Business ProfileforCentral Illinois Sheltie Rescue

My advice: RUN. If you do get into business with them, record EVERY call, keep EVERY text, and EVERY email. Protect yourself. You’ll thank me later. I come here from the perspective of an adopter who actually got their dog. That’s right. I got my dog. I applied for a bichon frise named Charlie. I wanted this dog so bad, I was willing to agree to any of Natalie’s terms.. I was also far to willing to take her maltreatment. I did my due diligence and read the materials on this rescues website. When the owner, Natalie, came to my house for the home visit. She was extremely rude & unprofessional. But she gave me the dog with a few caveats to the contract. 1.There would be no smoking in my house. 2. I would have a 'more secure" fence built by July 1. For the record, my fence was fine. It's held up for four years. No problems. It just wasn't good enough for her. After she gave the dog to me and left. I discovered that the contract online was different than the one I signed at the visit. The one on-line was missing Clause 17. It basically said she could take my dog at any time for any reason. No stipulations listed or explanation. I called her and told her about my concerns about the contract. She told me I only had a problem with it because I intended to break it. This was not true. I entered this contract in good faith, and she had deceived me. She told me that it was a mistake and she forgot to update the contract online. I didn't believe her. It broke my heart, but I gave Charlie back. I tried to work it out with her to get him back though, but I needed some reassurance that she was trustworthy. I asked her to coordinate with another rescue that could vouch for her. Maybe they could take over the contract so that we can get the dog back in my home and open up space for another. She declined my offer. I offered to buy the puppy outright and she declined. She refused to offer any options besides me signing an already dubious contract. That wasn’t gonna happen.

What a nightmare this has been….. If you do not want to read the entire story below, the short story is that we did not give Tami the dog that she wanted and she is angry and retaliating. 4 members of her house-hold smoke heavily and the house was just too smoke filled for us to feel comfortable leaving a dog there. So now Tami has made it her mission to make us look bad. IF you want to read all the details, keep reading……. Tami applied to adopt a Bishon Frise from us (CISR). Her application looked good and she had a good vet reference. The last step in the approval process was a home visit. CISR (Natalie and Mike) arrived at Tami’s home to do a “meet and greet” AND a “home visit” all in one trip. (We do a visit with each adopter to make sure the home is suitable for a dog) On that day, IF everything was fine, we would leave the dog with her and complete the adoption. As we arrived at Tami’s home, the smell of smoke first hit us in the driveway. As we walked up to the door, we both were even more discouraged as the smell of smoke just got stronger. As Tami opened the door and let us in, the smoke was just overwhelming. The walls were sticky, and the windows and curtains were yellowed. It was bad. At that point I told Tami, “I cannot tolerate this much smoke, is there someplace else we can talk?” Tami said, “Sure” and led us to the basement. The basement was somewhat better, but still not smoke-free. Tami stated no one smokes in the basement, however, the HVAC circulated the air and we could smell smoke coming from the vents. Apparently, there are 5 people living in the house, and 4 of them (being home-bound), smoke all day long in the house. All the windows were closed. I immediately told Tami that this would simply not work. I will not subject this little dog to a life of breathing in THAT much smoke. In my mind, we were done, and I got up to leave. BUT….by this time, Tami was holding the dog, and kind of rocking him, and I could see how much she really wanted that dog. The dog looked JUST like the dog she had just lost. This just broke my heart. Every other aspect of the adoption criteria had been met, except for this smoking problem. So…. I decided to throw out an idea. I asked Tami “WHO owns this house?” She replied that SHE owned the house. So, I told her, that if SHE implemented a NO SMOKING policy in her house immediately, we would allow the adoption. She gladly agreed. (But remember, it was not HER that smoked) I wrote the NO SMOKING clause into our contract, and I thought everything was fine. I had no doubt Tami would love the dog, that was never the issue. It was just the unbelievable amount of smoke in the house that was just not compatible with life!!! So…. with a new NO SMOKING policy, I thought it was a win-win situation. So, Tami signed our contract and paid her adoption fee with ******, and we were done. Tami was happy and we were ok with things and we left. The next morning Tami called me and told me she was uncomfortable with our contract. (I could hear the rest of the household in the background urging her on) She said she was just not happy with it and wanted to return Charlie. I tried to explain to Tami that our contract is SOLELY to protect our dog both now and forever. She said she understood, but I suspect it was the smokers in the home who were just not going to stop smoking. I said OK. I sent my husband over to pick up Charlie. Once I got Charlie back here, I went to ****** and reversed all the charges. She got a FULL REFUND. We were done, right? Wrong. Then the harassment started. The first email was to tell me how awful and deceitful I was. Then another email offering me Three thousand dollars if I just gave her Charlie with NO CONTRACT. I declined and again tried to get her to understand that this is ONLY about Charlie's well-being. Nothing else. The emails kept coming daily. They ranged from calling me names to asking me to go to an attorney with her to re-write the CISR contract. After a week or so I finally stopped replying to her at all. Then…. after the emails were getting her nowhere, she started leaving AWFUL and untrue reviews all over. And as she was leaving these reviews, she emailed me and told me IF I gave her Charlie, she would remove the bad reviews. Um…. NO. We will not be blackmailed. Personally, I feel really bad for Tami. I have a funny feeling the other people in the home are the ones who stopped her from getting a dog that she would have really loved. I can understand why she is angry, but her anger is aimed at the wrong party. We simply protected our dog. We did this time, and we will always do what is best for THE DOG. Natalie CISR

