HALO Animal Rescue, Kansas City, MO Christina T. Overly priced adoption, fraudulent ads on petfinder.com, lies continualy-the check is in the mail, I would not recommend this facility to anyone. Braymer, Missouri

I found this beautiful puppy on the Petfinder.com site and fell in love with how cute he looked and had to meet him.  My first red flag was that this woman that runs HALO Animal Rescue does not have a facility that you can come and visit/play with the animals to know if the puppy/dog is right for your family.  She had us meet her in a parking lot!

We had set a time to meet her to visit the puppy in the parking lot and she was not there.  We waited, and waited with no phone call to let us know she was running late.  We waited (yes we waited way too long but I had researched the breeds that my puppy was mixed with and I was certain he was the dog for us if we met him and we liked each other) so we waited an hour and a half.  After the first 30 minutes I called her and she indicated that she was almost there, ha!

When she arrived in an SUV she never even got out of her car!  Her children handed over the puppy and we had to talk to her through her car window.  The SUV was so packed with junk that the other 2 passengers barely had a place to sit, and the car stunk!  The stench was so bad that I could hardly stand there and talk to her.  If this is any indication of how bad her facility stunk I am not surprised that she did not want us there.

When one of my kids mentioned how the dog stunk she made some kind of excuse about how he got sick on the way over.  This dog did not stink in this manner, this was a long term stink and as soon as we got him home we had to give him a bath.  It took 2 baths before we could stand for him to be in our home.

This woman had no collar or leash that we could put the dog on the ground with, we stood and held him in the parking lot for a while until we realized that we had a leash in our car from our dog at home.  This woman was not prepared at all.

At our "parking lot" meeting (it felt like I was buying something off of the black market and cost that way too) I forked over $300.00 for the "rescue shelter" fee.  This I would guess is the highest in the industry and more than some pure breads cost from a breeder.  And of course this had to be cold, hard cash!  On the paperwork she provided me it indicated that she had only had the puppy for 2 weeks, boy this puppy sure did run through some expenses!  Don't get me wrong, I know he had some shots and he was wormed when we got him. 

As well as he ate some of her food.  And I DO believe that she should not handle this service for FREE and not make any money from it.  BUT the expenses incurred while in her care could not have been more than $50.00.  With this being said, I still agreed to pay the money this is not my main complaint.  I agreed to the $300.00 becuase she told me that this would cover the cost of the neutering.  She indicated that when I was ready to have him neutered that I should let her know when the appointment was and she would "prepay" for the services.  We discussed who my vet was and she indicated that this would not be an issue.  We went home and have enjoyed our puppy so much, we love him dearly!

Now when I made the appointment for the neutering I instantly emailed Christina to let her know all the information.  The appointment was 2 weeks away and I gave her my name, address and phone number as well as the vets and the date of the appointment.  She did not reply to my email.

4 days before the appointment, I sent her another email asking her to confirm that this service had been prepaid to my vet by her and again she did not reply to my email.  At this point I could have canceled my appointment, but what was the point the service needed to be completed on my puppy.

When I took my puppy in on Monday for his procedure I told the ladies at the front desk that this was supposed to be prepaid.  They said that it had not been prepaid, nor that it couldn't be prepaid.  They indicated that they had not recieved a call from her, they knew who she was and had done business with her in the past.

The day after the procedure I called Christina and left her a message and did not recieve a return call form her.  I then proceeded to email her to let her know that I needed reimbursed for the procedure or I would turn her in for fraud.  I instantly recieved a call from her, she did most of the talking and apologized for this misunderstanding stating that she called and left them her credit card information at the vet and was not sure why they did not run it.  I already knew this was a lie but I let it go.  She let me know that she would send me a money order in the mail to reimburse me my money that I had to pay out and for me to email her my address. 

Come on lady!  I had to fill out an adoption application with my address.  I had to fill out paperwork when I picked up the puppy with my address.  Then I had emailed it to her when I gave her the appointment information.  It was given to her again when I forwarded the email the 2nd and 3rd times.  My address was everywhere but I was being nice and I sent her another email with my address and let her know that the cost was $70.00 that I would need to reimbursed for.

She replied to my email to let me know that she would only refund me $55.00 for the procedure because that is what it would have cost her had she paid for it.  She recieves discounts for all of these procedures.  Of course then emails back and forth she still continues to tell me she will not mail me more than that and it would be in the mail today.

6 days later I still had not received my check inthe mail and I email her. She tells me that yes she mailed it and I should have it in a couple of days.  More emails later she finally tells me in a nasty way that she will go ahead and send me another check for the $15.00 for my full refund.  At this point I am happy but it should not have taken this much work. 

It has now been 8 MORE days and by this point I should have had 2 checks.  One for $55.00 and the other for $15.00.  I contacted her yesterday and she tells me that my check (not plural if you notice) was in her mail box.  that it was returned to her for a bad address!  LOL!   She then asked for me to email her the address AGAIN!  I informed her that the email she sent me contained my address twice and she could scroll down to find it.  (Yes, I scrolled down myself just to make sure I had no typos in my address)

Please do not do business with this woman.

Her ad on petfinder.com clearly states that the adoption fee includes the spay/neuter.  She clearly did not plan on paying for this procedure She has lied to me on numerous occasions by telling me the check is in the mail. She has lied saying that you cannot prepay for a procedure when you clearly can (I verified this with my vet)