| Karen Zakaria |
| Karen Zakaria Runs a suburban puppy mill in Novi, Michigan |
| 3rd of May, 2011 by User860681 |
| This woman is a beast of a person and is obviously only in this business because she wants money! From the sounds of it, my husband and I are lucky. We got our money back in cash but, I think the only reason for that was because I made my husband deal with Karen and he used a few choice words with her. Our experience is as follows. We picked up our puppy on a Saturday afternoon and by that Wednesday evening she died. Saturday when we picked her up, Karen gave her shots and had also assured us that she had been taken to the vet the week before for her final check up and everything was great. She gave us a goody bag with all kinds of stuff in it and a folder containing her shot records, and all kinds of brochures that she supposedly got from her vet. Now, right off the get go we knew our puppy was small but, she had "been to the vet" and been handled by all kinds of people by the time we brought her home. No one commented on her tiny frame and my husband and I haven't had a dog in about 7 years so, we were naive. Well, Saturday she wasn't very lively. We attributed this to the fact that Karen had just given her the shots. Sunday morning we woke up and the puppy was sore in the shot region and was limping. By later Sunday afternoon she was jumping around and playing a little. At this point she wasn't really eatting that much either. We kept trying to coax her into eatting but, she just wasn't very hungry. Sunday comes and goes and now we are in to Monday. My husband and I went to work and came home and everything seemed as fine as it could be at that point, I guess. I went across the street to my neighbors house at around 7pm that night just for a few minutes and brought the puppy with me. We were getting ready to leave the neighbors house and all of a sudden the puppy starting making that noise that dogs make when they are going to vomit. I set her on the floor and she got sick a little. It was alarming but, my neighbors mom has had a couple of Shih Tzu's and said her one dog use to vomit once in a while and it was probably nothing to be concerned over. I took her home and at around 10 pm we went to bed. We had the puppy in the bed with us and at about 12 a.m I woke up to her sneezing and then coughing a little. This episode seemed to pass and then around 1:30 a.m I woke up to her vomiting again. At this point she had been laying in a little bed that I had next to our bed. She slept the rest of the morning it seemed with out incident and we got up at about 5 am to get ready for work. By now, she had a runny nose. I came home at lunch time to let her out. When I walked in the door she was obviously excited to see me but, her nose had started crusting up because it was running so bad. I of course was alarmed and called my husband and told him about it. By the time he came home from work she was even worse. She was actually so bad that he said he thought she should go to the vet. Well, I had taken that Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday off work to help the puppy acclimate so, I said well, it's up to you. You can take her now or I can take her on Wednesday morning. He said he would watch her and let me know. It was about 3:30 on Tuesday at this point. By, 4:30 he told me she for sure needed to go to the vet because she was having a really hard time breathing. I got off work early and came right home and picked them up and went to the vet. First thing the vet did when he picked her up other than agreeing that she was very very congested was that she was extremely tiny. Then he started asking us questions about where we got her and how many puppies were in the litter. We at this point didn't think Karen had maliciously duped us but, we realized pretty quickly that is exactly what had happened. The doc said first they needed to try and get some blood which would be hard because she was emaciated and then they would do a Nebulizer treatment on her to see if they could open up her air ways. When the doc came back into the room, he said first off because she was so emaciated that her blood sugar was really low. In a puppy he said her sugar count should be around 100, she was at 40. Next, he brought in X rays showing that she didn't have much fluid in her lungs which was a good thing but, she was gasping for air so hard that her stomach had filled up with air. That is why she wasn't hungry. He also said that she had the start of pneumonia. Well, you can understand our surprise! I started crying because I was so upset. The doc did the breathing treatment on her and it did help. He said we had to get food in her to get her sugar back up because her organs could start shutting down. He sent us home with Caro syrup, an antibiotic, a high calorie paste, and syringes. We had another appointment the next morning for another breathing treatment. She did breath better that night it seemed but, I was awake on the couch with her all night. She would be laying there on my chest taking shallow breaths and then all of a sudden would freak out and jump up and take off running because she had phlym break loose in her head and would have to sneeze so she could breath. The infection that was coming out of her head at this point was bright yellow. I guess I still felt like she must be doing better because at least she wasn't gasping for air. The next morning I took her back in and they did another treatment on her and the vet said that if I kept doing what I was doing that she would probably be fine; This was Wednesday morning. I was on the couch with her in my arms all day doing her treatments just waiting