Feb. 24 (ABC7) — Deciding to bring a pet into your home can be a big decision. Naturally, you want it be healthy and happy. But several pet owners have accused one Bay Area store of selling sick puppies. Michael Finney has this 7 On Your Side investigation.
A Santa Rosa store is taking some heat. Several of its customers say the puppies they brought home were in poor health, and they blame the store for their pets' problems.
Just last week, this puppy was checked into the emergency care unit of Santa Rosa's veterinarian hospital mere days after coming home to its new owners.
Dr. Kathy Robello: "When it arrived, it was depressed, dehydrated, coughing, having a hard time breathing."
Claire Garcia had a similar experience last May when she brought home a Yorkshire Terrier. The puppy she named Louie immediately showed signs of illness.
Claire Garcia: "I had to wake up every couple of hours and feed him, and give him water with a syringe because he wouldn't drink. He couldn't breath, guy couldn't get enough oxygen into his little body."
Louie died five days later. During that same time, Cynthia Tilker saw a puppy at a store, knew it was sick, bought it anyway and spent thousands of dollars nursing it back to health.
Cynthia Tilker: "I got emotionally involved. At that point it was a little too late. I was not going to let that do go back into a kennel at that particular store. Just didn't want to do it."
Aside from being sick, all of these puppies have one thing in common, they were purchased from one store - Super Pets of Santa Rosa. Open since 1994, Super Pets is one of largest pet stores in Sonoma County.
Only two years ago, it started selling puppies and is currently the only pet store in Santa Rosa that sells puppies from out of state breeders.
Though Cynthia's yorky is now healthy, she filed a complaint with the district attorney's office claiming Super Pets is selling puppies irresponsibly.
Cynthia Tilker: "I don't want this to happen to anybody else. It was really an ordeal. It was very emotional."
The complaint launched a third investigation of the pet store in the last couple of years. In the previous two investigations, Sonoma County Animal Regulation found Super Pets in compliance with health and safety codes. Super Pets' owner, Charles Freese, is cooperating with the district attorney's office on the latest investigation. Meanwhile, he maintains that a majority of his customers are happy.
Charles Freese, owner, Super Pets: "We don't sell sick puppies. That's the way it is. Do we have a cold or respiratory infection? Yeah, occasionally that happens. It happens to everybody all the time and we deal with it. We don't ignore it. We don't buy unhealthy dogs to begin with."
Freese also contends he tries to please his customers. We offer a pretty broad warranty. I mean dog's warrantee for a year for pretty much anything that happens.
Before you invest money and emotion into a new pet, make sure you know where the dog came from, its health information and know your rights. California law falls hardest on sellers of unhealthy dogs.
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/news/7oys...uper_pets.html
California Pet Lemon Laws
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/pets/lemon_ca.html