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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