Policy
Sales Policy
The deposit, the health guarantee and how a problem is handled, plus the takeback. Set down in writing so you can hold me to all of it.
In short: a deposit holds the puppy, the rest is settled before it travels, and the health guarantee only runs once your own vet has seen the puppy inside its first week with you. Separate from any of that, I will take back a dog I bred at any age it ever reaches, no time limit and nothing to justify. That one hangs on no condition at all.
Holding a puppy
- A deposit pins down one named puppy and is knocked off the agreed price.
- The remainder falls due before the puppy travels, or on the day you collect.
- Change your mind and the deposit is not returned. That is the usual arrangement, and it is what keeps a puppy from sitting off the market for someone who was only half decided.
- Should I be the one to call it off, including a puppy failing its pre-travel check, you choose: your deposit back in full, or carried over to another puppy.
- Moving a delivery date for weather or a heat advisory is not calling it off. You are told why and we settle on a new date together.
The health guarantee
Bell Rock Veterinary Clinic examines each puppy before it travels, and it leaves here healthy on the strength of that examination.
What you have to do for it to run: get the puppy in front of your own veterinarian within one week of collection. That appointment is what turns the guarantee on. It is not box-ticking. It is the only way to fix the puppy’s condition on arrival in the eyes of someone independent, and without it there is no honest way to tell a problem that came with the dog from one that began under your roof.
Should that first examination uncover a serious congenital or hereditary problem, get in touch at once with your vet’s written findings in hand. You will be given the choice of a replacement puppy or your money back. I will not make you send the dog back to qualify, because it is your dog by then and asking that of you would be unfair.
What this is not is a vow that the dog will never fall ill. No one can honestly promise that, and a kennel that does is selling words rather than cover. I do not screen the parents and I do not certify them, so I cannot and will not guarantee against every inherited condition, because I have no honest footing to stand on if I did. The full account of what I do and do not do.
The takeback
I’ll take back any dog I’ve bred, at any point in its life, with no time limit and no questions asked.
No deadline on it. It is not limited to puppies and it does not turn on your reason for calling. Eight years down the line, if your life changes shape, the dog comes home to me rather than landing in a shelter or with whoever answers a classifieds ad.
No money comes back to you at that point and this is not a returns counter. It is a standing promise that a dog I bred never has to take its luck out there alone. All I ask is that you come to me before rehoming it yourself, and that you be honest about what has changed so I can place the dog where it belongs.
What I ask back from you
- Clear the dog with your lease, your HOA and your insurer before any deposit, in writing. This wrecks more purchases than anything else and it is completely avoidable. I will hold the puppy while you sort it.
- Get the vet appointment on the books ahead of the puppy arriving, for inside the first week.
- Be straight with me about your household. How long the house sits empty, children, other dogs, whether you rent. It is not an interrogation and there is no answer that disqualifies you, but a bad fit that only shows at eighteen months is hard on everyone and hardest on the dog.
- Do not sell the dog on. If it does not work, it comes back to me.
Nothing gets slipped on at the end. How delivery works, what is included, and where to put any question about it.
Anything here you want to go over?
Better to raise it before you commit than after. These come straight to me.