I’m on the hunt for a puppy right now, either herding breed or spaniel, and last night I found an ad on Craigslist for a Australian Shepherd puppy that a person was rehoming due to their child’s allergies. At the time the ad had been up for only one hour.
The price was good and the dog came with toys, crate, food, etc. I called and left a text, just to make sure she got it. All I said was “Hi, my name is (insert) and I’m interested in your dog, please call me at # if you still have her. Thank you!”
Two hours later I go to check the ad and its vanished! I spend thirty minutes searching Craigslist only to never find it. The person hasn’t responded.
I imagine one of several things has happened:
They changed their mind.
Their breeder saw the ad and contacted them to take the puppy back.
There is also option 5, that you hallucinated the whole thing, and it is an early sign that your sanity is slipping and you will end up spending the rest of your life in a padded room having conversations with a giant orange talking praying mantis that only you can see.
Yes, having sold things on Craig’s List, I can attest that you start with good intentions of responding to all and then, overwhelmed by the response, you end up just pulling the ad and hiding under a rock.
Yeah, I mean, sorry, but this isn’t strange at all for Craigslist. They’re still anonymous until they respond to your email, and that’s valuable to some people. So if they’ve already sold it, or don’t want to sell it to you for whatever reason, then it makes sense just to delete your email and not write back.
Depending on what city you’re in, you’re probably going to have to move quickly on those posts. We found our puppy on Craigslist in NYC, and it was literally me sitting there every 5 minutes hitting refresh. Good luck!
ETA: Sorry, just realized you said they left their phone number, which kills their anonymity. But still, it’s pretty common to just move on once they’ve found a buyer; they probably just hadn’t gotten around to removing the post yet.
Yeah, in recent months that’s become Option 1. However, Aussies are bumptious, and dogs are social animals, are not people, and need another dog to be happy. Do you have room for even a minimal dog pack?
That’s what I’d go with as well. The dog is gone, time to move on. I put something on Freecycle once (never again, I’ll just use craigslist if I ever want to do that again). Got flooded with emaisl right away. I started at the top of the list, if you didn’t meet my ‘demands’, I just moved on to the next one. I’d reply, if things didn’t work, I moved on to the next one and be done with with that person. I got soooo many emails, I didn’t really have any reason to screw around with anyone that was making this difficult for me.
FTR, I was giving away a large flat panel plasma TV. My only requests were 1)It needs to be picked up today and 2)You have to provide transportation.
At least half of the emails either asked me to hold on to it until another day or asked me to drive it somewhere for them. Considering I was getting about 10 emails an hour (tapering down to about 10 a day, even a week after I pulled it), I just deleted any email that didn’t start out with something like ‘I can be there in an hour’ or ‘How big is it, will it fit in the back of Civic?’.
Actually, one last thing, while you should move on, don’t totally give up hope, if the buyer flakes, you’re probably still on the list (unless they put it back on CL). I had a few people flake, in which case I just moved to the next person.
That is ever so much fun! Dylan was supposed to be a corgi/lab. He was 35lbs and black with a white bib. A lab tail, but otherwise a completely generic pariah dog. Damn good dog.
But did you find another dog?