Author Nancy Crowe

Solo practitioners: Avoid payment scams

Nancy Crowe
Image by Thomas Breher from Pixabay

There was no suspicious link, no Nigerian prince, no call from someone claiming to be a grandchild in trouble. This scam was new to me, and in the end I didn’t fall for it — but there were several red flags that could have saved me some time. Maybe they’ll save you some time, heartache or money.

Long story short: A person emailed me through my website and booked distant Let Animals Lead® animal Reiki sessions for her dogs, for which she said she’d pay by check. I normally don’t take checks for my animal work, especially from new clients. However, there was enough time to cancel if the check didn’t arrive, so I reluctantly agreed. Then she said she’d accidentally cut the check for $4,300 instead of the $430 she owed. Would I please deposit the check and send her back the difference? After asking my partner if this sounded suspicious – and her saying yes – I told the person no.

Now let’s look at the many red flags here:

1) The person contacted me through my website asking about my services, when that information was easy to find on said website.

2) She said she’d be paying by check. Even if she had asked if I take checks instead of telling me that’s how she was paying, I should have politely refused.

3) She emailed me an hour or two later to say she’d mistakenly cut a check for a much larger amount than what she owed. Since she “couldn’t write another check for a while,” would I deposit the check and send back the difference? Evidently this is known as a check overpayment scam; the check will be fake, but by the time the bank discovers it’s fake, the scammer already has the money you sent. Then you’re on the hook repaying the bank.

4) When I said I wouldn’t do that, and again asked her to pay through PayPal, she said she wasn’t permitted to use any third party apps because of a charge back dispute. If that was supposed to get me to let my guard down, she needs to go back to Scammer School.

5) She then dug in, saying she really wanted these sessions for her dogs: “So please once you receive the check, you’re going to deduct your fee from it and send the balance.” Again, a legitimate client — or at least a client I would want to work with — would not say this.

That’s when I repeated my “no,” cancelled the sessions and ended the interaction.

I have to admit wondering why anyone would bother to scam me and not someone more “scamworthy.”

But, sadly, it makes sense that scammers would go after solo practitioners, especially in service-oriented fields. We do this work because we want to help animals and the people who love them, and we’re on our own. My administrative staff, accountant and IT department? They’re all me.

You may want to give someone the benefit of the doubt, but your doubt is a valuable tool. Use it.

At the very least, see it as a sign to pause and ask more questions.

Veterinarian finds hope, healing on streets

Nancy Crowe
Photo by Mart Production/Pexels

As the lead vet at a last-stop California animal shelter, Dr. Kwane Stewart dealt with waves of intakes and discouragement. It got to him.

That’s not uncommon among people who work with animals: You go in knowing you can’t save them all (though of course you want to). Then human stuff piles up … irresponsible pet ownership, abuse, neglect, bureaucracy, you name it — and you wonder if you can do anything at all.

Stewart began to stop and talk with the area’s homeless people who had pets, offering his services pro bono. Despite the initial mistrust — how did they know he wasn’t going to take their dogs or cats away? — he found renewed purpose. He details this journey in What it Takes to Save a Life: A Veterinarian’s Quest for Healing and Hope.

“Homeless people are loving, dedicated pet owners — which I hadn’t thought the case before I started my work,” he writes.

Another surprise was how well behaved the dogs were. In clinics, he’d seen his share of out-of-hand dogs whose humans insisted they had no time to train them. The dogs of the homeless did not pull at their leashes, bark or growl when Stewart approached, nor did they attack other dogs. These owners had nothing but time. They and their canine companions could read each other perfectly.

Stewart has also been inspired by those who weren’t homeless, but still pretty beaten down by the circumstances of their lives. One of these was Richard, a Vietnam veteran who lived in a trailer with his wife and several rescued animals. When Richard’s dog Courtney, a Corgi-hound mix, required a $3,000 surgery for bladder stones. Richard quickly agreed. Stewart asked if he was sure.

“Do what you’ve got to do. Period. … Courtney’s a member of the family. I ain’t rich now but I’ve been poor and I can and will be poor again if that’s what it takes. … That’s just something that when you become a responsible pet owner, that’s what you’ve got to do.”

Stewart put some info about Richard and Courtney on a GoFundMe page. He was stunned when $17,000 came in within a week. In what he calls one of his favorite details of all time, one of the donors was another pet owner he’d helped.

Another great detail: Stewart also works on TV and movie sets, making sure animal actors are safe and well. He overheard Brad Pitt bragging about how sweet, loyal and intuitive his own dog was. “If I closed my eyes, I could have been on Skid Row, listening to someone on the streets talking about what their dog meant to them.”

There is, of course, much more to this memoir. Stewart’s own history includes being bullied as a child, getting into fights well into adulthood, mental illness, a broken marriage, finding joy in fatherhood and navigating vet med as a Black man.

Stewart now leads the Project Street Vet nonprofit, which currently has teams in California, Florida and Atlanta.

‘Do Unto Animals’ takes savvy, practical approach

Nancy Crowe

81sxcc1obelWhen the enormity of a problem makes you want to shrug your shoulders and turn away, that’s the time to break that problem down — into a million oddball pieces if necessary — and find something, however small it may seem, that you can do. Sometimes it’s right in your back yard.

Tracey Stewart’s book, Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better, does this with the savvy of a an animal advocate and former vet tech and with mom-next-door authenticity. The book also does it with Lisel Ashlock’s breathtaking illustrations, some of them simply capturing the natural world and others showing how pigs express sadness, how cats may react to catnip (“whoa, dude!”), and more.

Within these colorful pages, you’ll find everything from practical animal care tips (“Five Ways to Make a Cat Happy”) to recipes for homemade dog biscuits and horse cookies to hard-to-take information about puppy mills and factory farms. At no point in the reading of this book did I find the shaming, blaming, or manipulating that can seep into the most well-meaning literature that aims to benefit animals or the environment as a whole. Parents will find this book especially useful, as there are several activities (such as the “Hurtless Hunt”) families can do together.

So the next time you read or hear something that leaves you feeling overwhelmed with sadness and/or that nothing you can do could possibly help — first of all: Breathe. Then open this book.