The 14-Day Heartache Guarantee
Tell pet stores: There's no such thing as a "replacement puppy"!
Tell pet stores: There's no such thing as a "replacement puppy"!
Pet Store
Hall of Shame, part 1
Pet Store Hall of Shame, part 2
USDA Violations by Petland Breeders
USDA Records on Various Breeders
How to find out more
about your puppy's breeder
Do Petland puppies really come from LICENSED breeders?
Hunte Corp.
Puppy Mill Links
14-Day Heartache Guarantee
Protesting
for Beginners
Find a group near you
Shelters
Adoption info and links to rescue groups
Poems, etc.
Former pet store employees speak out
Buying puppies online--buyer beware
Pet Stores and Puppy Mills in the News
Animal sellers in Washington DC area
Pet supply stores that DON'T sell animals--the good guys:)
Puppy mill survivor stories
Shop
Donate
www.sterlingshelter.org/news/boycott.html. You would have to be very highly motivated to do all of the things listed, but you can do some of them!
Suppose you go to a department store and buy a brand-new top-of-the-line refrigerator for $1,300. It comes with a year warranty. You take it home, and it works for the first day. The second day, it conks out. You're angry, and you immediately call up the store to complain. They apologize profusely and send out someone to take away the defective refrigerator and give you one that works. That is how it should work and usually does work with appliances. When the store doesn't provide a good product, people complain to the Better Business Bureau, they sue, they tell their friends. Word gets out, and the store either cleans up its act or goes out of business.
Now suppose you buy an adorable puppy for $1,300 at the Petland in Fairfax City, Virginia. That's a lot of money for a dog, so you assume he's top of the line in terms of health, especially since he has AKC papers and is from a USDA-licensed breeder. You are told the puppy comes with a "14-day health guarantee" that you don't bother to read. You get the puppy home, and he's a happy, playful boy the first day. The second day, he starts coughing frequently, and thick mucus comes out of his nose. You call the vet listed on your puppy's sale papers, Dr. Cheema of Potomac Valley Veterinary Hospital. But it's a Saturday night, and his office is closed. His message says if you have an emergency, go to an emergency animal hospital, so you do. The vet there says you have an extremely sick puppy who will die without round-the-clock care. You don't want your new puppy to die, so you leave him there at a cost of over $2,000, which you figure will be covered by the 14-day health guarantee.
The next morning, you call Petland. Surprise! Petland will not pay for ANY emergency care, not even one day after purchase. It would not pay for it even if the emergency care was provided by its own vet, Dr. Cheema. In fact, it will not pay for NON-emergency care for ANY illness, even at its vet, other than these five illnesses: parvovirus, distemper, hepatitis, corona virus, or canine influenza. That's what's written in the 14-day health guarantee. If you doubt it, go into Petland and ask for a copy, or call up and ask the Potomac Valley Veterinary Hospital, their latest in a series of vets. If Petland does anything for you at all, they are doing it so you won't badmouth the store.
So if it won't help you pay the vet bills, what DOES the 14-day health guarantee mean? It means that if you notify the store immediately, you can bring your deathly ill puppy back to the store, and they will either (1) give you your money back or (2) they will take your sick puppy back and give you ANOTHER puppy, who they call a "replacement puppy." They are doing you no great favor there--those measures are required by Virginia's "puppy lemon law" for 10 days after purchase of a purebred puppy. The puppy lemon law is designed to protect consumers from fraud. It does not help sick puppies one little bit.
When you return a defective refrigerator to a store, you don't worry what happens to it next. But a puppy is not a refrigerator. Though you've had your puppy only a short time, you feel a strong sense of responsibility to this suffering little baby whose life depends totally on you. If he dies, your heart will be broken, your family will be devastated, and the puppy's life is lost forever. An animal's life cannot be replaced. And there's no guarantee that your "replacement puppy" won't be sick, too.
You suspect that the store is not what it appears to be, or maybe you even bought him in the first place to "rescue" him from that little cage where he looked so sad. You're reluctant to give your puppy back, and you're right to be. What will happen to that puppy if you give him back? Do you think the pet store would spend over $2,000 on vet care for a sick puppy who might die, when they could only sell him for $1,300 if he were perfectly healthy?
It's not profitable for pet stores to pay for expensive diagnostic tests and treatment. They will try inexpensive drugs to get sick puppies healthy enough to sell, and if that fails but the puppies are still alive, they routinely send them back to the broker. The broker may then sell the puppies someplace else at a cheaper price, such as a flea market. Or they could return the sick puppies to the puppy miller, who might decide to kill them or, if they survive, use them as breeders.
You may not know that, but you know you care a lot more about that puppy than they do. So if you can afford it, you deal with the emotional stress and hang on to your poor puppy. You tell the store owners how much you and your puppy have suffered and how angry you are, but they don't care--as long as you don't tell the whole town, they'll keep right on selling puppies to other unsuspecting people.
