BACKGROUND ON THE CALIFORNIA CODES

For decades consumers have been held at the mercy of dog breeders and pet shops that trade in poorly bred puppies that often suffer from congenital defects due to inbreeding at the hands of irresponsible breeders, or illness due to neglect or indifference on the part of pet shop owners. It's time to ask your government officials to protect you when you purchase your next pet. As a consumer you need to be guaranteed that you will have a means to recover any financial losses you may suffer if the animal you have been sold is in anyway defective through no fault of your own.

I have not been able to confirm the actual year but sometime in the 1990's the State of California enacted a new set of Codes that guarantee consumer protection to those purchasing puppies from pet shops that the puppy they are buying is guaranteed to be healthy or they would be fairly compensated by the pet shop.

Now if a shop chooses to sell dogs (which is perfectly legal) they are held financially responsible for the guaranteed health of that dog up to the purchase price, or even amounts that exceed the purchase price of the dog in vet bills if it is sick at the point of purchase (for 15 days) or up to 1 year for congenital defects.

This means if they sell a sick puppy for $1000 and the consumer takes it to the vet and spends $1000 in vet fees they can return the puppy for the purchase price plus the additional vet fees! So now the shop has a sick dog and just paid back to the purchaser $2000. If the purchaser wants to keep the sick dog the shop still has to reimburse them for up to 150% of the purchase price in vet fees, so for a $1000 puppy they would have to give the purchaser back a whopping $1500. Genius!

Obviously the entire concept of a profit margin fell straight out the bottom of the puppy selling business the day the new law took effect here in CA.... This is the precedent I hope more states will follow.

The Cutest Dog Ever will continue to learn new ways to create animal lemon laws in states where they are either sub-standard or currently don't exist and will update the site whenever new information becomes available.