Puppy's Owners Want To Know: What Happened To Cooper?

BRICK, NJ — Anne and Brittany Reeves say it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop into Breeders Association of America to look at the puppies.

The two were on their way home from an appointment — Brittany is a cancer survivor — and Brittany, 20, asked if they could stop, Anne Reeves said.

"She's been through a lot," Anne Reeves said. "She works and goes to school full-time, and she's dreamed of getting a pomsky."

So they went in to the storefront on Route 70 in Brick to look, and Brittany's dream of a pomsky — part Pomeranian, part husky — was soon gazing back at her with bright blue eyes and headed to the Reeves' Brick Township home. That was March 23.

Within a couple of days, Brittany's pomsky, named Cooper, was ill, Anne said in a telephone interview on Sunday.

"He started vomiting and had diarrhea," Anne Reeves said, so they took the puppy to the veterinarian that cares for her family's other dogs, Banfield Pet Hospital in Brick. The veterinarian diagnosed Cooper with an upper respiratory illness and gave him a shot containing an anti-nausea medication to address the vomiting and diarrhea. She also provided the Reeveses with a form certifying Cooper as being unfit for sale, due to his illness. Despite the treatment at Banfield, Cooper continued to vomit.

"I called the vet and told her Cooper was still vomiting," Anne Reeves said, and the vet advised her to take the puppy to an emergency veterinarian. Anne said her next call was to Breeders Association, who, she said, urged her to bring the puppy to them to be cared for by their veterinarian, Ramtown Veterinary Hospital.

So on Wednesday, March 29, in the evening, Anne Reeves took Cooper to Breeders Association for treatment.

The Reeveses have not seen him since.

Where's Cooper now?

It's here where the details become a matter of contention.

Anne Reeves says when she arrived at Breeders Association on the evening of the 29th, the manager, a woman named Jen, said the store would have its vet at Ramtown treat Cooper and that Cooper would be returned to the family when he was well. According to the documentation signed at the time of Brittany's purchase, Brittany had empowered Anne to make decisions regarding Cooper.

Anne Reeves, who provided copies of all the documents they received to Patch, said she told Jen they wanted Cooper treated and returned to them.

A form titled "Unfitness of Animal — Election of Option," which gives the purchaser choices for what to be done if a veterinarian determines a puppy is unfit for sale, has Option 2 "Retention of my animal" checked off, with both Anne Reeves' signature and Jen's signature at the bottom.

The full text of the option reads: "Retention of my animal and reimbursement for the veterinary fees incurred prior to the date I received my veterinarian's certification of unfitness, plus the future cost to be incurred in curing or attempting to cure my animal. The total reimbursement for veterinarian's fees shall not exceed two times the purchase price including sales tax of my animal."

"We wanted Cooper back," Anne Reeves said, adding Jen told her Brittany would be able to visit Cooper while he was being treated.

The next day, Anne Reeves said, she called Breeders Association for an update. At that point, she said, Jen told her Cooper had bloody diarrhea and that he had been rushed to Ramtown.

That's when things stopped making sense, Anne Reeves said. She said the manager told her Cooper was going to be seen by the vet at 3 p.m. on Thursday, even though he had been rushed to Ramtown as an emergency case.

Friday morning at 11 a.m., Anne Reeves said, she received a call from the manager, saying Cooper was not doing well and offering Brittany a refund or a new puppy. Anne Reeves said they went to the store that evening.

"My daughter is emotional, asking, 'Where is my dog, I want to see my dog,'" Anne Reeves said, and said Jen told her they weren't going to see the dog and wouldn't answer whether Cooper was still alive, offering a new puppy instead.

"I said, 'We don't want a new puppy. We want our puppy,'" Anne Reeves said, at which point she said Jen told her Cooper was no longer theirs, that he belonged to the store.

"I never agreed to give him up," Anne Reeves said.

Jen, reached by telephone at Breeders Association on Monday, insisted Anne Reeves returned the puppy to the store. When asked about the form Anne Reeves had showing she had checked the retention option, Jen, who did not give her last name, repeated that the family had returned the puppy.

"We gave her a refund," she said.

Anne Reeves said Brittany, who paid for part of the cost of the puppy with her credit card and was financing the remainder, has not received any refund.

Jen said Cooper was returned because of an upper respiratory infection, and when asked, denied he had diarrhea; however, the unfit-for-purchase form that Anne Reeves received from Banfield stated a whole host of issues, including lethargy, vomiting and diarrhea, in addition to the upper respiratory infection.

Despite repeated questions asking about the puppy's whereabouts, Jen refused to say what had happened to Cooper at the store.

