How Puppy Health Guarantees Impact Price

Today we’re talking puppy Health Guarantees.

What sort of health guarantee do you offer on your puppies? It’s a really important question, because on its own it can determine the price that you actually get for your pups and what kind of owner you’re likely to attract.

There’s all kinds of buyers out there [we’ve talked about that on a recent video]. And if you want to get the top prices, then you have to appeal to the top of the market buyers.

Now, the top of the market buyers, as a quick recap, they are invested in the idea of not making a mistake when they get the next dog.  That’s because they always commit a hundred percent to whatever dog they own. And if you want to attract them, then you must allay their fears.

One of their biggest fears is their dog will have health issues.

This is one of the reasons why designer breeds are so popular and premium-priced at the moment: there is a perception that they’re healthier than pure bred dogs.

If you’re doing all of your health testing with your dogs [hips, eyes, heart and all the rest of it] and offer a rock solid guarantee, then you are more likely to attract these people at the top of the market and be paid accordingly.

Effect of Health Guarantee on puppy price

What determines the price of a puppy?

How much is a registered Labrador Retriever puppy worth at the moment in the USA, for example?

For essentially the SAME quality puppy you can pay anything from about $1,000 on PuppyFind to about $2,000 on AKC Marketplace to $3,400 on PuppySpot.

And the biggest difference between these puppies is their health guarantee:

The health guarantee is non-existent on PuppyFind, and weak on AKC. But because it is there, AKC pups are double the price.  And then, at the high end, PuppySpot offers a 50%, 10-year guarantee on Labrador Retriever puppies, and that boosts the price to $3,400!

Top of the market buyers are interested in breeders who are willing to stand by the health of their dogs and back that up with a money-back guarantee. So how long is your guarantee?

We know that by law we aren’t required to cover the long-term health of our dogs. But if you do offer a generous genetic and congenital disease guarantee, then you will be showing buyers that you have a lot of faith in the way you’re breeding, and you are prepared to back that up and put your money where your mouth is!

And you know what? It absolutely blows your competition out of the water.  With a strong health guarantee you really get the attention of the top buyers.

Can’t you go broke doing this?

Offering a strong genetic/congenital health guarantee can go awfully wrong for you too;  that’s if you are turning out puppies with a high chance of hereditary problems. So to prosper from a strong health guarantee you’ve got to be breeding in a way that’s going to have the lowest possible chance of causing genetic issues in the puppies.

We know that there just aren’t enough genetic tests out there to cover every issue in every breed. And therefore, we can’t be absolutely sure that we’re not going to be turning out puppies with genetic problems just by relying on genetic screening or clinical testing alone.

So how can we actually cover our butts financially and not go bankrupt with a guarantee like that? Well, your best protection, and the best protection for your owners, is to refrain from doing any inbreeding or linebreeding.

It’s a really good idea to keep that coefficient of inbreeding down as far as you can, and make sure that your pairings are producing as much vigor in the breed as you can. [Embark now offers a service that you can test for the coefficient of inbreeding of any potential mating that you want to do]. As soon as you start breeding related animals together, the chances of having a doubling up of a bad recessive gene in the offspring goes up dramatically because both parents are very likely to carry that recessive gene. So before offering a strong health guarantee stay away from linebreeding and inbreeding, especially if you’re breeding pets for people.

It makes heaps of economic sense [if you’re not producing high risk puppies, which I hope you’re not!] to offer a solid health guarantee and attract those top buyers.

Of course to capitalize on adding value like this to your puppies you also need to figure out how to get the top buyers to see you!  Learn what to do for free on our Marketing for Breeders online class.  Register here.