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Created by DogCatcher on Dec 21, 2010
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Rescue a French Bulldog website, showing Michelle Tippet's stolen photo of Stu
In part two of “When is a Rescue Not a Rescue?“, I detailed how a few French Bulldog fanciers, working together, discovered that Wendy Faith Laymon (or is that Faith Layman? She has so many names on the go, it’s hard to tell) was behind the new “rescue” group, ‘Rescue a French Bulldog‘.
A background search on Wendy turned up some disturbing news – a history of puppy milling, with convictions for poor care of her dogs, licensing violations, and a host of other charges. Even the USDA finally said “enough is enough”, and suspended Wendy’s license until 2012. Considering the kinds of filthy conditions that the USDA doesn’t seem to have a problem with, you’re left fairly staggered when you contemplate just how bad Wendy Laymon’s kennels had to be to piss them off this severely.
I still felt as though something was missing – some essential piece of the puzzle I just didn’t understand. How was Wendy still up and operating, if the USDA had suspended her license? What was the point of Rescue a French Bulldog, other than a way of pimping out her “B” stock French Bulldogs? Until all of this, I was unaware of the way that someone could use a 501(c)3 charity to game the system – but Wendy wasn’t.
Here’s where we introduce Miss B. Miss B was Wendy’s long time web designer, and knew more about Wendy Laymon than almost anyone else alive. She already had a website up and running, detailing Wendy’s numerous cons and scams. When the news about Wendy Laymon and Rescue a French Bulldog broke on Facebook and the various Frenchie mailing lists, Miss B offered up some more information on Wendy – including the story behind just exactly how “Rescue a French Bulldog” operates.
From the BulldogsBeware website:
So why would a breeder want to start a rescue all of the sudden? Well, you see here in Missouri they’ve just passed Proposition B in November, which now regulates large scale breeders and discourages puppy mills. Breeders are not allowed more than 50 breeding females (Wendy Laymon has, last I know, over 60 French bulldogs and around 20 English bulldogs), buildings must be ground level and not stacked (hers are stacked and the bottom level is about 3′ off the ground), dogs must be allowed unfettered access to an exercise area (read the True Stories links on this website) among other things. However, this new law applies only to large scale breeders like Wendy Faith Laymon, not to shelters, kennels, rescues, etc.
Here’s the magic, let’s say I’m a licensed breeder and I have 75 breeding females. I also have a licensed rescue, along with nonprofit status. Obviously 75 females is too many for the new law, not to mention under the new law I may only breed any one female twice in any 18 month period, that really limits the optimum number of litters I’m able to produce. What do I do now? I know, 50 of these dogs are in the rescue! Now I only have 25 breeding females. More magic! If I breed a female twice, I just put her in the rescue, pull another one out of the rescue and throw it into my breeding program. I can now breed this other dog twice! This way I never go over the allowed number of dogs, don’t have to upgrade ALL of my now illegal dog houses and can still breed to the maximum number of litters! (Especially if I were to have my own progesterone machine to boost efficiency, like Wendy Laymon has.)
Running her business as a rescue does more than just allow Wendy Laymon to game the local and USDA licensing laws (and circumvent that pesky ruling banning her from having a USDA license until 2012). Being a 501(c)3 Charity also allows Wendy Laymon and “Rescue a French Bulldog” to rake in money, tax free.
From BulldogsBeware:
Where to begin. Let’s start with the obvious, let’s have a look into the actual nonprofit filing with the state, which you can find at this address:
https://www.sos.mo.gov/BusinessEntity/soskb/Corp.asp?2961487
Notice anything strange? I do and that is that Wendy Laymon’s name is nowhere to be seen. Luther Kemp is an attorney specializing in business law, as far as I know he is not the person running Rescue A French Bulldog. What do you imagine the benefit would be from doing this? I can think of a couple of reasons:
1. Her name is tarnished. Googling her name returns a healthy collection of complaints, which somebody is doing a hilariously novice job of covering up with cute little essays about how great Wendy Faith Laymon’s breeding program is, tips for raising dogs and other stories glorifying her name. Well, if her name is on the nonprofit paperwork, it would take about 2 seconds to connect the dots. Instead, it took the French bulldog community about 2 days.