Anne Reeves, on Sunday, said the veterinarian, Dr. Joseph Fenton, told them Cooper had died.

"He told us Cooper passed away," Anne Reeves said. She said he told her he could not definitively tell her what had killed the puppy, however, because no testing was done on what was causing its illness.

A telephone message for Fenton left Monday with a receptionist requesting comment for this article was not returned. Fenton returned the call Tuesday evening.

Anne Reeves said Fenton told her the puppy showed signs of parvovirus, a highly contagious viral disease that can produce a life-threatening illness, according to PetWebMD.com. Symptoms of the virus include lethargy, severe vomiting, loss of appetite and bloody and foul-smelling diarrhea that can lead to life-threatening dehydration, according to the website. In puppies, it can damage the heart and cause a lifelong cardiac problem, according to the website.

Parvo is "extremely contagious and can be transmitted by any person, animal or object that comes in contact with an infected dog's feces. Highly resistant, the virus can live in the environment for months, and may survive on inanimate objects such as food bowls, shoes, clothes, carpet and floors," PetWebMD said.

The website additionally says parvo is diagnosed "on the basis of clinical signs and laboratory testing," and a test, the Enzyme Linked ImmunoSorbant Assay (ELISA) test, can be performed in about 15 minutes.

On Monday, in a followup conversation, Anne Reeves said she has since received multiple explanations why Cooper was not tested, including a statement from Jen that Cooper was "too sick" to be tested. Anne Reeves said she went to Ramtown on Monday to request copies of Cooper's treatment records but was told the veterinarian's office had no record of treating the puppy, despite being told by the vet he had died there on Thursday.

In a conversation Tuesday evening, Fenton said the store told him that it owned the puppy, and it wasn't until Anne and Brittany Reeves came looking for him Saturday that he had any inkling of that. And while he did tell them initally that Cooper had died, he held back further information on Sunday because he thought the puppy still belonged to the store.

"I discovered the lady was right," Fenton said, and on Tuesday morning he turned over Cooper and the puppy's medical records.

He said he did not have Cooper in his care very long and focused primarily on trying to save the puppy's life. Fenton said the puppy did not have diarrhea when it arrived at Ramtown's office, and because of that it would have taken a blood test to confirm the parvo, which he said Cooper did show symptoms of having.

In the paperwork Fenton gave to Anne and Brittany Reeves, it listed Cooper's time of death as being approximately 8:40 a.m. on March 31, with a notation that his staff notified the store of the puppy's death. Fenton said that notification would have been any time between 8:40 a.m. and 11 a.m. on Friday, March 31.

Jen at Breeders Association of America, when asked if it was true that Cooper was dead, called the question "outlandish."

"I don't have to listen to these outlandish comments," she said, adding, "I have nothing else further to discuss with you," and hung up the phone.

So the question remains: What happened to Cooper?

A controversial history

Breeders Association of America has been in operation in Brick Township since 2006, and complaints about animals with a variety of illnesses and issues have been posted in a variety of places, including websites such as Yelp, Consumer Affairs.com and a website titled "The Rip-Off Report." The BusinessFinder listing on NJ.com has predominantly positive reviews, though most of them are culled from other sources.

The Better Business Bureau, meanwhile, gives the store a B- rating, which it says is primarily based on the number of complaints the store has received. The site includes one negative review and 10 complaints, one of which includes the notation "the business responded to the dispute but failed to make a good faith effort to resolve it." For the remainder, the bureau said it had not received information on the outcome.

The store is one of two owned by Lorin Kislak; the second is American Puppy Club, also known as Breeders Club, in Middletown, according to the Better Business Bureau. Breeders Club has similar complaints lodged against it online surrounding its puppy sales. Consumer Affairs and Yelp both have extensive lists of complaints. Breeders Club posted a defense of the Middletown store on the Patch in 2013.

The Brick store also has been the target of protests from groups that oppose the sale of puppies from so-called "puppy mills." Both stores are defined as kennels, because they say they board animals. As kennels, they fall under different reporting rules on sourcing of their puppies than pet stores must follow. In New Jersey, pet stores must report the names of the breeders they source from; a state law passed last year tightened those restrictions, but animal activists say they need to be tightened further.

In Brick Township, persistent controversies with another pet store in the township led to the Brick Township Council passing an ordinance banning the retail sale of dogs and cats within the town in 2012. Brick is one of roughly 90 communities that ban the sale.

The ordinance bans businesses from selling, delivering, offering for sale, bartering or auctioning cats or dogs. It also included a clause allowing current businesses that operate legally to remain in business — and that allowed Breeders Association of America to continue to operate.

