Earlier we reported a story about someone who sold his dogs in a dodgy manner (TL;DR – he transacted dogs at $2500, which was quite close to retail prices)

We had no idea who this person was, but someone who claimed to be him was nice enough to send us a Facebook message identifying himself with the following message:

“My name is M, and i’m the person in topic here: 

Please let me address the following as such.

1. The dog in topic is our own dog, and it was not adopted for free. We had a few previous dogs as well, and we felt that we could not continue taking on the responsibility of taking care of the dog, hence, we decided to let it up for adoption instead of mistreating it or being unable to be there for it.

2. There is no hard and fast rule, neither are there any laws in Singapore, being mandated by the AVA, that adoption fees be set at a specific amount, and unless there is such a rule, I don’t see that there is anything wrong with setting it at $2500, and just because the majority of society feels that its high, does not equate it to be wrong. Another reason on why we had set it at $2500 is because we didn’t want the person who would be adopting the puppy to re-sell it at a higher price, which would meet pet shop prices of the said breed and age.

3. My food for dogs business operates under the boundaries of a home based small scale business scheme, and as such, we are not required, by law, to register our business.

4. We are upright, law abiding Singaporeans and any accusations, without evidence, would lead to a defamation lawsuit and an immediate police report.

We would like sureboh.sg to get your facts right before making such a post on us, and the business, as such acts on your end, may or may not tarnish our reputation and business repute, and we are considering our options, and discussing with our lawyer with regards to which if we would want to sue for damages or not.

I am texting you privately now as I wish to resolve this issue with sureboh.sg amicably, however, we would definitely not hesitate to pursue legal avenues to preserve our good repute.”

Firstly, let us address the question of whether or not it is ok to set whatever fee you want and call it an adoption rate.

The law does not look to your words, the formalities involved or the terms of your contract. It looks to your conduct and the substance of your transactions. If you sold one dog at $2500, ok – maybe it is an appropriate fee for the care of one dog.

If you sold two, three…the facts stack against you. If you do it recurrently then it will be very difficult to convince the courts that you are not in the business of breeding.

It is quite amusing that he claims he is not a breeder, but his threats allege that our article has affected his “business”. ROFL.

And now, let us talk about defamation because wow… we have never received threats like this before and it is sooooo original!

We’re not going to waste time teaching anyone about the tort of defamation, you go pay your lawyer for that. But we’d like to save you some money by sharing this: it is not defamation if it is truth, in the public interest or is factual material from public domain.

Further, even though it doesn’t matter, we take care not to identify people because we do not believe in vigilante movements…other sites are not so kind.

So Mr. M, if you really are the person (dunno whether really is it him or not, a lot of fake things on the internet these days) Lim peh very scared – please send your “court order” to:

“AM Lee, 1 Orchid Road, Istana, 238823”