I am the Coordinator of the Bearded Dragon Breeders & Suppliers Network, that was started several years ago by Bill Mears and has 120 members. This is a group of bearded dragon breeders that commit to only selling young dragons over a certain size and age. Any experience breeder of them knows that under that age, even with going to knowledgeable buyers, they often can not survive due to stress with change of environments. Unlike snakes, which are usually good to go to new home once they are established eating, the majority of bearded dragons sold under the age of 6 weeks or 6 inches do not live to see their 4th month of life. Bearded dragons are big consumer of insect food as babies. They often eat 30-70 crickets a day when young, so you can see with this expense for a 24+ clutch, these breeders that join the network commit to incur those costs. to give a young dragon the best possible start in life. The impact of 30,000 crickets a month for one clutch is a lot.
On September 11, 2006 we received a complaint signed by a "Nancy" that a Sara Gatto dba Mezclado Reptilia, a new member on the Network was selling undersized/underage dragons at the Pittsburgh Reptile Show in Harmar , PA. When someone applies, they are checked out, their websites completely read, other breeders that are members of the Network and might know them in the same area or have sold them stock are consulted, show promoter that they attend as vendors as emailed or called , BBB , BOI and even some other avenues that are not public to verify that they have a good reputation and business history. Sara Gatto dba Mezclado Reptilia has also been issued a Fauna Classifieds Good Guy Certification #0163.
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...ad.php?t=83870 She is also a member on this stie and has been for over a year, with over 400 post, most of those helping others on the forums here. So you can see, we do not casually just add anyone applying.
Some of the information that was coming back from inquires regarding the complaint, was mading me feel disturbed that this might be a false/malicious complaint to purposely try and harm someone's business and have them removed from the network.
NO information came back confirming their complaint and additional check including the hatch dates of her dragons and the show date, indicate it would not be possible for the complaint to be true. Network members get free advertising on some reptile site and list, listed with contact info on the Breeders Network site that has thousand of hits a day and in promo information at some reptile shows. What was troubling was that the name of the Complainant was not disclosed in inquires, but the 2 breeders we contacted that attend that show and another one in PA with Ms Gatto and the contact for the show promoter all came back discussing the name of the people that they
assumed for some reason were the complainant. That was a red flag, along with some other info of ongoing problems with this other couple they mentioned.
At that point we ran a trace route on email of the Complainant and another on the route of the known email of this couple John & Debbie Smith who sells bearded dragons and rodents. They match as the same ISP and going to the same address. We are still checking to confirm the business name and will post that once it is confirmed. When this info was relayed to Ms Gatto, she provided me with a copy of an email with header which also match and was the same address, this was allegedly sent by Mr. John Smith a few weeks ago and threatened her with a comment of there being many ways to make her web site, her business and her life in general much more difficult.
Granted, this Nancy who signed the complaint from their address could be a child in their home that got access to thier email and sent this complaint and the threatening letter a few weeks ago to her.....and is playing games. I am emailing the Smiths a link to this URL so they can be made aware this exist and encourage someone independently to do so also. I would like to hear their side of this publicly. I want to be absolutely fair, and they may come back and say Nancy is a daughter or relative in the home, that they are mature and responsible enough individual they would never do anything like this and they will take action against her for doing something so foolish..... and something that is illegal, its called liable and they can be sued for it.
Additional note of checking on this complaint, these are the comments that came back from the breeders at the same show and the contact for the promoter regrarding Sara Gatto about her dragons 1)healthy and of good quality, 2)wonderful dragons & we refered people to her - 3)can not imagine that someone complained about them, they were some of the best in the show.
I felt the community deserves to know when there are some very questionable ethics being used by someone in this industry that sell publicly at shows and seem to have the intent to harm another as all the evidence does show at this point. I think we all have seen this too many times and especially on some of the Tampa threads in the past. If someone is playing games and purposely trying to get another banned off a site that promotes their business and sales, they can do it to anyone, including you. They need to be exposed for what they are and outed in this industry, so others can decide if they really want to do business with someone like this.
Heads up, some people need to learn not to assume others are so stupid and are going to just take their word, they can end up being the one losing their reputation
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