Breaking News

[there's a lot to catch up with, but this is so great--for us--I'm posting it now before I get scooped]

DH placed an ad to sell/re-home Sombrea in our local Greensheet. This task has been on his todo list for a while; I think that looking at our budget (and seeing how much we've been laying out on extra feed expenses) and another attack on Persephone were what spurred him to action. Sombrea does a fantastic job of keeping the wild canines away, but I wish she was capable of making an exception with our two. I decided to expand our chances of selling her, and I posted this to craigslist last night:

Registered Jennet

15-year-old female donkey needs a new home. In-laws gifted us with her daughter, and she's been living with us while they worked out their weaning dance. We can no longer justify paying twice the feed, so we want to find her a good home. $200 adoption fee to ensure committed companion. Great guard donkey (she's kept our sheep safe from the ferals/coyotes that had taken 3), but not good with dogs. Grey burro with "cross" along back/shoulders. Please email to initiate conversation.

We received one bite, but she was wanting a miniature. No go. By noon, we received a notice that our post had been flagged and removed. I couldn't imagine why, so I posted this question to their pets forum:

"I've been flagged. I can't figure out why--I read the terms of service and worded my post accordingly. We are not trying to sell our animal. She needs a new home. We were only meant to be temporary owners while her daughter (whom we are keeping to be a guard animal) weaned herself. As I can read on other posts that have been left up, a rehoming fee is acceptable in order to ascertain a serious new owner/companion.
I'll watch this thread for constructive comments, and I'll post the ad again in a week. We truly want Sombrea to find a good living space where she can get the attention she needs, and hope that this community can help by enabling us to spread the word as widely as we can."

Here's the first response:
"is it possible that your post sounds like you intentionally bred her? if you post the ad here, maybe we can help. Flagging questions should also be directed at the flagging forum- click feedback in the upper right and then click flagging. "

My answer: [I posted the original ad, which I neglected to do]
We had nothing to do with her breeding. The daughter (Serenity) was 4 months old when we received her from our in-laws.
I posted here because I'd like to get an idea of why someone would kick my ad off and leave other similarly-written ads alone.

Here's another reply:
"how much were you asking?"

my answer:
$200--the original copy is within my reply to the first reply in this thread (hope that made sense). This was far lower than any of the other rehoming fees for similar equines. Do you think we should up the price?

and a third:
"this is completely out of context for me as I don't see any other posts by you on this forum and don't know what your ad on the Pets board looked like.
If you want constructive comments, it might be a good idea to include the text of the ad you posted with your request (on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if people just said "Go to the flagging forum." I think the whole process is getting too complicated myself.)
But based on nothing more than what I just read in your message, it sounds like you are rehoming-for-a-fee an unspayed "animal" (I assume a dog, but why don't you say that?). If you don't state that you will spay her or require the adopter to, that in itself might be enough to get you flagged.

Since I'd already reposted the content, I felt that this question was covered.

And then, I received this post:

"reasons
possible reasons:
a) dog isnt spayed
b) keeping pup as "guard dog" (dogs deserve to live inside and can better guard your possessions while inside. what she guarding outside? your lawn?)
c) rehoming fee is too high for services rendered (reasonable fee $100 for a spayed, vaccinated pet or $25 for an unspayed, unvaccinated pet - but she SHOULD BE SPAYED)
d) intentionally bred the dog you're rehoming
e) the dog you're keeping isn't spayed
f) you intend to breed again
it could be anything. if you would like to post your ad here, we can better guess why you were flagged

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to be as graceful with my answer:

Here's the third copy of...the ad [and I posted another copy, as above]
so:
a) she isn't a dog, and she's registered, she's meant to be bred

b) while some people have no problem with allowing their donkeys inside (I understand some owners of minis do this), this is prohibitive for us. She's a full-size donkey, and she has 10+ acres on which to roam. As you can see in the ad, she's guarding our sheep against wild/uncontrolled canines that had, up until her arrival, taken nearly half of our flock. [I should have said that there is no more lawn to guard, as the sheep she's protecting have eaten it down to nothing]

c) $200 is actually quite low for an equine. She's registered, part of a decent bloodline, and meant to pass that on. In order to buy the mother-dughter pair, we made a promise to register the daughter so that the bloodline can remain tracked. We have no plans at this time to breed the daughter (aside from that fact that she's way too young), but who knows what our circumstances might be in the next 10 years?

d) We had nothing to do with the jennet's past breeding. My in-laws bought the mother-daughter pair, which had to be kept together in order to allow the daughter to be weaned humanely

e) see c) Do female donkeys get spayed? I know jacks get gelded...

f) We may breed, but it won't be "again", and it won't be for several years, and maybe not until we can afford a bigger place.

Given the new information above, what do you suggest I do to stay off the flaggers' radar?

I suppose I should have been not so... snippy, but as I went on, the tone and the assumptions of the post got under my skin.

Anyway, as I was typing up the last response, my dear friend Phelan pinged me, asked what I was up to. I told her that we'd finally gotten around to advertising Sombrea for sale. She wanted to know how much we were asking, and I told her. She said SOLD! and asked when she could come and get her. After I made sure she knew what she wanted to take on (possible foaling late this summer, foot problems, dog stomper), we agreed to trade flesh for cash sometime within the next month. There were other parts of the conversation which turned goofy, but that is one of the things I love about my friend. <3

And, lo, there was much rejoicing about the Browncoat Acres.

Until I realized that I am going to have to get my house really clean and soon. OMG my friend is going to see my house!!