Lifetime Breeder Support: What is it, and why do we need to offer it?
Introduction
There is a marketing term that is being used in the dog breeding world right now: Lifetime Breeder Support. I call it a marketing term because I am seeing it used more often than not as a way for breeders to add value to their puppies. However, I do not typically see a definition for this term from the breeders that use it.
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m guilty of throwing the term Lifetime Breeder Support without offering a clear definition of what it means for my customers, and how it adds value to my puppies.
I’ve also found myself wondering where the term came from, and why it seems like a new thing that breeders are offering with their puppies.
In this article I want to explore what Lifetime Breeder Support means, and how it can add value to your puppies, and credibility to your program.
I also want to touch on how offering some level of lifetime support to your customers can help you improve your own breeding program over time.
Why do we need to offer some level of lifetime breeder support?
Lifetime Breeder Support can set you apart from Bad Actors. One of the many things that sets ethical breeders apart from other breeders (especially Bad Actors) is true lifetime support for customers. It’s difficult to put a price on a customer’s ability to call their breeder, and to feel comfortable and encouraged to do so, when they need help. Customers that have dealt with bad breeders in the past will place very high value on a puppy from a breeder that stands behind that puppy for life.
There are several goals behind providing lifetime support for your puppies:
Keeping your puppies out of shelters
Tracking health and behavior
Adding perceived value to your product – customers will return because they feel like you have taken care of them
Lifetime Breeder Support can help improve your program. Encouraging your customers to stay in contact with you, and to reach out with questions and concerns, can even help you breed better dogs. You will be able to take note of behavior and health patterns that you are seeing from certain litters or pairings, and use this information to make better breeding choices in the future.
Being available to your customers for the life of their puppy will help keep your puppies out of dangerous situations and improve their quality of life. Some people, no matter how educated they are, do not understand the abuse, neglect, and lack of screening new families that often comes with surrendering a dog to a shelter. Private rescues can sometimes be a better option, but the problem here is that they often have an incomplete health and behavioral history on the dog. The rescue might be hard- pressed to find an appropriate home due to simply lack of knowledge about the dog’s past.
Lifetime Breeder Support can help save your puppy’s life. Customers need to know that you are there for them in a time of crisis, and that their puppy will always have somewhere safe to go. Being available to your customers can also save your (or rather, their) puppy’s life. I have seen it too many times on social media in breeder groups – puppies and dogs are prematurely euthanized by their owners at the recommendation of a vet for problems that needed second opinions or some form of alternate, basic treatment. Many of these tragic situations could have been avoided if the customer had reached out to the breeder for opinions and guidance based on the puppy’s health and family history.
Offering lifetime support to your customers should be a routine component of good customer service
When purchasing a product that is produced with the intention of lasting for many years, you expect to receive some form of lifetime product support. This support often comes in the form of call centers where you can talk through and troubleshoot problems with customer service associates.
In the past, it was simply understood that when an ethical breeder sold a puppy, that breeder would be available to customers to help troubleshoot problems and offer mentorship in the form of basic pet ownership advice. Before the pet industry exploded (in the early 2000s), dog breeding was still considered a glorified hobby, rather than a true form of business. Ethical breeders didn’t need to advertise to their customers that they offered some form of lifetime support for their puppies. It was expected.
After the pet industry exploded, we began to see more puppy mills and Bad Actors who were getting into breeding strictly for profit, with no love for the animals or desire to improve their breeding stock. Because pet ownership was skyrocketing, many puppy sales became strictly transactions, and not personal interactions between breeder and customer. Customers began to expect a product label on the puppy they were buying. And, here we are today! Now we see breeders advertising puppies with a spiel attached to ensure customers are clear on why your puppies are valuable to them.
We also live in a time when anything and everything comes with a guarantee. Customers have high (and often unrealistic) expectations surrounding customer service, and want a high level of reassurance of quality in the products that they purchase. This reassurance is often presented as clever marketing, with no plan to offer meaningful warranties or support.
And so, the marketing term Lifetime Breeder Support was born. Ethical breeders finally put a label on a premium, routine service that had always been offered to their customers.
