When dog owners put the care of their beloved pets into the hands of another person, they trust they’ll stay happy and healthy. That’s what Stacey Sullivan and her husband Kris assumed when they decided their chocolate Labrador retriever Remi needed a little help with his manners and got him settled into a month-long stay at a training facility in Fayette.
There were minor communication issues while Remi was away, but nothing that rung any real alarm bells. Updates were few and far between. At one point they were notified that Remi got into some cat food – no real issue for a breed colloquially known as a canine garbage disposal.
On pickup day in early August, the family’s hopes of seeing Remi with some new skills soon became frantic prayers that he’d even survive his first night back at home. Their sweet, goofy nearly 2-year-old boy had turned into a skeletal shell of himself in his month away, reeking of feces and urine with raw sores all over and a new skittishness suggesting he’d been through hell.
Weeks later, Remi is slowly but surely regaining the weight he lost with the help of veterinary assistance and a whole lot of extra love. Instead of coming home knowing useful commands like “heel” and “quiet,” the Sullivans are working with him on getting his confidence back.
They’re also taking steps toward ensuring what happened to Remi doesn’t happen to any more dogs. Within days of getting Remi back and at the urging of their veterinarian, they called Fayette Police and the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office and filed complaints against the business. They made a widely shared post on social media about Remi and spoke with other people who said they’ve experienced similar at the same business.
And on Aug. 28, the Sullivans filed a civil lawsuit against Simmons Banded Retrievers and its owner Lacey Simmons, claiming fraud, breach of contract and negligence. The suit also requests that the court prohibits the business and its owner from further operations.
Stacey Sullivan said Remi was a birthday present for her husband, and he’s been well enough behaved since he arrived.
“All he wants to do is lay on the couch with you and cuddle,” she said. “He’s such a good boy.”
But well enough isn’t perfect. He’s got a voice and he’s not shy about using it, she said, and although he never showed any signs of aggression his reactive behavior needed modifying.
“He’s got that deep bark and people get terrified thinking he’s gonna do something,” she said. “But he’s barking at you and backing up at the same time.”
When she saw an ad for Simmons Banded Retrievers in North River magazine while her family was moving into a new home, they decided it was the perfect time to get Remi some dedicated training.
“The ad was in a magazine, and so we went onto their Facebook page and we’re like, ‘OK, we see all these dogs with ribbons around their necks, he must be good,’ ” Stacey Sullivan said. “So my husband contacted him, and he had a couple of spaces available. We talked about it and I said ‘OK, let’s just go ahead and do this.’ ”
When her husband Kris dropped Remi off in late June, nothing seemed amiss.
“One of the things (the owner) said was that any time we wanted to come up and visit Remi we could,” Stacey Sullivan said. “He said he’d send us pictures and videos every week.”
Those pictures and videos never came, but they didn’t feel that was cause to worry. After all, Remi was busy getting trained alongside other dogs. School was out and making life hectic, and a family beach trip was in the works.
“I’ve kind of gotten ridiculed from some people about why didn’t you go check on him,” she said. “But I was letting the training process go through. We’ve never done this before.”
When Aug. 3 came around and Kris Sullivan went to go pick Remi up, that’s when it hit the fan.
“I got everything prepared because I was gonna give him a bath,” Stacey Sullivan said. “He’d been out for a month, he’s probably dirty. When my dogs go outside to go potty, I wipe their feet when they come back in.”
But her husband’s warning when he was on the way did little to stem the absolute shock of Remi’s emaciated appearance.
“I said ‘What did he do to him?’,” she said. “And my husband’s just sitting there like he knows I’m about to lose it. I start crying, and he said (the owner) said that Remi got into cat food and that’s why he looks the way he looks.”
Stacey Sullivan grabbed her phone and started taking pictures. She called her mother, who encouraged her to get Remi to a vet immediately. Because it was after regular business hours, they rushed him to an emergency vet clinic.
He was saturated in feces and urine. There were cuts on his paw pads and other spots on his body. He was limping. You could see his ribs, hips and spine through his fur. He weighed 36 pounds that night, when his normal weight is about 50 pounds.
When the X-rays came back, the vet said it looked like his stomach contained what may have been wire and rocks. He’d acquired parasites and was so dehydrated they put him on IV fluids immediately.
Getting his weight back up has been an anxiety-filled journey, she said, because all they wanted to do was give him all the food he could swallow – but that’s the last thing you should do when reintroducing food if they’ve gone without for so long. They had to start with small amounts and work back up, worried the whole time that his already stressed body would find it impossible to continue.
Within the first few days of Remi’s return, the business was communicative, Stacey Sullivan said, and they received a Venmo payment from the owner for Remi’s emergency vet bill that totaled about $1,700. But then communication stopped.
That’s when she made a Facebook post about what happened to Remi, and it was widely shared. Several people reached out to her, she said, sharing similar complaints about the business.
WVUA 23 Digital reached out to Simmons Banded Retrievers in early August via Facebook. Through direct messages, a person operating the account said Remi hadn’t lost any weight until the last week of his stay, when he got into some cat food that bothered his stomach. According to the person operating the account, they were in contact with Remi’s owner and handling any associated vet bills.
Since that conversation, the Simmons Banded Retrievers Facebook and Instagram accounts have been disabled and are unable to be viewed. The business does not appear to have have a website. Subsequent attempts to contact the business have failed.
More vet visits followed as Remi was treated for dehydration, starvation, parasites, superficial sores and osteoarthritis in his hips. He’s out of the danger zone, but he’s exhibiting a lot of trauma- and fear-based behavior and has a long road of healing ahead.
Sullivan said she’s waiting to hear back from the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office on whether Simmons will be criminally charged with any wrongdoing.
Even if there’s nothing law enforcement can do, Sullivan said her biggest hope is that no one else’s dog winds up in the same situation.
