The animal rights movement uses social media to encourage local vigilantes calling themselves rescuers into stealing dogs out of the backyards of every day citizens. They are all abused they cry as they resell the stolen dogs for big money to a gullible public who thinks they are saving an animal. One such activist operating in New York state is Stephanie DeRose-Morano of Wappingers Falls.
DeRose-Morano, a stay at home mother, is a member of multiple so-called rescue groups networking to look for dogs to “rescue” that she can resell for profit. While promoting herself as a “natural childbirth coach” and running a business she calls Bloomin Beginnings which offers classes at the Waddle n Swaddle baby store in Poughkeepsie, she also claims to be a professional dog trainer.
America is wallpapered with thousands of quacks all hanging up a shingle claiming experience in dog training. Her business she calls “Global Shepherd” can’t be found in any legitimate business listings. Just how professional is that? She claims to have a master’s in education, yet she also claims to be so crippled from Rheumatoid Arthritis starting at age 14, that she can’t work in that field.
In this article, she says after the birth of her son, she was so crippled she couldn’t even get dressed and struggled to able to nurse her own son. She is not a licensed medical doctor yet promotes also herself as an educator on childbirth. In her $300 classes she teaches nutrition, information on medications, exercise, and how to be more comfortable while giving birth at home without medical supervision. A quack indeed. If people want information on prescription drugs, they should ask a licensed doctor, not this woman.
The real question is, as a dog broker, is she licensed with the federal Department of Agriculture (USDA) and New York state to legally resell all of the dogs she is selling to the public as rescues? In this post, she is offering a three year old German Shepherd of Czech bloodlines for sale that she claims she got from a public shelter. If she bought this dog from a shelter, just how does she know it has Czech bloodlines? What is even more troubling is her description of the severe behavioral problems, including dog aggression that this dog has, yet she’s selling him off to the public. In this post, she’s reselling a one year old shepherd. She has also posted sales ads for all black German Shepherds in the Hudson Valley Adoptable Pets Facebook group and GoFundMe pages asking for people to give her money that she claims will be spent on various animals. In this GoFundMe page, she’s asking for money for her own dog.
Caesar is her own private pet that she admits got out of an open door at her house and took off. Now in her updated sob story she claims he has become a feral dog who needs over $2,000 in medical treatments that she wants the public to pay for.
DeRose, along with other local vigilantes posted in a Facebook group called the Dutchess County Moms, bragging that they answer reports of people breeding pets in their community in an attempt to steal the puppies from their owners. Recently DeRose and another activist showed up on the doorstep of a Champion German Shepherd breeder who provides therapy dogs to military veterans, threatened her husband, and accused her of abusing dogs.
DeRose has never met this breeder before and has no idea if these dogs are abused or not. In addition, these vigilantes have published the work address and location of this hobby breeder in order to have other activists harass her at work. This breeder has now filed a police report against DeRose and has sought legal counsel.
In addition, she has had a veterinarian examine her dogs and document their condition to prove that DeRose’s uneducated social media claims are baseless. Meanwhile, DeRose is actively scrubbing the Internet of many of her posts in the wake of the police visit to her home.
A look at the background of DeRose shows that she has a pattern of going after strangers and acquiring their dogs. In one post earlier this year, now removed, she whined that the puppies she was looking to steal were in a screened in porch and she felt that a porch was just “way to cold” for them. She isn’t the law and has no documented education in animals.
She doesn’t get to determine whether a porch is too hot or too cold, the law does. She later bragged that she gained custody of the two puppies and offered them for sale as supposedly having been rescued from something.
The big question is, since she is the President of the Vassar Kinry PTA for the local Vassar and Kinry Road Elementary Schools, do all the other moms know she’s a dog flipper?
Katharine Dokken is a Public Affairs Specialist at The Cavalry Group and the author of two new books, including The Art of Terror: Inside the Animal Rights Movement, available on Amazon. Follow Katharine and The Cavalry Group on Twitter: @KatharineDokken @TheCavalryGroup
