Closed celebrity puppy store slapped with $4.8 million judgment
By Gina Spadafori
August 5, 2009
Great news for a Wednesday, from the NBC affiliate in L.A:
A $4.8 million default judgment awarded to former customers of a now-closed Bel Air pet store should help deter similar businesses from selling sick animals from puppy mills, a lawyer for the plaintiffs said Tuesday.
A lawsuit against Pets of Bel Air — where customers reportedly included such celebrities as Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Demi Moore and Denise Richards — was filed in December 2007 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. It alleged the store sold puppies that later became sick or died because they were bred in so-called puppy mills.
The complaint alleged Pets of Bel Air “sold … puppies for a premium price and thereby duped California consumers out of millions of dollars.”
Judge John P. Shook approved the default judgment last Wednesday after the defendants ignored court orders to turn over business documents to the plaintiffs and respond to motions in the case.
Awesome news…always good to see legal efforts actually work.
Comment by Ark Lady — August 5, 2009 @ 4:04 pm
DO NOT BUY PUPPIES FROM PET STORES! Pet stores rely on impulse buyers and they buy their puppies from bokers who inturn purchase entire litters from puppy mills with no regard to health or pedigree. Many puppy mill puppies are products of inbreeding. Or the females are practicly bred to death. That is why so many puppies are sick.
Reasearch the breed you are interested in, know what you are looking for, question the breeder about lineage, heath history etc. Meet the the parents if possible. check references. A good breeder will be more than happy to answer ALL of you questions, if they won’t don’t buy from them.
Comment by Idlewild Kennels — August 9, 2009 @ 11:05 am
I just visited your website at Idlewild Kennels (USDA license number 42A0973). I see you breed and sell six breeds: Great Dane, Dachshund, Scottish Terrier, Soft-Coated Wheaten, Pug and Chinese Crested. And on your website, you say the puppies are raised “as part of the family”. How about once they’re grown up? Do ALL of your adult dogs ALSO live “as part of the family”? All six breeds of them - sires and dams (which you state on your website you own both of - presumably limiting your breedings to being between dogs you already own). How many hours a day - on average - do each of these adult dogs get to live as “part of the family”?
I also read through your “Health Guarantee” which requires the buyer obtain an initial vet exam within 5 days of receipt of the new puppy. If problems are found, the buyer is required to *return* their new puppy in order for the “Health Guarantee” to go into effect, and there are no cash refunds - only a replacement (now or later) with another one of your puppies. How about the buyer who isn’t interested in another puppy from you? Or the buyer who has already fallen in love with their new puppy - even after “only” 5 days - but now has a sick puppy to deal with?
And how about AFTER the 5 days are up? What happens if one of your puppies develops a genetically-inherited problem later in life - AFTER the 5 days called out for in your contract? Do you provide any kind of support? Do you factor this knowledge back into your breeding program so as to try to avoid selling other puppies with that same inherited defect from those same parents you keep using for your breedings?
What happens if - at any time during the puppy’s life - the circumstances of the owner change and they can no longer keep the dog? Do you step up to make sure that no dog of your breeding ever ends up relinquished to a shelter or rescue if you can prevent it?
Christie has coined a new saying “Family pets from family homes”. Which - of course - rules out pet shops. But I’d also like to see a bit more about the quality of ongoing lives of those dogs who are “producing” those family pets, and what happens to those family pets who - for whatever reason - just don’t quite work out.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 9, 2009 @ 3:32 pm
You say you offer “show quality” puppies. Do you show your dogs? If so, where are the brag pictures?
Sticking just to the breed I know best, Chinese Cresteds: Are your dogs Optigen tested? CERF’d annually? Their hips and elbows OFA’d?
I have to say, they don’t look like healthy, well-made Chinese Cresteds. In one case, honestly, I wonder what the mix is.
When we say, “Don’t buy from pet stores,” we do NOT mean, “buy directly from the puppy miller.”
Comment by Lis — August 9, 2009 @ 4:18 pm
People often complain that it’s very difficult to tell the good from the bad, the truth from the lies, when deciding if someone is a “good” breeder or not.
There are many things that go into making a good breeder, and that tell you someone’s a bad breeder, but I think that there are two standards that can be used that will get you 90 percent or more of the way there — with the caveat that this is how you find a dog as a companion and family pet, not a working dog:
Raised in the home, not a kennel or other non-home situation; and the breeder will take the puppy back at any time during his or her life, no questions asked, if that becomes necessary.
Sure, there will be a few bad apples even so, but those two things in combination are a net that catches almost all of them.
Comment by Christie Keith — August 9, 2009 @ 4:20 pm
It occurs to me that we need to get a little more specific about “take back”. In order for such a clause to be of value to an owner, “take back” has to mean “When there is a need”.
Saying that a sick puppy can be returned within 5 days of purchase is not a “take back” if the new owner already loves the puppy and doesn’t want to give him/her up, but is also now faced with cost of vet care which can be pretty high, depending upon what the problem is.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 9, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
A quick little search turns up Idlewild’s former USDA inspections. Last one was clean, but the ones before that cite violations for veterinary care, housing and identification of puppies sold.
Details can be found here:
http://www.aphis.usda.gov/anim.....A-0973.pdf
Comment by Kim — August 9, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Pat, you’re right and wrong at the same time. The take-back clause is entirely different from the terms of the guarantee, which is what you’re discussing here.
Guaranteeing a puppy by saying you will replace the dog under certain circumstances is sadistic, and nothing but a ploy to pretend you’re guaranteeing the puppy but really not. Dogs are not washing machines, and you can’t replace one with another and call it good. It’s complete crap.
