PetConnect Rescue, Inc. Disclaimer

We’re NOT affiliated with Pet Connect Rescue out of Joplin, MO, or any other organization with the same or similar name.

We are PetConnect Rescue, Inc., a 501(c)(3) animal welfare organization based out of Potomac, MD, dedicated to saving dogs and cats at high risk of euthanasia since 2005. We have rescued and found loving forever homes for nearly 8,000 dogs and cats from high-kill shelters over the years.

We are not affiliated with any other organization with the same or similar name anywhere in the U.S. or around the world.

Why do we have to make this disclaimer?

On January 1, 2019, the state of California’s new Pet Rescue and Adoption Act went into effect, requiring retail shops to offer only rescue or shelter puppies, not puppy mill puppies. We at PetConnect Rescue celebrated this legislation, like so many rescues and rescue advocates who have been fighting puppy mills and commercial breeders.

Around that time, we began receiving calls and emails asking if we were selling puppies in California pet stores or asking for more information on a rescue puppy “adopted” for thousands of dollars.

We discovered that a Joplin, MO-based organization affiliated with known commercial breeders and calling itself Pet Connect Rescue, Inc., has been supplying puppies to retail pet stores in California, which have been advertising them as “rescues.” The only difference in the otherwise identical names is a space between two words: PetConnect Rescue (us, in Maryland) and Pet Connect Rescue (Joplin, Missouri).

People looking at puppies have been told that there are Pet Connects all over the U.S., and to contact the rescue for more information. When potential “adopters” search “Pet Connect,” we come up because we’re legitimate. People then assume that we are affiliated with the Pet Connect out of Joplin, MO. We have fielded numerous calls, emails and Facebook messages, and have spent a lot of time educating those who contact us about who we are, and who this other organization is.

Shockingly, the Joplin-based organization (along with several others) has been able to get a legitimate 501(c)(3) designation from the federal government, and has been using the designation to exploit a loophole in the California law to promote themselves as a non-profit working with rescues.

Several animal advocacy groups and animal law enforcement, along with several state attorneys general, are working to expose and crack down on these fake rescues and the stores that sell the puppies, while trying to get the law’s loophole closed. One group, the Companion Animal Protection Society, recently released an expose on how animal breeders and their middlemen, including Pet Connect out of Joplin, have been posing as legitimate 501(c)(3) rescue organizations, allowing them to sell their animals in California.

To view the Companion Animal Protection Society’s expose on California’s pet stores, go to, go to this link.

To view the Bailing Out Benji story that discusses these fake rescues—and also specifically notes that we are NOT the Pet Connect Rescue selling puppies–read here.

If you see a story about a Pet Connect Rescue selling puppies in pet stores in California, it is NOT us, and there is absolutely no affiliation. We would appreciate if you would forward any such stories to us at info@petconnectrescue.org.