We got Harry on May 27th, and by the next day, he was dying.

He wasn’t eating. He wasn’t drinking. He wasn’t doing anything but coughing, gagging, and vomiting. We called BluePearl, an animal ER, and were told to bring him in immediately. They diagnosed him with severe infectious pneumonia, and admitted him into their ICU, where he was hooked up to oxygen and IVs because he couldn’t breathe or eat on his own. At this point he was 9 weeks old and weighed less than 4 pounds.

In the last four months, Harry has been such a cute, sweet, loving puppy. He has also cost me and my boyfriend over $13,000, which is an astronomical amount of money. But we adore this poor, innocent little guy and have wanted to do everything we can to help him. Since his stay in the ICU, Harry has continued to have persistent respiratory problems that no amount of medication or vet visits have been able to solve. On bad days, he wheezes and gags constantly; we have to get up with him in the middle of the night, take him into a steamed-up bathroom, and beat on his chest to help break up the blockage in his lungs. He has been on three different expensive medications for four months. He was too ill to ever go outside until two weeks ago. Our vet is sure that Harry arrived to us sick and has described his lungs as “some of the worst I have ever seen on a dog.” And no insurance company will help with the costs because they also consider his pneumonia “a pre-existing condition."

We bought Harry from Purebred Breeders. And throughout this whole process, they have been an absolute nightmare. Though I will say this right now: I should have NEVER bought a dog from them, and I am 100% complicit in this whole situation. We should have adopted. We should have gotten a shelter dog. But we didn’t. We did, however, try not to buy one of those puppies in the window, so we went through Purebred Breeders. They prided themselves on how well their dogs were cared for and how they had sold puppies to the Bidens and other high-profile celebrities. If anything, we thought we were buying a dog that was TOO fancy; that we were actually being sort of hoity-toity. But, we thought, at least we’ll know it’s a good dog. NOPE.

If we had just googled harder, we could have found out HUNDREDS of horrible things about Purebred Breeders. We could have found out that The Humane Society has sued Purebred for being a puppy mill that “deceives customers about the origins of the puppies they sell, and as a result, unsuspecting families suffer great expense caring for sick dogs.” We could have found out that the Better Business Bureau gave Purebred Breeders a C rating. We could have read the endless number of negative Yelp reviews, all from people who went through the same thing we did. We could have watched the “Today Show” report where ex-employees of Purebred admitted that they were coached to mislead prospective buyers about the conditions their puppies were raised in. Conditions identical to puppy mills. So why oh why did we not Google harder, especially in 2014?

Because A) we were idiots excited to get a cute little puppy, and B) we were smooth-talked by the people at Purebred Breeders.

Those people have spent months ignoring us. Not returning phone calls. Responding to emails at a snail’s pace. They have refused to help pay for any of Harry’s medical expenses. In the guarantee we signed upon purchase, it stated that we would get the price of our dog back if he died within one year due to a congenital disease. But he is not dead and he hasn’t been diagnosed with a congenital disease. And the "price of the dog” is nothing compared to the mounting medical bills and the near-constant pain our puppy has been in. He arrived to us sick with an illness he either got where he was raised or during transit. Because while Purebred bragged to us on the phone about how their dogs fly to their new homes ON the plane like “show dogs” (which, again, seemed soooo fancy), he was shipped UNDER the plane, at 9 weeks old, even though the woman who raised Harry says on her website “we will not ship our puppies until they are at least 10 weeks of age, sometimes 12 weeks.”

We have been lied to by Purebred Breeders every step of the way. We have been refused help by Purebred Breeders every step of the way. And now, just to get the price of the dog back, they want us to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Yeah, right. We refuse to do this, because people need to know how horrible we think Purebred Breeders has been. Not to us, but to our puppy. And people need to know not to buy from them.

That being said, it’s 2014. All of you are probably reading this like “of course I would never buy a dog from Purebred Breeders! I already know this!” It’s kinda like when you see a young person smoking nowadays—it’s like “what are you even doing!? Everyone knows now that this is so bad!” But I was a dumb idiot and I basically started smoking in 2014; I bought a dog through a company with a long, documented history of neglect, lies and abuse. And I should have known better.

So please, don’t be an idiot like me. Never purchase a dog from Purebred Breeders. And don’t let someone you love do it either.

Plus, it’s 2014. Why would you basically start smoking now?