we finally met up with the other van, the driver had been vaping the entire drive and all the dogs smelled like vape and had been breathing it the whole ride (20+ hours). None of the dogs were given meds to calm them, and a few of them were sitting in kennels in their feces (likely from the stress of the trip).
This honestly has been one of the worst experiences I've ever had.
The one good aspect of the entire ordeal is our sweet, sweet girl, who is very sweet, but very traumatized and terrified of everything (which was not at all part of her adoption description).