We all know what happens when ethical breeders assign a label to a premium product within their program – irresponsible breeders use these terms to elevate their program with no intention of following through with their promises. Another label that comes to mind, along the same lines as Lifetime Breeder Support, is the term fully health tested. Do you catch my drift?
So, let’s explore what the term should imply to customers, and how ethical breeders can honor this form of support for their customers.
It is important to define what Lifetime Breeder Support means to you and your program.
Lifetime breeder support is exactly what you make of it. It is a very individualized term and will mean something different to every breeder who offers it to their customers. This means you need to be specific when communicating this to customers.
For some breeders, offering lifetime support to customers is simply part of a clever marketing strategy. The support is offered in a flippant attempt to add instant value to their puppies, and the actual support disappears (well, it was never really there in the first place) after a transaction is complete. Please don’t be like these breeders.
For all practical purposes, the term lifetime support in this article implies that the breeder will be available to their customers for the life of the puppy purchased.
What does being available to customers mean to different ethical breeders?
Most ethical breeders define being available as allowing customers to contact them (via phone or email) at any time with questions or concerns regarding their puppy. Compare being available to calling the 1-800 number on the back of a product label. The customer support associates that you speak to should be able to answer basic questions about the product, and/or point you in the right directions to find the answers you need.
This is a very reasonable and valuable level of support to offer customers, and arguably, any ethical breeder should be offering this level of support whether they advertise it or not.
I know that dog breeders don’t have call centers. As an ethical breeder, I believe that you should make sure that your customers know that they can contact you any time, and that you will respond promptly and within normal business hours. Some customers will take contact you anytime very literally and will start calling in the middle of the night! We will talk later about customers who abuse this, and how to avoid it.
For some ethical breeders, being available goes as far as to offer their customers medical advice, training advice, or even free training. Offering support outside of the definition outlined above does not necessarily mean that you are going above and beyond for customers – the wrong type of customer support may actually create liability issues and/or emotionally toxic situations for well-meaning breeders.
We will discuss the importance of setting boundaries with customers when it comes to your level of lifetime support later in this article.
You need to clearly communicate your personal definition of "Lifetime Breeder Support" to your customers before they make a purchase.
Ensuring that your customers understand the exact level of support that you will provide instills confidence and comfort when they decide to do business with you. Clearly defining your level of support before a purchase is made also sets healthy boundaries with your customers.
My personal definition of lifetime breeder support is “being available to contact via phone or email by my customers for the life of their puppy, and encouraging this contact.”
When my customers take advantage of this lifetime support, I am willing to offer them:
Practical and very basic care and training advice
Medical care related opinions on non-emergency conditions or ailments
Dietary and nutrition-related opinions and advice
Personal recommendations for local professionals (vets, trainers, etc.) that can help them with problems or to achieve specific goals
A shoulder to lean on when they need moral support in raising a puppy
The last thing I tell every single customer before they drive away with their puppy is, “Please do not hesitate to reach out to me at any time, with any questions. You are not bothering me, I want to hear from you. I would rather you ask me your question first, before you ask Google.”
Once you tell your customers that you offer lifetime support, and provide a definition for this support, be prepared to honor it. Stick to your definition. I like to live by the saying, “underpromise and overdeliver.” However, in the case of offering lifetime support to your customers, I suggest you deliver exactly what you promise, not a bit less or a bit more.
Only you can define “lifetime breeder support” for your program. I hope the remainder of our discussion in this article will help you define lifetime support for your program.
As you offer your Lifetime Breeder Support, it is important to set and communicate clear boundaries with your pet parents.
Allowing your customers to monopolize your time, energy, and emotions to help them solve problems that are their own problems to solve as pet owners could set you up for a toxic relationship with them. It doesn’t help your customer to offer them an unrealistic, overbearing level of support because it does not teach them how to be independent, responsible pet owners. It teaches them that it is ok to place responsibility and blame for problems on you.