2. The most interesting for those of you who find her rescue disturbing.. You see, with a 501(c)3/nonprofit, you cannot pay your board of directors, such as the president, vice president, etc. However, you can pay service providers, employees, etc. So let’s say Wendy Faith Laymon vaccinates the dogs herself, poof, she’s a veterinarian. Say she does some paperwork, poof, she’s a secretary. The contributions and adoption fees to Rescue A French Bulldog can now go toward “administrative costs.”
In other words, running “Rescue a French Bulldog” as a 501(c)3 charity allows Wendy to game not only the USDA, but also the IRS. She no longer has to declare income from ‘selling’ French Bulldogs – instead, she’s merely an employee of the rescue, entitled to fees or a salary for “caring for” the very dogs she herself bred. Pretty slick, huh? Not only that, but Wendy can now solicit “donations” for the care of these dogs (her dogs), which she can then pocket in the form of ‘fees’ for the services she provides to her own dogs.
In layman’s terms, this is like you or I setting up a donation box to “help the poor doggies”, and then using the money to pay yourself a salary every time you walk your own dogs or buy them a sack of kibble – and you can write it all off, because *poof!* – you’re a charity.
Personally, this is what I find most galling. While the real rescues out there are struggling just to keep their heads above water, and beginning to see a future where the doors will be shut to the Frenchies who have the most serious (and expensive) health needs, Wendy “Faith” Laymon is sucking up donation dollars from well meaning Frenchie fanciers, and putting those donations into her own pockets. If that doesn’t piss you off, Wendy is doing all of this while touting her Christianity (hey, she’s so religious she gave her self “Faith” as a middle name – or was that just to try and distance herself from all the criminal charges?). Why is it that every time some dog breeder tells me how much they love Jesus (and how mutual the feeling is), I inevitably start looking for the rabbit hutch full of starving dogs?
Of course, this hubris is what has ultimately been Wendy’s downfall.
Bad breeders? None of us like them, but we’ve learned to pretty much shrug and ignore them as best we can. But imitating a rescue – at a time when the real French Bulldog rescues are full to the brim with dogs who came from ‘breeders’ just like Wendy Laymon?
Uh uh. No way. There’s a certain line in the sand that you just don’t cross – and Wendy Laymon crossed it. When she did, she found the eyes of our entire community trained on her, and on her operations. We’re on to you, Wendy – and we won’t stop until everyone knows just what you are, and what you’re doing.
Wendy Laymon and Rescue a French Bulldog – “When is a Rescue Not a Rescue?”
Part One || Part Two || Part Three
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Zeus - Bullmarket Absolut Notorious, at the Credit Valley Dog Show
Just a quick note to mention we’ll be showing Zeus in Kitchener on December 28th and 29th, at the “Christmas” dog shows at Bingemans.
This is a nice chance for anyone interested in ‘talking dogs’ to come out and meet with us, ask some questions, meet some Frenchies and have a crash course lesson in watching a dog show.
The show schedule is here –
http://colmars.com/History/2010/JS%202010%2012%20ELORA.pdf
We are only attending the second and third days of the show.
If you plan to come out, please try to aim for at least one hour BEFORE the listed ring time. If you come out too close to ring time, I will be too busy grooming and fretting to really have time to chat with you. I can’t tell you where we’ll be set up, but look for the Frenchies in the grooming area – we usually all try to set up close together, and if not, we’ll usually know where each other are.
Please drop me a note if you’d like to attend, and I hope to meet some of you there!
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In Part One of “When is a Rescue Not a Rescue?“, I discussed how many red flags the website for “Rescue a French Bulldog” had raised within the French Bulldog rescue community. None of us were sure who was running this new ‘rescue’, but all of us had a really, really bad feeling about it.
