They surrendered their adopted pets that turned aggressive, then they got sued for thousands of dollars for breach of contract

Jeremy Jojola’s report for 9NEWS opens with a simple, painful truth: this isn’t a story about people who stopped caring. It’s a story about people who cared so much that giving up a dog felt like losing a family member.

“I was crying the day that I had to release the dog,” one former adopter, Cody Backer, tells Jojola. He describes it like a serious loss, not a casual decision.

Then comes the twist that makes the whole thing feel upside down. After these adopters surrendered dogs they believed had become too dangerous to keep, they say they were hit with lawsuits demanding thousands of dollars, based on the contract they signed at adoption.

The rescue group at the center of Jojola’s investigation is 2 Blondes All Breed Rescue, and the legal weapon is a strict “return-to-rescue-only” clause that many adopters may not fully appreciate until life gets messy and safety becomes the priority.

Jojola lays out the human side first: fear, injury, guilt, and that awful feeling of choosing between a dog you love and a household you’re responsible for.

Then he digs into court records and finds a pattern.

Two Different Homes, One Shared Ending

Jojola introduces Backer and Colleen Eager as strangers who didn’t know each other at first, but ended up living versions of the same nightmare.

Both adopted dogs from 2 Blondes.

Both kept their dogs for about two years.

And both say a major life change – new relationships, new household dynamics – was followed by dogs becoming reactive and aggressive in ways they could no longer manage safely.

Eager describes being a single mom at the time, dealing with a dog she says was “too reactive” and had bitten three people. When you hear that, it’s not hard to understand why “working through it” can stop being a feel-good phrase and start becoming a liability nobody can afford.

Backer’s situation, as Jojola reports it, also involved a serious incident. He says the dog attacked, and in the aftermath he wasn’t just emotionally wrecked—he was “physically nursing wounds,” too.

In both cases, Jojola reports that surrendering the dogs wasn’t presented as a “dump them and move on” move. It was described as a desperate solution after the situation escalated past what they could safely handle.

And in both cases, Jojola says they ended up surrendering to an organization other than 2 Blondes – something the rescue considers a breach of contract.

The Contract Clause That Changes Everything

The key detail in Jojola’s reporting is the adoption agreement.

He says the contract requires that if an adopter can’t keep the dog, the surrender must be made back to 2 Blondes and no one else. Not a local shelter. Not a rescue down the road. Not a humane society. Not a friend.

Only them.

That sounds straightforward on paper. In real life, it can collide with urgent safety concerns, limited options, and what people are advised to do in the moment.

Jojola reports that Backer and Eager each surrendered their dogs elsewhere – Eager to a shelter, and Backer following what he describes as professional guidance.

Backer explains the mental state he was in at the time. He says he was dealing with injuries and emotional distress and wasn’t exactly in a place where he felt prepared to dig up a two-year-old contract and treat it like a legal landmine.

That line from Backer hits because it’s honest: when you’re in crisis, you’re not thinking like a lawyer. You’re thinking like a person trying to prevent the next bite.

Jojola also reports another contract feature that matters: 2 Blondes remains listed as a point of contact on the dogs’ microchips. So when the surrendered dogs were scanned, the rescue was notified.

That microchip link becomes the mechanism that turns a private surrender into a legal event.

It’s a clever system if your priority is making sure dogs come back to you instead of disappearing into the shelter network. But it also means a choice made in a stressful moment can follow you years later, with a lawsuit attached.

The Lawsuits That Arrived Years Later

One of the most striking parts of Jojola’s piece is the timing.

Backer and Eager both describe being sued long after they surrendered their dogs.

Backer says it was “two years to the week.” He describes being handed papers, signing for them, opening the envelope, and realizing it was a lawsuit. No warning that felt immediate. No quick call right after the surrender. Just a legal ambush, at least from his perspective.

Eager describes being surprised too, and she also says her case involved stress, time, and learning the system without help.

Jojola’s reporting suggests this delay matters because it changes how a person experiences it. It’s one thing to be confronted right away when a contract is violated. It’s another to get served years later, when you’ve already lived through the incident, processed the loss, and tried to rebuild life.

At that point, a lawsuit doesn’t feel like enforcement. It feels like punishment.

Jojola then broadens the scope beyond two families and finds something bigger: he says 9NEWS identified 30 breach-of-contract lawsuits filed by 2 Blondes between 2020 and 2024.

That number is the spine of his investigation. It’s what turns a sad story into a public-interest one.

Because once you hear “30,” you stop wondering if this is a one-off misunderstanding and start asking what kind of rescue group operates with this kind of legal posture.

What Animal Lawyers Say Is Legal, But Unusual

Jojola brings in professionals to answer the question most viewers will have: can a rescue actually do this?

Animal attorney Kristina Bergsten, who tells Jojola she’s practiced animal law for about 13 years, says there’s nothing illegal about having a contract like this. But she characterizes it as harsh and out of the ordinary in her experience.

Her framing matters because it splits the issue into two realities.

One reality is legal: a contract can be enforceable.

The other is cultural: most rescues don’t go nuclear on adopters the way this one allegedly does.

Bergsten’s critique in Jojola’s report isn’t that 2 Blondes is breaking the law. It’s that the agreement doesn’t leave much room for human error or crisis decision-making, and that the penalties appear intense.