But I can come up with a THOUSAND things that are complete crap, and a thousand that are good. What my point is, is that we can get away from all this micro-managing and confusing and subjective stuff about the guarantee and whether the breeder shows or tests for this or that, or how often, or how many dogs they have or how often they breed or whether they belong to a dog club or whatever, and pretty much rely on just those two things: If you cannot keep the puppy in the future for whatever reason, the breeder will take him back, no questions asked, no hesitation, and puppies born and raised in a family home.
I personally don’t care too much about the terms of a guarantee. Sure, in a perfect world the breeder will give you back your money if there’s something wrong with the puppy, and leave it up to you to decide if you want to keep the puppy. Some breeders even pay something towards vet bills, depending on what the problem is. But bottom line, puppies aren’t machines and can’t really be guaranteed. They are living creatures and they may well have problems. You can minimize your chances of those problems by dealing with a good breeder, but you can never eliminate them. It’s unrealistic and IMO somewhat contradictory to the message that puppies aren’t commodities or things when we act as if a good breeder can actually GUARANTEE the puppy wont’ be defective. No breeder can do that.
So what I’m suggesting is that you get your puppy from the best possible breeder, and after that, well, it’s your dog and you may have some vet bills. That’s part of what happens you bring a living creature into your home. And my advice is simply a surrogate marker for the often confusing and usually extremely detailed, complex list of qualities we’re told to look for in a breeder.
Are the puppies from a home situation and does the breeder offer to give or find the puppy a home any time in his life if you can no longer keep him? Then I’d say there’s a 90 percent certainty at that point that you’re dealing with a good breeder.
Comment by Christie Keith — August 9, 2009 @ 9:20 pm
You actually clarified my point for me. My concern - upon re-reading the comments - was that this - or another - breeder would come back and say “Of course we’ll take the puppy back - it’s right there in the ‘health’ guarantee”. And of course that is NOT what a “takeback” is. But I could see buyers becoming confused about that, and unscrupulous breeders happily adding to that confusion.
As to guarantees - of course you can’t actually “guarantee” a living thing. To me, a “guarantee” on a puppy is as much for a (caring) breeder’s benefit as it is for the buyer’s. Because when a buyer comes back to report on health problems (something it may not occur to people to do when there is no guarantee in place), that is VALUABLE information for a breeder who wants to maintain an ongoing breeding program that is as robust and free of problems as possible. The occasional defect can occur in even the best of programs. But the same thing over and over (obvious example - hip dysplasia) means there is *something* going on, and if the breeder cares, they will not only work on helping that owner and their dog, but they will also re-examine their ongoing breeding decisions to try and track down why this problem is occurring and what they can do to try and reduce or eliminate it.
And THAT is where the true value of a well-written and honestly upheld puppy guarantee can really be appreciated.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 10, 2009 @ 5:16 am
It’s unrealistic and IMO somewhat contradictory to the message that puppies aren’t commodities or things when we act as if a good breeder can actually GUARANTEE the puppy wont’ be defective. No breeder can do that.
Also wanted to just add that I’m always explaining to people that a guarantee on a puppy isn’t about saying a puppy “won’t be defective”. Rather, it’s ALL about what the breeder promises to do if problems do turn up.
A subtle clarification, but an essential one.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — August 10, 2009 @ 5:28 am
Another element of a “guarantee” is documentation of what a breeder has done in order to maximize the chances that the pups she produces will be genetically healthy.
Saying that I “guarantee” sound hips is cheap. All it means is that you get your purchase price back if the dog fails to meet a certain threshold of soundness at a certain age.
What puts meat into my contract is being able to demonstrate what is known about the pup’s pedigree, justifying the decisions I’ve made about selecting parents based on their ancestors, siblings, and previous offspring. And the time spent educating buyers about the reality of risks.
As for a “five-day health guarantee” — in many states, that is legally mandated. It’s right up there with chicken labeled “hormone-free.” It’s illegal to feed hormones to chickens. May as well label it kryptonite-free.
And if you have a USDA license as a breeder, you are a puppymill. Period.
This is what I mean about puppymillers, empowered by the high prices to be gotten at retail and the power of the web to obscure reality, learning to ape the forms of good breeders. There’s a lot of concealment that they practice that can fool Jane Q. Pet Buyer, but is usually quickly apparent to someone who spends a lot of time looking for these things.
Comment by H. Houlahan — August 10, 2009 @ 7:23 am
Idlewild Kennels sells such a diversity of dog breeds that its owner must be a genius at keeping all those bloodlines straight and keeping all of those hereditary defects.
As a dog owner, I have hard enough time keeping up with one breed’s bloodlines and health issues.
That’s probably because it’s next impossible for anyone but a puppy mill operator. If you’re one of those, the bloodlines don’t matter. And health issue? Aren’t all puppies born a little sick?
I can’t believe that a puppy mill operator tried to free advertise in the comments of this blog.
Comment by retrieverman — August 10, 2009 @ 10:22 am
I just checked Idlewild Kennels’s history of the Chinese Crested dog.
They aren’t African.
All hairless dogs with that particular gene come from Latin America.
http://retrieverman.wordpress......al-origin/
If you think Chinese cresteds actually were kept on the junks for killing rats, then you’ll probably be happy to know that golden retrievers descend from the Caucasian Ovtcharka, which were brought to England as circus dogs. Lord Tweedmouth was so smitten with them that he took a few back with him to Scotland and bred them to bloodhounds to create the golden retriever.
Comment by retrieverman — August 10, 2009 @ 10:27 am
Also pugs are not miniature mastiffs, as this kennel claims. They are derivatives of the Gobi Desert Kitchen Midden dog, along with the Pekingese, the Shih Tzu, the Japanese Chin, and the Tibetan “spaniel.”
They have nothing to do with mastiffs, except that they were used to create the modern bulldog and the French bulldog.
Comment by retrieverman — August 10, 2009 @ 1:48 pm