Did your dog come from the puppy pipeline? - Los Angeles Times (original) (raw)
Los Angeles Times photo illustration/photos via Storyblocks
Every year, thousands of dogs are shipped into California from other states.
California law requires that any dog being sold or transferred to a new owner in the state first be examined by a veterinarian who attests it is healthy enough to travel. The Times requested those travel documents — called certificates of veterinary inspection — from all 50 states and analyzed records of more than 88,000 dogs approved to travel into California since 2018. Not every state provided records. Some of the travel documents included microchip numbers.
Many certificates were for puppies bound for brokers or resellers, some of whom do not disclose to consumers that their dogs were actually bred out of state. To see if your dog is listed in one of the records, search its microchip number using this tool.
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Melody Gutierrez is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she covered state government and politics for The Times, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Sacramento Bee. Gutierrez has written award-winning government accountability stories on wasteful spending, pension spiking, rape kit backlogs and failures in the foster care system.
Alene Tchekmedyian is an investigative reporter at the Los Angeles Times. She previously covered the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, focusing on accountability stories and writing about failures by officials to comply with transparency laws. Before joining The Times in 2016, she reported on crime and policing for the Glendale News-Press and Burbank Leader.
Sean Greene is an assistant data and graphics editor, focused on visual storytelling at the Los Angeles Times.