Never realized how hard it was to make a sale online. Let me rephrase that, how impossible it is to sell a pup to a legitimate buyer not looking to scam you.

It was going to be simple. List said pups in online classifieds, receive calls, and sell pup, the end. It wasn’t that simple. The world is full of scam artists, and they are all phishing pet sellers. Just when you think, this ones legit, they through you a curve ball.

Here’s what you are going to do:

I will issue you a check for $1500; you cash it the same day and receive a $200 bonus for doing so. Then you wire the rest of the money after your initial asking price to a friend of mine in the states I owe money to, and they will come get the pet.

Yeah right.

I respond by showing my appreciation for their generous compensation for the inconvenience of laundering their money, tell them I have advised my client to decline all such offers, and wish them good luck elsewhere.

I’ve answered emails into the wee hours, and gone to bed with cramps in my fingers. All this for probably nothing, instead of the commission I was going to earn. I owe it all to the crooks of the www.

How do you know the email is on the level? I’ve discovered quickly, that anyone that declines to call you direct can kiss your backdoor firewall goodbye. So, now I leap into the telephoning request. If they don’t call, they are sent packing; straight to the virtual shredder I call jaws. I have a little icon of a shark I feed them to.

You’ll find they don’t give up immediately. They try a few more times to up the anti, make it real tempting, you know, something for little effort and all. Their emails are also written in the format of an order. They state clearly and commandingly, what you are to do if you want the outrageous reward they dangle. I may be blonde, but I have the logistic roots of a calculating brunette, and the natural highlighting of a fire-breathing redhead. It’s referred to as being center-brained, perfectly comfortable, and equally formidable in both the right and left hemispheres, and also, content to drift the wide-open spaces of blondom.