As a kennel, there are a number of regulations that must be followed with regard to how animals are housed and receive food and water, as well as maintaining cleanliness of the facility. The regulations, published by the state Department of Health, require adequate heat and ventilation for the animals as well.

There also are requirements for the maintenance of records on each animal the facility receives and what happens to that animal, including whether the animal is sold, adopted, dies or is euthanized.

Brian Lippai with the Ocean County Health Department said Breeders Association of America has been inspected annually and there have been no violations during those inspections. He said while the department hears about issues third-hand, it hasn't received any actionable complaints directly.

Former employees say health inspections or not, what they saw during their time working at the store was simply appalling. Some who were approached declined to speak with a reporter; three former employees, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation from the store's owner, said the cleanliness was a facade.

One of the former employees said a week before the inspection was due to occur, the cleaning staff — which is separate from the sales representatives who deal with potential customers — had to rush to clean the entire facility from top to bottom and prepare for the inspection.

That employee said the cage cleaning, which was performed daily, had be done while holding puppies, because there was no place to put them safely while the cages were cleaned.

"Sometimes I was holding two puppies and trying to clean cages at the same time," the employee said.

The cleaning regimen was to use a heavy bleach solution, one so strong that the employee reported coughing fits triggered by the intensity of the fumes. Another employee corroborated the statements about the bleach, saying workers were not even provided masks to protect them from the fumes, and there was no ventilation to remove the fumes from the room.

"We couldn't open the door because the puppies could get out," one employee said.

Another employee quit after a few months at the insistence of a parent over concerns about the bleach exposure.

"Even the puppies were coughing," the employee said.

The store had between 40 and 50 dogs per week, with new shipments of puppies arriving each week. That is when the backroom employees would see the vet, who would examine the new arrivals. The puppies received baths as soon as they arrived. Puppies the vet deemed unfit would be returned to the breeder, employees said.

Puppies that got sick during their time at the store were placed in an isolation room, which one employee said had been a bathroom. None of the three employees could say whether the sick puppies did or did not receive medical treatment from the vet. They did, however, say there was no one checking the puppies overnight, while the store was closed, including sick puppies in the isolation room.

"The iso room was a big secret," one employee said. "It's supposed to be an employee bathroom. No one cleans it, it just sits there. There are cages stacked on top of cages" with sick puppies, the employee said.

The employees said puppies in the isolation room were sometimes kept four or five to a cage, even when they were vomiting or had diarrhea.

"It's small and it smelled really bad," another employee said. "Those dogs never left that room."

Valerie and Brody

Anne and Brittany Reeves weren't the only ones whose puppy got sick so quickly after purchase; Valerie Macaluso of Beachwood said her family is dealing with grief as well, after Brody, a Rottweiler-Australian cattle dog mix they purchased from Breeders Association on March 9, died nine days later on March 18.

A credit card statement and a condolence card from Ramtown Veterinary Hospital are the only pieces of paperwork Macaluso has from her interaction with Breeders Association of America; Macaluso said the manager insisted she return the contract paperwork to receive her refund.

"We paid $2,000 for him," Macaluso said. When Brody, a gift for her older daughter, came home, he was not super playful, she

"I just assumed it was because he was getting used to us and used to a new place," she said. But two days later, he stopped eating. The next day he started throwing up bile, she said. By Monday evening he had diarrhea, so she called the vet. Her usual vet was closing for the day, so, on the advice of the store, she took Brody to Ramtown.

And like the Reeveses, she never saw Brody alive again.

"I called to check on him every day," Macaluso said. "It was the same story every day, he's still got diarrhea." She went to Ramtown to see Brody, she said, "and they wouldn't let me see him." Finally, she said, another vet in the practice told her Brody had died on March 18.

"I went in there on the day he died and had to sign over the papers so he could be cremated," she said.

She said she was told Brody, too, exhibited signs of parvo, but the vet said no testing had been done.

"My daughter's best friend just died and she was undergoing counseling," Macaluso said. "The puppy was meant to bring joy to the house," but now they are grieving Brody, too.

"It's amazing how attached you can get," she said.

Anne Reeves said she just wants answers about Cooper.

"(The manager) refused to tell us what was wrong with Cooper even though I have three more dogs in the house that could get sick," she said. "My daughter is absolutely a wreck. We fell so in love with this little guy in just four short days."

Have you purchased a puppy from Breeders Association of America and had issues with it being ill? Contact me at karen.wall@patch.com.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article was initially published at 10:45 a.m. on April 4, 2017. It was updated at 12:15 a.m. April 5, 2017, with comments from veterinarian James Fenton. (kw)

Brittany Reeves and Cooper. Used with permission of Anne Reeves