She has contradicted herself twice here in her rebuttal of my review. She can’t even keep track of her own lies. More-so, her account of my house becomes more exaggerated with each telling. For the record, only 4 people live in my house. One of which, is a smoker, who is trying to quit. Do you honestly believe that someone —with such stringent rules in adopting her dogs - would allow her dog to stay in an environment like the one she described. No, she wouldn’t. It would be wholly irresponsible of her as a rescue to do so. Remember, she gave me the dog. Her account makes no sense. I don’t know why she keeps bringing up the smoking issue any way. It was a non-issue. There was a no-smoking clause added to the contract, and this issue was resolved. This is just a sad excuse on her part to distract from the real issue. The real issue being the deceptiveness of the contract, and how she suspiciously omitted a clause on the online version hoping I wouldn’t discover it. I did discover it though. It wasn’t just a generic clause. Then, I might be able to believe that it was an honest mistake. It was a major clause with serious ramifications. It would allow her to take my dog away without any recourse or explanation. I can’t accept that. I refused to accept that. She’s right when she said I didn’t get what I wanted. I wanted to work with a rescue that was honest, trustworthy, and incompetent. I got none of that with her. I don’t understand why she can’t see the problem here. The integrity of the contract was in question. Only an idiot would sign it again without reassurances. I even asked her three times if she would be comfortable signing the contract if the same thing had happened to her. She refused to answer. It is not unreasonable to ask her to meet with lawyers to hash out a contract that BOTH of us are comfortable with after the disparity shown in hers. But she’s not willing. It makes me ask why? What would be the big deal? It makes you wonder. This accusation that I am trying to blackmail her is equally as ridiculous. I assume this was the email she is referring to below. I copied & pasted it directly so you can judge my intent for yourself ——- "You know, even now, I am still stupidly optimistic that we could work this out. I want nothing more than to erase that review and forgo all the legwork it is going to take me to get some accountability here. But that ball is in your court. At the very least I will be seeing you again in small claims court over the fence. It should be fun.”" ——— Does this sound like I am blackmailing her, harassing or threatening her? No. I am begging her to help me come up with a solution that we are both comfortable with. I did not want to write these reviews. I do not like speaking poorly about people. That is not who I am, but they are 100% truthful. Admittedly, I did threaten to take her to small claims court because she cost me thousands. Who wouldn’t? She violated my trust and is now spewing lies about me and the situation. She should be ashamed of herself. All she is doing here is hurting the dogs. I am a good person whose mission it is to take care of my patients at the hospital where I work. To take care of my sister with MS and my family. And to one day, love and spoil my dog rotten. I do not deserve the crap she’s put on me. It is so irrational that it boggles my mind how she behaves. She claims I said mean things to her. That’s rich given how she is shown to treat people. How she’s treated me. From our our first conversation, where she accused me of racking up bills with numerous vets because I had 3 listed on the application. Or when she asked me if I was a felon because I didn’t have a drivers license with me. These are just two examples of the insults I’ve had to deal with from her. There are several more, and I have the emails to prove it. Don’t take my word for it though. You can see how she treats people through her other reviews or on her rescue’s ******** page. It’s a shame really. I seem to be fighting more for this dog than she is and she’s the rescue.