Retail Rescue is really just about the money, not 'saving' dogs. This is an issue I've been writing about for over 20 years. That rescue in your community with the heart rendering sob stories that open your wallet? Is probably run by a secret millionaire. Most of them are. Rescue is a dirty rich business in all tax-free untraceable cash.
Let me introduce you to "Elliott," a desperately suffering and dying dog deliberately kept alive so that a Retail Rescue could profit.
This is Part 3 of a series on "This Is Houston" rescue in Texas. A rescue formed in 2019. They originally caught my eye when I saw them posting that they were looking to resell a brucellosis positive dog.
You can read Part 1: Could Your Neighbor's Dog Kill Your Child? Or Part 2: Another Brucellosis Positive Dog Sold In Virginia of this series here.
According to their social
media posts they are pulling in money hand over fist and saving an astronomical
number of dogs all miraculously hit by cars. Every dog they have for sale has some outrageous story attached to it. Shot, used as target practice, hit by cars, hit by a train, blah, blah, blah. Every dog has literally beaten death if not had their hearts stop outright while valiant rescuers stood by and cried. If you listen to Laura Forma, all of Cleveland and Houston, Texas is one wide open sewer filled with stray dogs humping each other senseless and having puppies in the gutters. Those that live are all used as sport while everyone in Houston seems to get their jollies off of hitting them with their cars.
Yeah, right Laura.
In fact, here's a fiction of the century story from Laura and Tom from May 2020 to explain how they got their hands on 15 highly resellable puppies:
Did ya catch that? They want you to believe that some unnamed SPCA left a bunch of intact dogs running free on some property in Cleveland, Texas. They want you to believe that these dogs were intact and just humping each other senseless and whelping their puppies in farm fields while daddy was eating birds to survive. Yet none of the parents starved to death and mom had enough milk to raise puppies? Meanwhile, they only managed to 'catch' the dogs when the puppies were grown up, CUTE and miraculously ready FOR SALE. Oh, and notice they caught the puppies but no mention is made of the parent dogs..... IF you believe this story, I have a bridge to sell you.
These people are really some of the best masters of rescue porn I've ever seen. Dozens of individual pictures of sad and suffering dogs, every post has a plea for money. HELP US. Give us your money!! By attaching fundraisers to individual pictures they obscure how much money is pouring in.
Remember Ozzy, the dog withbrucellosis that they were attempting to sell to the public? They claim they have spent over $25,000 on his care already and that he is in a $40 a day boarding kennel. Yet the most recent IRS filings available for them claim that they received just $51,298 in donations in 2019. This Is Houston is a circle jerk of just three people: Amanda Hulebak, Tom Heller, and Laura Forma (calling herself Laura Jean on social media). They call claim to not make a dime off their efforts. Not a single dime. (though they are revising their website AS I'm posting these articles to make themselves look much bigger.)
Tattooed Tom the "security expert" bad ass (I'm laughing in my cornflakes on that one) lives here:
Here's where it get's really
interesting... their IRS 990's claims Amanda Hulebak is one of their Board of
Directors but she is not listed on their website. In fact, she claims to be both the founder and president of this rescue but also 'quit' less than a year after founding it.
Remember that figure. $51K. Cuz Laura and Tattooed Tom are masters of the Retail Rescue Heartstrings Pulling Blackmail Stories.
I literally cannot keep up
with screen capturing the 'donations' heart string posts begging for cash
constantly. Every dog has a outrageous sob
story. The majority of them all hit by
cars. (what's the odds?). To jerk your heart strings even more, some
of these sad eyed dogs were HIT HEAD ON BY A CAR. Really?
There is no way this couple is
only pulling in $51 grand a year. It
wouldn't shock me if they were pulling in $51 grand A DAY.
The "Save them All" savior complex hurts dogs more than it saves. Let's meet Elliott.
"This Is Houston" ran multiple separate fundraisers for a dog named Elliott. They claim his vet bill is over $10,000 to 'save' his life.
Before you see the hysteria, here are the facts.
1.) Elliott ate a sock.
2.) When Elliott became sick and started losing weight, his owners took him to the ER.
3.) After discovering the sock, the ER said it would cost $$ to 'try' and save his life, or another option was to put him down because the damage was too extensive.
4.) Elliott's owners signed him over for euthanasia.
5.) A 'vet tech' at the ER funneled Elliott over to This Is Houston to 'save.'
Now you have the players. This Is Houston are the saviors. Elliott's owners, evil monsters so lacking in care for their dog that they can't even keep their house clean.
This is because Laura and Tatooed Tom think they are better than you.
Elliott sadly ate sock that bound up and obstructed his insides. In the Social Justice Warrior Halo Polishing world that makes his owners cruel and abusive people who don't deserve their dog. Yes, you heard that right. His owners signed him over to be put down and depending upon whether or not they paid for euthanasia services, that veterinarian could have broken the law by not doing it. Now Tom and Laura are fundraising like mad off the situation while posting picture after picture of suffering Elliott to get people to open their wallets.
