Policy
Sales Policy
Deposits, the health guarantee, what happens if something is wrong, and the takeback commitment. Written down so it can be held to.
A deposit reserves a puppy, the balance is due before it travels, and the health guarantee runs on the condition that your own vet sees the puppy within one week of arrival. I’ll take back any dog I’ve bred at any point in its life, with no time limit and no questions asked. That last one isn’t conditional on anything.
Reserving a puppy
- A deposit holds a specific named puppy and comes off the $700.
- The balance is due before the puppy travels or at collection.
- Deposits are non-refundable if you change your mind, which is standard and is what stops a puppy being held off the market for somebody who was undecided.
- If I cancel, for any reason including the puppy not passing its pre-travel veterinary check, your deposit is refunded in full or moved to another puppy, whichever you prefer.
- If a delivery date has to move for weather or a heat advisory, that isn’t a cancellation. You’re told why, and a new date is agreed.
The health guarantee
Every puppy is examined by Bell Rock Veterinary Clinic before it travels and leaves here healthy on that examination.
The condition: your own veterinarian examines the puppy within within one week of collection. That visit activates the guarantee. It isn’t a formality, it’s the thing that establishes the puppy’s condition on arrival with an independent professional, and without it there’s no way to distinguish a problem that travelled with the dog from one that started afterwards.
If your vet finds a serious congenital or hereditary problem at that first examination, contact me straight away with the veterinarian’s written findings. You’ll be offered a replacement puppy or a refund. I won’t ask you to return the dog to qualify, because by then it’s your dog and asking is unreasonable.
What the guarantee isn’t: a promise that the dog will never be ill. Nobody can give you that and any kennel that does is selling you a sentence rather than a protection. I don’t screen or certify the parents and I don’t guarantee against every inherited condition, because I’ve no basis on which to. Exactly what I do and don’t 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 time limit. Not just puppies. Not conditional on the reason. If you’re eight years in and your circumstances change, the dog comes back here rather than to a shelter or to somebody found through a listings site.
There’s no refund attached at that stage and it isn’t a returns policy. It’s a commitment that a dog bred here never has to take its chances. I ask only that you contact me rather than rehoming it yourself, and that you tell me honestly what has changed so the dog can be placed properly.
What I ask of you
- Check your lease, HOA and insurer before you place a deposit. Get it in writing. This is the most common reason a purchase falls apart and it’s entirely preventable. I’ll hold a puppy while you do it.
- Book your veterinary appointment before the puppy arrives, for within a week.
- Tell me the truth about your household. Hours out of the house, children, other dogs, whether you rent. It isn’t a screening interview and there’s no wrong answer, but a mismatch discovered at eighteen months is bad for everybody and worst for the dog.
- Don’t resell the dog. If it doesn’t work out, it comes back here.
Nothing is added at the end. How delivery works, what’s included, and where to ask about any of it.
Questions about any of this?
Ask before you commit rather than after. I answer these myself.