One of our intrepid investigators decided to phone the 800 number on the Rescue a French Bulldog website. The call was returned by someone who called themselves “Wendy”, and just happened to be calling from a phone number which traced back to Wendy Faith Laymon’s internet puppy selling website, http://frenchiepuppies.com.
Wendy Laymon (aka Wendy Faith Laymon, aka Faith Laymon, aka Wendy Layman, aka Faith Layman) had been all over my news alerts lately — I track every incoming news article which has the words “French Bulldog” in it, and all of a sudden, it had seemed like every other ‘article’ was a self aggrandizing press release from Wendy Laymon (or from Wendy “Faith” Laymon, in some cases), talking about how she was “living the American dream” by breeding French Bulldog puppies, or touting her latest litter of Frenchie puppies. It all seemed awfully odd, but I just chalked it up to yet another commercial dog breeder, desperately trying to pimp their puppies. Sadly, we’ve had an awful lot of those in the last year or so – breed popularity will do that. Suddenly finding Wendy Faith Laymon associated with a ‘rescue, however, made us all decide to dig just a little bit deeper – and there was lot to dig through.
Wendy seems to have been in dogs for years – but not in a good way. The earliest records we could find of her seemed to all be from Washington state, and revolved around “Shadow Mountain Kennels”. The news wasn’t good.
From the Humane Society Article “Missouri’s Dirty Dozen“, which details the offenses of the twelve worst commercial dog breeders in MO -
In Snohomish County, Washington, Layman reportedly lost her kennel license and was sued in small claims court approximately 15 times for charges related to selling sick puppies and misrepresentation issues. The majority of the cases were in the late 1990s and in 2000. Reportedly, she was convicted and sentenced to jail time in Washington state and was restricted from owning any animals as part of her release. She then moved to Missouri.
Most recently, on March 27, 2009 the USDA levied action against her (dba Shadow Mountain Kennel) under docket #08-0089: http://www.da.usda.gov/oaljdecisions/090403_AWA-08 She was fined $7,125 (held in abeyance) and banned from holding a USDA license for three years.
Although Laymon has been banned from holding a USDA license until at least 2012, while previously licensed as a B dealer she was cited for numerous violations of the Animal Welfare Act, including excessively matted dogs, dirty conditions, inadequate housing and records violations.
Despite her dishonorable history, Laymon currently holds a MO state kennel license. She has some of the most numerous MO Department of Agriculture ACFA violations of all state-licensed sellers (at least 36 violations since 2008).
HSUS investigators found that Laymon sells puppies (or has done business) under many business names, none of which are registered as fictitious business names in the state of MO as of April 2010, including:
•Shadow Mountain Ranch (name used on her current MO license)
•The Bulldog Connection (www.thebulldogconnecion.com/)
•Frenchie Babies (www.frenchiebabies.com/)
•Web Frenchies (www.webfrenchies.com/)
•Love My Bullie (www.k-designco.com/lovemybullie/)
•A French Bulldog (www.afrenchbulldog.com/)
During a routine state kennel inspection on 02/10/10, the Animal Health Officer inspecting Laymon’s kennel noted that “the last inspection conducted by the attending veterinarian was January 2008,” more than two years before.
Read more here.
Does this sound like the kind of person who suddenly decides, out of the goodness of her heart, to devote herself to helping homeless French Bulldogs? We didn’t think so, either, and so it wasn’t surprising to find myself directed to the website of someone who had intimate business dealings with Wendy, and nothing good to say about her.
The bad news was about to get much, much worse.
Wendy Laymon and Rescue a French Bulldog – “When is a Rescue Not a Rescue?”
Part One || Part Two || Part Three
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I’ve written before in the past about various types of internet scams and cons that revolve around ‘adopting’ homeless French Bulldogs (or English Bulldogs, or Yorkies, or other pricey, popular breeds).