I wish I had learned earlier on in my career how important setting customer boundaries is. I’ve had customers that have felt comfortable calling me in the middle of the night with trivial questions. I’ve had customers that want me to fully train their dogs for them via phone calls and emails. I’ve had customers that want medical advice from me because they want to avoid an exam fee at the vet. I’ve even had customers that ultimately want me to pay for training or vet care because, by making myself overly-available and vulnerable, they feel it becomes my responsibility. I believe much of these situations could have been avoided with clear communication and boundaries at the outset.
Cutting abusive customers off can be devastating for an ethical breeder, because you feel like you are failing and abandoning your puppy. Avoiding these toxic situations is imperative to creating a healthy business environment for yourself, so being clear about your limitations is key.
I seem to always have to learn things the hard way. Don’t be like me!
You must understand the limitations of your own Lifetime Breeder Support, and have a plan for how to handle a pet parent that does not respect your boundaries.
As ethical breeders, we all do our very best to prepare our puppies for their future homes during the very short 8-12 weeks that we have them. We can all agree that once our puppies leave our possession, their environment plays a huge role in shaping their adult personalities and behavior.
We have no control over a puppy’s environment once it leaves our possession. This is probably the most terrifying part of being a breeder! Offering your customers medical and training advice can sometimes cause more harm than good. Because you are not in control of the puppy’s environment, you are not in control of how your advice is processed and put into use.
While I try to help where possible, I will not attempt to troubleshoot specific behavior or medical problems, as I am not a part of that puppy’s new environment and cannot fully understand the context of the problem. I’ve made the mistake before, many times–offering inappropriate advice for a problem because I don’t (and can’t) fully understand the context surrounding the problem.
As one specific example, I sold a puppy to a wonderful family who had a very minor (or, so I thought it to be), non-life-threatening inherited defect. I see this defect from time to time in my breed and the defect almost always self corrects as the puppy matures. In my experience, the defect had self resolved 100% of the time in my puppies. The family’s vet advised that surgical intervention would be necessary. They consulted with me, which I appreciated. I tried to talk them out of surgery. They listened to their vet instead. I’m glad they did! As it turned out, in this first and so far, only case, surgical intervention was absolutely necessary. Had they listened to me, their puppy could have endured some unnecessary pain and discomfort, and emergency surgery rather than preventative/routine surgery. The family kept me updated along the way, and I ultimately thanked them for listening to their vet instead of me. This story is so important, because I can only base my advice off of the limited information I have about the puppy while it is in my care. I still often offer limited medical advice to my customers, such as when they should spay or neuter their puppy. But I always follow up my advice and opinions with the obligatory statement, Always seek the advice of your veterinarian; I am not a veterinarian. It sounds robotic, I’m sure, but I think it’s necessary.
As another example, a customer called me one morning, about a year ago, who was very concerned about her dog. She had purchased him from me about three years prior. He had been acting strange and had stopped eating the night before. The customer already had a vet appointment scheduled for later that afternoon, but wanted my opinion on what could be happening and what she should ask the vet. I suspected either a blockage or toxicity, based on his symptoms, but assured her to let the vet do what he felt was necessary. As it turns out, my suspicions were nowhere close to what the real problem was. The dog had a piece of a twig stuck in between his molars and infection was setting in. I would have never been able to “diagnose” that over the phone!
My customer called me back after she was home from the vet and expressed her gratitude in simply being able to call me for moral support before her vet appointment. I’m so glad I could at least offer her that.
Conclusion
I know that if you are here and reading this article, you care deeply about the lifelong safety, health, and happiness of your puppies. And I bet you’ve been offering some level of support to your customers without even knowing it! Never underestimate the value of this support. If you have been dealing with some abusive customers, I hope you have learned that their behavior is never appropriate, and come up with some tools to avoid these relationships in the future. When I’m lying in bed awake in the middle of the night thinking of a puppy that I sold to a family five years ago, and am wondering how they’re doing because I haven’t heard from them in a while, I make a note to reach out to them to make sure they know that I’m still here for them. This is the level of support that I think customers value the most – and what a simple thing to be able to offer our families.
