Buyers of sick puppies barking mad amid probes
Accusations mount against Big Apple pet-store chain
A BOUT a week after Anita Marks purchased her adorable long-haired Chihuahua puppy, Frankie, he ended up confined to an oxygen tank at an emergency pet hospital.
When Kimberly Bowser brought home her 4-month-old Chihuahua, Joey, he immediately started vomiting.
And Donna Downing’s 10-week-old French bulldog, Harley, collapsed in a coughing fit, while Tiffany Albina’s French bulldog, Pearl, lay dying of pneumonia, just days after their purchase. The poor pooches all suffered similar symptoms from kennel cough, pneumonia and a compromised esophagus.
They also shared something else in common: They were bought from Citipups, a small, exclusive chain of Manhattan pet stores that has been accused of using puppy-mill breeders — and is now under investigation by office of state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the Humane Society after The Post last week revealed Albina’s plight.
JOEY
Bowser thought it was adorable that her new puppy, Joey, always wanted to be held when she and her family bought him at Citipups’ Chelsea location in August 2015 for around $2,000.
“One of the reasons we picked him was because he was just so laid back and cuddly and wanted to sit on our laps,” the Hoboken resident recalled. “In retrospect, he was that way because he was really sick.
“When we got home, he wouldn’t stop throwing up. We were worried because, how many times can a dog throw up and still live without starving?”
Bowser said that when Cititpups learned about the dog’s condition, it sent her to its vet and covered the cost. The vet determined Joey was “not fit for sale” because of kennel cough and a respiratory infection.
Bowser eventually learned that Joey had a condition called mega-esophagus, which inhibits eating and drinking.
She said Citipups never disclosed the condition.
The devoted dog owner has since done everything she can to keep Joey alive. She purchased a prop called a Bailey chair that allows him to eat on his hind legs. She holds him up after every meal so he can swallow. Joey also sleeps with a neck brace to keep him from choking on his vomit and dying.
Citipups offered her a refund if she returns the pooch, but Bowser said she is worried about what would happen to the him if she gave him back.
“We don’t feel that Citipups really owes us anything, but hopefully, they’ll get healthier dogs and not perpetuate selling sick dogs,” Bowser said.
FRANKIE
Unlike Bowser, Marks wants to be repaid the nearly $20,000 she said she spent saving her Chihuahua, Frankie.
Marks, a broadcaster for the Giants, said she shelled out $2,200 for the 8week-old puppy at the West Village Citipups, and five days later, he came down with pneumonia.
“He started developing this cough, and literally within 12 hours, he was on his deathbed,” Marks said.
Workers at Animal General in Edgewater, NJ, diagnosed the pup with kennel cough, a collapsed esophagus and possible pneumonia, according to a draft of a lawsuit that Marks’ lawyer, Michael Devereaux, plans to file against Citipups in Manhattan Supreme Court.
Frankie was rushed to the emergency veterinary hospital Blue Pearl
in Midtown Manhattan for advanced treatment.
“He had to live in an oxygen tank for several days to breathe and was on massive antibiotics for months,” Marks said.
“Sixteen thousand dollars later, he is alive and kicking, but I know many don’t have those funds to save these little guys,’’ she said.
Citipups urged her to transfer Frankie to the store’s own vet, where care would be free, but the animal hospital didn’t have an oxygen tank, she said.
A Citipups employee kept telling her, “You have to get him out of Blue Pearl. It’s too expensive,” Marks said. “He said, ‘Bring him back here, and we’ll reimburse you.’ And I said, ‘ Then what, he’s going to die?’ That was the final straw for me.”
The draft of her planned lawsuit states, “Citipups knowingly, deliberately, intentionally and/or maliciously sold Marks a very sick and unhealthy Chihuahua.”
PEARL & HARLEY
When Downing read about Albina’s struggle to save her French bulldog Pearl in The Post last week, she said to herself, “This could have been my story!”
“To see that article, and it was the same pet store and same scenario, it really upset me,” Downing said. “It just broke my heart that her little puppy didn’t make it.”
Albina had traveled from Maryland to the Citipups store in Greenwich Village just before Christmas to purchase Pearl for her husband.
The pet store was recommended by a relative, Albina said in her recently filed Manhattan lawsuit. She paid $4,500 for Pearl. The dog got ill two days after Christmas and eventually died.
Citipups reimbursed her, and store owner David Barton said he offered to send someone to her home in Maryland to retrieve the dog for treatment when it was sick but that she refused. Albina is suing Citipups for more than $10,000 in medical costs.
Albina’s story is strikingly similar to Downing’s, although at least Downing’s dog Harley is still alive.
The Oregon grandmother got her $6,500 French bulldog as a gift from her daughter and Manhattan granddaughter in September.
“Two days later, I got up with her at 4 in the morning, and she was so sick she couldn’t even stand up,” Downing said of her then-10-week-old Frenchie.
“It almost brings me to tears, even now, because I love her so much, and I did immediately when I first got her, and just to see her so weak and sick, I would just hold her and cry whenever I would visit her at the hospital,” Downing said.
“We went through 3¹/2 months of horrible medical bills trying to get her well,” she said.
In all, Downing says she spent $7,000 on a seven-day hospital stay, X-rays, medication and other costs.
Downing said she never contacted the pet store because she was preoccupied with the dog’s recovery.
“Am I upset that I’m so out of pocket? Yes,” Downing said. “Am I blessed that I have him in my life? Absolutely.”
S O-called “puppy mills” are commercial dog breeders which, animal activists accuse, treat dogs inhumanely by packing them into small crates, denying them veterinary care and sometimes even starving them.
The AG’s Office told The Post it was investigating Citipups.
Barton, an owner of the three Citipups stores in the West Village and Chelsea, questioned the Humane Society’s credibility by noting that a counter organization called Humane Watch claims the group spends most of its money on lobbying instead of caring for animals.
Barton said his company pays medical bills for sick puppies and insisted that the kind of cases detailed by The Post are rare.
“I would . . . say 99 percent of these people, when the pup gets sick, they neglected the dog until the last moment, and there’s nothing we can do,” Barton said.
He reasoned that all puppies are susceptible to sickness because “they have no immune system. They can pick up everything.”
He said his stores have a strict protocol for assuring pets are healthy when they’re sold.
“You don’t wake up one morning and have pneumonia,” Barton said.
“We have very, very few problems, but I got to tell you, when people purchase a live animal, they have to treat it like a living being.”
In 2013, Citipups sued two animal-rights activists for running through its Chelsea store yelling, “Puppy mill! Puppy mill! Puppy mill!”
But Manhattan Judge Joan Kenney tossed the suit last year when she found that Citipups failed “to rebut factual claims” made by activists Kristi Schrittwieser and Michael Feldman.
In court papers, Schrittwieser and Feldman argued that they never entered the store but only held “educational” protests in front of the building.
They said they are the real victims of harassment by Citipups and provided the judge with a copy of a court order that barred the pet store from interfering with their “constitutional right to protest.”
Bowser, Marks, Downing and Albina say their experiences mean Citipups should source healthier dogs from more humane breeders.