I need any and all information available about a pet shop in Danbury
Connecticut called Puppy Love - especially including any customer
reviews, ratings or consumer information on buying a puppy from there.

Hello shana,

I checked the Connecticut Better Business Bureau for "Puppy Love". The
store has been a member since February 1999 and has had only one
complaint. That complaint was resolved. (
http://www.connecticut.bbb.org/commonreport.html?compid=51000630&national=Y
)

I checked the local Danbury newspaper (The News-Times) to look for
details of the complaint. There were four stories on the Puppy Love
store during 1999:

http://newstimes.com/archive99/nov0499/lce.htm
http://newstimes.com/archive99/nov1899/lch.htm
http://newstimes.com/archive99/jun0999/lcs.htm
http://newstimes.com/archive99/dec0499/lcf.htm

The two November articles and the December article involve a yellow
Labrador retriever sold by Puppy Love. The buyer bought the puppy as a
gift for their 11 year old son and claims that the puppy was covered
in black spots that did not wash out. The shop owners claim that the
puppy is healthy and wasn't covered in black spots when sold.

When the buyer complained about the spots, the owner asked them to
bring the puppy to the store. The buyer didn't want to come back and
sent photographs instead. The photographs show several huge black
blotches and a stripe, so the store owner told them she would send it
back to the breeder if it were ill. When the buyer brought the puppy
back, the store owner said the puppy looked nothing like it did in the
photograph. The store owner said the puppy was perfectly healthy, and
it appeared to her that the puppy had rolled around in grease or oil.

The June 1999 story is about six ducklings that got trapped in a storm
sewer near the Puppy Love store and the store owners spent a couple
hours rescuing them.

The 2000 archive listed an article about the Puppy Love case, but is
pay-only access to read.

Search Strategy:
"Connecticut BBB"
"danbury news"
"puppy love"

I hope this helps. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask
for a clarification.

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Request for Answer Clarification by shana-ga on 05 Mar 2003 12:27 PST

The reseach I was looking for regarding ratings of Puppy Love were
pertaining to any Pet Store search engines or websites that rate pet
stores or give reviews. I was informed by two or three pwoplw that
they had read reviews of the atore Puppy Love as far as selection and
service and compared them to other places to buy dogs but I was never
able to locate those reviews or ratings...Wondering if it could have
been posted on a puppy or dog chat group...

Apparantly the reviews were quite favorable and geared towards the
consumer researching where to buy a purebred puppy. Any help would be
greatly appreciated. THANKS VERY MUCH!

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Request for Answer Clarification by shana-ga on 05 Mar 2003 12:35 PST

p.s. I forgot to add in my request for clarification that if someone
would supply me with the extra information I am searching for I will
add a $20 tip. Thanks so much!

---

Clarification of Answer by lapin-ga on 08 May 2003 08:27 PDT

Searching Usenet for "puppy love danbury" at Google groups only
returned information on a dance rave called Puppy Love.

Epinions.com only had a listing for Puppy Love shampoo. The American
Kennel Club (www.akc.org) listed breeders but not stores. I checked
the Yahoo Directory under Pet sites for search engines, but they were
yet again for breeders, not stores. Three other sites were
interesting:

www.Nopuppymills.com has a free puppy research service where they
check out the store and the breeder of your puppy.
(http://www.nopuppymills.com/puppy)

They list 200+ breeds/stores that have already been requested, but
does not mention what they found in the research. A single report for
a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel from Puppy Love with a Kansas breeder
was listed, but no other information was given.

A related site ( www.pet-abuse.com ) has an animal abuse database
(AARDAS) for listing puppy mills. There are no listings for Danbury,
CT in the database.

Finally, http://petstoreabuse.tripod.com/stores.html#Connecticut gave
Puppy Love five stars (out of 5) rating for excellence.

Thank you for such a thorough answer - the part that was MOST helpful
was the website that offers ratings on pet stores - that was exactly
what I was looking for!!  Thanks so much!!!

The Connecticut Better Business Bureau website is here:

http://www.connecticut.bbb.org/

You can check on-line to see if any complaints have been filed through them.