One of the scams I described is the “Fake Rescue Scam” –
The con: This one is slick, and preys on our tendencies as loving dog owners to want to help out dogs in need. The con men set themselves up as a ‘rescue’, claiming to have dogs that they’ve liberated from puppy mills. The trick here is the price – $3,000 and up, in some cases, to ‘adopt’ a dog from a rescue. What you’re actually doing, of course, isn’t ‘rescuing‘ or ‘adopting‘ - it’s buying. You’ve bought a dog from a puppy mill, for a typical high ticket price, and no health guarantee (after all, you didn’t buy that dog, you adopted it, and caveat adopter). The profits go right back into the mill’s pockets, and allow them to pump out more sub standard puppies.
Commonly found: All over the web. YouTube is littered with videos for places that claim to help ‘rescue’ Bulldogs and Frenchies from Thai puppy mills, or Dog Farms in Ireland, or midwest commercial kennels. A search on ‘rescue a French Bulldog’ will bring up blogs and websites, all touting high priced puppies in need of “adoption”. I’ve also received several direct mails from groups claiming to be “Rescues” or “Sanctuaries”, in one memorable case soliciting donations for a ‘Sactuary for the homeless French Bulldogs of Thailand’. The idea of packs of homeless, feral French Bulldogs roaming the streets of Thailand would be funny, if this wasn’t such a cruel scam.
Avoiding this scam: Learn to differentiate between a real rescue group, and a company selling puppies. A legitimate rescue will be well organized, well established, and often times a registered charity. There will hardly ever be cute young puppies available, since there’s no lack of homes waiting for adorable puppies. Most rescue dogs are older, with many in need of veterinary care.
As with the other scams, use common sense!
Why does this group always have a never ending flow of young puppies? Where are the needy adults and older dogs commonly placed through rescue? Are they a recognized charity? Will their national breed club vouch for their legitimacy? If they can’t answer all of these questions to your satisfaction, just say no thanks. Give your money to a rescue group that will actually use it help dogs, instead of using it to breed more of them.
Recently, I ran across the website for Rescue a French Bulldog, a new internet based French Bulldog “rescue” that set off all of my warning bells.
The bottom right hand corner of the front page of their website featured a distinctive looking brindle pied dog, poised in mid jump. It was Gary (aka “Gary, not from France”), Michelle Wynn Tippets recently deceased and much missed Frenchie. I contacted Michelle, and received an almost instant reply – No, she had NOT given them permission to use her photo, and No, they did not ask for it. What kind of rescue uses stolen photos? The more I looked, the more wrong almost everything about this ‘rescue’ seemed to be.
While their website is emblazoned with paypal donation buttons asking visitors to help ‘care for’ their dogs in need, everything else on the page sets off warning bells. Their website proclaims them to be not just a 501(c)3, but also a “licensed shelter”.
A licensed shelter?
I know a lot of Frenchie rescue groups, and they’re all getting by on a shoe string budget and a prayer, but these guys have already set themselves up some sort of Frenchie sanctuary? The French Bulldog community, and the French Bulldog rescue community in general, are a close knit bunch. If some sort of philanthropic Uncle Moneybags had endowed a home for wayward Frenchies, we’d all know about it. Instead, the Frenchie grapevine was remarkably silent about “Rescue a French Bulldog” – none of us had ever heard of them, none of us knew of a dog they’d placed, and all of us were instantly suspicious, and our suspicions only grew when we looked at their “Available Dogs” page.
Rescue a French Bulldog had to be either a scam, or the luckiest Frenchie rescue group on the planet.
While the rest of us get the dogs that no one else wanted, Rescue a French Bulldog’s dogs were all young, healthy and apparently “perfect”. No seniors. No handicapped dogs. No special needs dogs. No dogs returned for behavioural issues. As someone who deals with rescue on an almost daily basis, I know that the odds of a rescue having nothing but perfect dogs available for adoption are akin to the odds of winning the power ball lottery. Twice. On the same day.
Obviously, something was up with Rescue a French Bulldog, but none of us were really sure what. In the next day or two, we’d find out that it was even worse than we’d thought, and it all had to do with a Missouri commercial breeder named Wendy Laymon – aka Wendy Faith Laymon.
Wendy Laymon and Rescue a French Bulldog – “When is a Rescue Not a Rescue?”
Part One || Part Two || Part Three
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