for 6 p.m to come because she had another breathing treatment. She had been sleeping pretty much all day and would only wake enough for me to force water and caro syrup into her. I also was giving her the high calorie paste and the antibiotic. My husband came home for his lunch break and asked how she was and I said still no change. He went back to work and came back home at about 3:30 p.m. He asked how she was and I said still no change. He asked me when the last time was that she had gone pee and it dawned on me that she hadn't had a bowel movement of any kind for about 4 hours. So I brought her little face up to eye level and was looking into her eyes and that is when I realized she had stopped blinking. I got alarmed and pulled her eye lid back and that was when I started freaking out. Her little eyes had started to dry up. I told my husband we had to go to the vet immediately, which we did. When we got there the lady at the desk asked if everything was okay and I just broke down and said I think she is dying. She took the baby out of my arms and rushed her to the back room. My husband and I sat in a room by ourselves and just cried. The vet came in and said that she was shutting down and that her sugar had dropped below 40 and that they could try to stabilizer but, there was no guarantee at this point that she would survive. At this point I was pretty much crying uncontrollably and my husband asked me what I wanted to do. All I said to him is you saw her eyes, you know what we have to do. So, the vet brought us papers to sign, which we did. About 5 minutes later the vet came back in the room and told us we had made the right decision because she had just died on her own. It was one of the most heart wrenching experiences I have ever had. They put her little body in a white box and we took her home and buried her in the back yard. My husband called Karen and told her what happened. She wanted to give us another puppy but, we were like no thanks, we want our money back. She said to give her a couple of days because she didn't have any money and was expecting a check from some one. Well, a couple of days went by and we never heard anything so, my husband called her. She said I got the check from someone if you come by, i'll just sign this check over to you. We didn't feel right about this but, he went to her house and she gave him a personal check from someone else and just endorsed the back. Of course, my husband went to the bank and they said they couldn't take this check because for some reason if they cashed it for us and the check was bad the money would some how come out of our account. My husband was pissed. He called Karen back and told her what had happened. Her response to that was I really don't make that much money doing this. My husband basically said I don't care what your problems are, I've used my gas once to drive to your house and now I have to come there again. I'll be over there tomorrow and you better have cash. He showed up at her house the next day and she had cash. My husband went to Oakland County animal control at this point and explained to the sargeant what we had just experienced. The one thing I never mentioned throughout this story is that at any given time, not including all of the puppies that she had, she always had at least 20 adult dogs on hand. She gave us the B.S story that she was babysitting some of these dogs and they weren't all hers. So, anyway, the animal control looked up Karen and said she had been in violation before and had been fined and that he showed she also had been reported to the Nove police department a couple of times. Still, as you can see, no one has stopped this lady! The sargeant said that day that he was personally going over to her house. Well, apparently he drove over there and guess what! She never answered the door. We asked now what? The seargeant said the only thing they can do is sparatically drop by her house and see if they can catch her in action. I just hope that at some point some one can stop this lady..If anything for all of the sick little puppies that she is trying to sell people! By the way, this all occured back in the beginning of March 2011. |
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| My husband and I bought a puppy from her several years ago for our inlaws. She suffered horribly from inbreeding issues for 2 and a half years before she finally died. This little dogs suffered horribly, and my inlaws were heartbroken. Vet bills in the tens of thousands. This woman is outrageous. And for whatever reason, Oakland Couty Animal Control never stops her. Spread the news, if no one buys her puppies, it will end. |
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| i bought a puppy from karen - he is the sweetest dog ever. i also know 4 other people who bought puppies from her and their dogs are very healthy, sometimes nature throws us a curve ball and there is never any guarantee that every person or every animal will be 100% healthy. i am sorry for the pain you suffered with your puppies but knowing karen she would have made every effort to rectify the situation. i have seen her interact with her animals and she adores each and every one of them. i would hardly call her a beast!!! i would definately buy another puppy from her and have referred to her to many others!! i would never in any way support anyone who i felt was running a puppy mill - they are vile!!! i think it's in poor taste to try and destroy someone's reputation and business because you had a bad experience and in the midst of your pain you felt you had the right to trash a sweet, wonderful person!!! |
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