Then Jojola brings in 9NEWS legal expert Whitney Traylor, who reviewed the same agreement. Traylor points to something that jumps off the page: an immediate $5,000 penalty for breach of contract, contrasted with an adoption fee of $475.

Traylor says strict contracts aren’t automatically unusual. But he describes this one as feeling “punitive,” like it was drafted with enforcement in mind rather than simply ensuring the dog’s return.

That’s the heart of the controversy Jojola is documenting: the contract doesn’t just guide behavior. It threatens consequences, and the rescue appears willing to carry them out.

Two Outcomes: Fight Or Settle

Jojola’s report shows how people react when they’re sued by a rescue group.

Some settle.

Some fight.

Backer, Jojola reports, was dealing with unemployment during the lawsuit. He made a deal and settled. Now, he says he’s still making payments on a $5,000 settlement, calling it another roadblock while he tries to dig out of financial struggles.

That detail is important because it shows the leverage lawsuits can create even when the amount isn’t massive by corporate standards. For an ordinary person – especially one between jobs – fighting can be impossible. A settlement becomes the only way to stop the bleeding.

Eager took a different route.

Jojola reports she represented herself for months and ultimately avoided paying thousands. She describes the stress of trying to educate herself, learn legal terminology, and build a case without professional help.

Even when someone “wins,” the process can still feel like a punishment. Time, anxiety, paperwork, court appearances – those costs don’t disappear just because you get a favorable ruling.

This is one of the bleak truths behind civil litigation: the punishment can be the process, especially for people who don’t have money to throw at attorneys.

The Rescue’s Defense And The State’s Limited Role

Jojola doesn’t end the story with only the adopters’ side. He includes a statement from 2 Blondes All Breed Rescue, which argues their contracts exist for a reason.

In the statement Jojola reads from, the rescue says it maintains rigorous adoption standards and requires written agreements to ensure dogs are returned to them if an adopter can’t continue caring for the animal.

The group characterizes violations as “unfortunate but rare,” and says legal intervention represents only a small fraction of adoptions.

That’s the strongest argument 2 Blondes has: they aren’t suing because they enjoy conflict; they’re suing because they believe return-to-rescue rules protect dogs and reduce risk.

And to be fair, the underlying goal – keeping track of where animals go, preventing irresponsible rehoming, making sure dogs don’t fall into bad hands – isn’t crazy. Many rescues do want that control because they’ve seen what happens when animals bounce from home to home.

But Jojola’s reporting highlights the big difference: most rescues don’t enforce those rules with aggressive lawsuits and steep penalties, at least according to the experts he interviewed.

Jojola also points out a frustrating gap: there is a state agency that oversees animal rescue groups like 2 Blondes, but he reports it has no say in how pet adoption agreements are written.

So even if a contract feels extreme, oversight doesn’t necessarily touch it. The state may supervise licensing or general operations, but the contract itself is a private agreement – meaning the battlefield becomes civil court, not a regulatory hearing.

When Safety Collides With Paperwork, People Freeze

One thing Jojola captures well is how unrealistic it can be to expect perfect contract compliance during a crisis.

If your dog bites someone, and you’re scared it could happen again, your brain goes into emergency mode. You’re thinking about preventing harm, protecting your kids, protecting your partner, protecting neighbors.

You are not calmly re-reading a clause you signed years ago.

That doesn’t mean contracts should be meaningless. It means rescues that rely on harsh penalties should assume that in the exact moments adopters are most stressed, they’re also most likely to make a “wrong” move – then pay dearly for it later.

If a rescue wants to protect animals, building a system that people can realistically follow under pressure is smarter than building one that punishes failure after the fact.

A Rescue’s Mission Doesn’t Automatically Justify Its Methods

2 Blondes’ statement leans hard on mission and numbers, and it might be sincere. But a good mission doesn’t excuse a method that appears, at least from Jojola’s reporting, to hit ordinary people with big financial threats when they’re already emotionally wrecked.

A $5,000 penalty in a contract connected to a rescue adoption creates a strange moral imbalance.

Adoption groups often talk like partners in compassion, like they’re working with adopters as a team. Litigation flips that relationship into “us versus you.” It treats a former adopter not as a struggling person who tried to do the safest thing, but as a violator deserving punishment.

Even if the rescue is legally within its rights, it still raises a basic question: what kind of culture does this create in the community? Does it make people afraid to adopt? Does it make them hide problems instead of asking for help?

Jojola’s reporting doesn’t answer those questions outright, but it practically forces you to ask them.

What Jojola’s Report Leaves Viewers With

By the end of the piece, Jojola has documented a collision between three things that don’t fit neatly together: love for a pet, fear of harm, and a contract that treats the adopter like a potential defendant from day one.

Backer’s grief is real. Eager’s stress is real. The rescue’s desire to control outcomes might be real too.

But the lawsuits – 30 of them in a few years, according to Jojola’s review of court records – change the tone of what adoption means. It’s no longer just “bringing home a dog.” It’s signing an agreement that can follow you for years, and possibly reach into your wallet at the worst moment of your life.

If there’s a single practical lesson embedded in Jojola’s reporting, it’s this: adoption contracts deserve the same attention people give mortgage papers or car loans, especially when the penalties are this steep.

Because in the world Jojola just documented, surrendering a dog isn’t always the end of a heartbreaking chapter.

Sometimes it’s the beginning of a lawsuit.