The real animal abusers in this situation are not the family that didn't pick up a sock that Elliott got a hold of. Yes, people have attacked Elliott's family as being 'too lazy' to pick up their home when they have no idea how Elliott got ahold of the sock. They just believe the constant rescue porn posted by Tattooed Tom and Laura. The real abusers are the people keeping Elliot alive day after day as he suffers from a blood pressure drop to 50, raging infections, more surgeries, etc. It is cruel and inhumane to put Elliott through this just so Tom and Laura can brag on how great they are. After making him suffer from procedure after procedure, barely alive for days, Elliott took matters in his own hands and passed away.
Years ago a very similar situation happened to a poodle that I bred. He never spent a moment of his short life alone. He was loved and pampered by a large family who took him everywhere and trained him for obedience and agility events. One December day he ate a Christmas ornament while they weren't looking. The glass shards punctured his intestines. They took him to the vet 3 times before the vet finally figured out why he was sick and what might be going on. Just 4 days later they had to make the same decision that Elliott's owners faced. The veterinarian at the emergency room told them that even after thousands of dollars in surgery, he could not guarantee that their dog would live. They made the sad humane decision to put him down and end his suffering instead of rolling the dice on a 'chance' he might make it. Just as Elliott's family did. They made the right choice.
"This Is Houston" did not. They kept a dog alive that should not have been so that they could have another rescue porn story to fund-raise endlessly off of. Then there's Koda. The dog that Laura and Tattooed Tom Tom shipped from Texas to sell off in Vermont at the same time as the Elliott saga was playing out. Unfortunately for them, "Koda" dropped dead in Virginia on the transport run.
"This Is Houston" wants you to believe that every pet owner is irresponsible and only they are ethical and only they are saving animals. I've never seen such a massive ego ride from a 2 year old rescue group. They even have the nerve to ask for 'prayers' for the sick and injured dogs they are promoting. Anyone who posts on their page to say that the same situation as Elliott happened to them and how much it cost them or anyone who dares to speak up for Elliott's owners is immediately shot down by their deluded followers as cruel and abusive. Yet after days of intensive procedures and surgeries to remove huge parts of his intestines, Elliott DIED. He died after spending days in agony while the majority if his intestinal tract was DEAD. He suffered so people like Laura and Tattooed Tom could polish their halos.
They are so good at pushing their narrative that all animal owners are cruel and abusive and only people Laura and Tattooed Tom as 'saviors.' It's mental sickness like this that has America in the state it is today. All of these mentally ill posters are completely clueless that in the "rescue" world, they are considered to be just as abusive as Elliott's owners.
Keeping dogs like this alive is no different than a recent story in Slate magazine about putting a vicious dog down. The columnist relates how she purchased drove to New Jersey to buy a dog from a shelter and it started biting everyone in sight. After investigating the dog's background she found out it had bitten 7 times before she bought it, yet in the article, she grieves for the loss of this dog and put off putting it down as long as she could. Blackmailed into believing that love and training can 'cure' any dog. The dog should never have been sold to her in the first place. The shelter should be sued and shut down for negligence. What is even worse is the author mentioning a Facebook support group exists with over 11,000 members for people who have had to put dogs down for the same reason. It is absolutely outrageous how many rescues and shelters are selling off vicious dogs on an unsuspecting public.
Here's where it gets really fun. In this fluffy feel good media story about their origins, "This Is Houston" (really Laura and Tom) bragged that they transferred a dog named Thomas (allegedly their first intake) to Wags to Wishes Animal Rescue in Illinois. It's like a circle jerk in the animal retail rescue field.
I've previously written a 3 part series about the dirty retail rescue named Wags to Wishes in 2014. The first called When Christmas Puppies Bring Jail Time was quickly followed by Part 2: What Makes A Good Animal Rescue which led to Part 3: Running For Cover In Waukegan.
Birds of a feather flock together.
YOU can act to stop this. Do not ever donate a dime to any 'rescue' that is keeping a horrifically injured or sick animal alive. Do not support this 'save them all' or 'leave no animal behind' savior complex. You are doing a massive disservice to the animals you claim to love. It IS more humane and more kind to the animal to end its suffering than to prolong it 'just in case' it might recover. Stop satisfying your ego and put the animal first.
You can also report these retail rescues and their practices to your local and federal authorities. Any dog shipped over state lines is required to be 100% healthy and have an issued veterinary certificate to prove it. File a complaint with the USDA using their online AWA Complaint form.
File a complaint with the Virginia Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Any rescue that ships dogs through Virginia OR fund-raises in the Commonwealth of Virginia is required to be state licensed. This Is Houston is shipping dogs through Virginia for resale in the Northeast.
There are many ways you can stop dogs like Elliott from suffering for greed but only if YOU act.
Update: This has turned into a multi-part series.
Part 1: Could Your Neighbor's Dog Kill Your Child?
Part 2: Another Brucellosis Positive Dog Sold In Virginia
Part 3: Living Off Animal Suffering - Retail Rescue Exposed
Part 4: Exposing Cons Brings The Home Girls Out
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