You no longer trust the store's vet, since he gave the puppy a clean bill of health only days earlier, so you take him to a vet you do trust. Instead of spending thousands of dollars on vet care over the course of many years, you've spent it in the first WEEK, with more to come. Your decision to keep the puppy rather than return him and get your $1,300 back works out very nicely for the pet store, which made a tidy profit off a puppy that they paid very little for.
This happens over and over at pet stores. It's how they can sell sick puppies and stay in business. Petland likes to talk about "the human-animal bond." They might just as well say, "There's a sucker born every minute."
This policy is very similar at Just Puppies, another pet store in the D.C. metro area that gets puppies from Midwestern puppy mills. NO emergency care is covered, not even a day after purchase.
The three-year "health guarantee" for hereditary conditions is similar. You are stuck with the huge expense and the emotional strain of caring for a suffering dog with a long-term, painful hereditary condition (for example, hip dysplasia). Petland will not pay one dime for surgery or any other vet bills. If the serious hereditary problem becomes apparent in the first year, what will they do for you? They'll give you ANOTHER similarly-priced puppy from that same store, as if you'd want one! If the major hereditary illness crops up during the second year, you get 50% off on a puppy from their store. Third year, 25% off on a puppy from their store.
If you complain about this to the Better Business Bureau or a similar watchdog agency, they probably can't help you. After all, it was all spelled out in the contract that you didn't read. However, pet stores should bear in mind section 3.1-796.122 of the Virginia legal code, which states that depriving an animal of needed emergency treatment is a Class 1 misdemeanor. And pet stores are vulnerable to word of mouth. If you bought a sick puppy at a pet store, please share your story with as many people as possible so that others will not have to deal with the pain that you and your puppy went through. To save a life without perpetuating this cycle of misery, please don't buy any animal from a pet store--adopt from a shelter or rescue group.
The best way to tell pet stores there's no such thing as a "replacement puppy" is never to buy a puppy at a pet store again. The same principle applies for all the other animals sold in pet stores.
***
Many vets stop working for pet stores after a while, when they realize the misery that pet stores cause. But vets who continue to accept money from puppy-mill pet stores are doing both puppies and people a disservice. By "signing off" on pet store puppies, giving them a clean bill of health without a thorough checkup, the vets pass on sick puppies to an unsuspecting public. And when they do find illnesses so severe that they reject the puppy as unsellable, they are signing that puppy's death warrant, as the puppy will most likely be sent back to the Midwest and stuck in a cage, without being given any vet care. If he or she survives, life in a cage as a breeder is the most likely fate. Please let these veterinarians know you are shocked at their association with these disreputable companies.
Petland's current vet:
Dr. Sandeep Cheema
Potomac Valley Veterinary Hospital
9553 Braddock Road Fairfax, VA 22032-2539
pets@pwh.com
phone: 703-425-7387 fax: 703-425-8082
Just Puppies' current vets, as listed on their website at www.justpuppies.com, are:
Rocky Gorge Animal Hospital
7515 Brooklyn Bridge Rd.
Laurel, MD 20707
Tel: (301) 776-7744
Hours Mon. - Fri: 9 am-7 pm Sat: 9 am-1 pm www.rockygorgevet.com
Owings Mills Animal & Bird Hospital
9623a Reisterstown Rd.
Owings Mills, MD 21117
Tel: (410) 363-0393
Hours By appointment
www.petdr.com
Beltsville Veterinary Hospital
4246 Powder Mill Rd.
Beltsville, MD 20705
Tel: (301) 937-3020
Hours Mon - Fri: 8 am - 8 pm Sat: 10 am-1 pm
North Rockville Animal Hospital VCA
1390 East Gude Drive
Rockville, MD 20850
Tel: (301) 340-9292
Hours Mon, Thurs, Fri: 7:30 am - 5 pm Tues, Wed: 7:30 am - 6:00 pm Sat: 8 am - 2 pm
http://vcai.com
Old Town Animal Hospital VCA
425 N. Henry St.
Alexandria, VA 22314
Tel: (703) 549-3647
Hours Mon - Fri: 8:30 am - 7 pm Sat: 8 am - 2 pm http://vcai.com
***************************************
Have you gotten a "bedbug letter" from a pet store?
The Bedbug Letter
Years ago, the story goes, when people still traveled in Pullman sleeping cars on trains, a passenger found a bedbug in his berth. He immediately wrote a letter to George M. Pullman, president of the Pullman's Palace Car Company, informing him of this unhappy fact, and in reply he received a very apologetic letter from Pullman himself.
The company had never heard of such a thing, Pullman wrote, and as a result of the passenger's experience, all of the sleeping cars were being pulled off the line and fumigated. The Pullman's Palace Car Company was committed to providing its customers with the highest level of service, Pullman went on, and it would spare no expense in meeting that goal. Thank you for writing, he said, and if you ever have a similar problem - or any problem - do not hesitate to write again.
Enclosed with this letter, by accident, was the passenger's original letter to Pullman, across the bottom of which the president had written, "Send this jerk the bedbug letter."
Back to top