Catalina Ortiz called to her dog Milo, as he happily bounced around an East Boston park last week. The half Shih Tzu, half poodle weighs only 14 pounds, and stayed warm on that breezy morning with a sweater that features a shark fin on his back. Ortiz and Milo have been through a lot together in the last few years, including the threat of being pulled apart.
Milo was just four months old when Ortiz bought him in 2019 at a store called Pet Express in Braintree. She didn’t have the roughly $4,000 to buy him outright, but the store said they offered financing. All she had to pay up front was $100, and then make regular monthly payments for up to three years. But before Ortiz’s first payment was due, she lost her job. She called the financing company to see if she could delay paying until her new job started, but her account was immediately sent to Monterey Financial, a collection agency.
That’s when Ortiz found out she didn’t actually own her dog. What she had signed at the store that day wasn’t a financing plan, it was a lease. And after she missed her first payment, the calls started coming in several times a day.
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“They were telling me that they were going to take my dog away and then they told me that they could do that because it was a lease,” she said. “And this is the first I ever heard of the lease. I was so confused. I was like, ‘What do you mean a lease?’ How is that even possible to lease a dog, you know?”
Leasing dogs is actually illegal in Massachusetts. The state passed a law in 2008 that outlawed the practice of leasing or renting dogs, but Ortiz only learned that after the state attorney general’s office started cracking down on companies that continue to carry on the practice.
“Animals aren't property, like cars or anything else that we would think of leasing or renting,” said Carol Holmquist, director of advocacy for the MSPCA. The animal welfare group lobbied in favor of the law banning leases.
“To have an animal be repossessed and taken away from your family after potentially years — it’s unfair to the animal, of course, and it’s preying on consumers,” she said.
"I was so confused. I was like, 'What do you mean a lease?' How is that even possible to lease a dog, you know?"Catalina Ortiz
Holmquist said the MSPCA reailzed that dog leasing was still happening in the state in 2019, when two dogs were surrendered to the Dakin Humane Society in Springfield. Savanna Derby of Springfield bought those dogs for her mother, telling GBH News the amount she owed doubled for reasons she still doesn’t understand and the financing company told her to return the dogs.
“We had to give them to Dakin [Humane Society], and Dakin were supposed to turn back over to them,” Derby said. “But that never happened because Dakin figured out through the paperwork that it was a lease. And they called them on it. ... We didn’t know it was a leasing company, mind you. We thought it was like a credit card company.”
“The animal shelter realized that they didn’t have ownership of the animals because of this lease,” Holmquist said. “And that’s when it sort of clicked that there’s this law that prevents this. And it, of course, should be prevented.”
That case resulted in some local media coverage that drew the attention of the state attorney general’s office.
“The investigations started when we read reports that dog leasing was going on in Massachusetts,” assistant attorney general Michael Sugar told GBH News. “And so we began to look into the issues and we found that there were a number of companies that were originating dog leases.”
The attorney general’s office reached a settlement with those companies last spring, where the companies canceled balances and paid a fine. But that didn’t end the practice. Some of those leases had been sold for collection to Monterey Financial, the company that was hounding Ortiz.
“They did buy the lease from the originators and they were servicing leases that they owned and that others owned,” Sugar said.
The difference between leasing and financing — which is, in fact, legal in the commonwealth — is that the dog’s “owners” don’t actually own the leased dog, so it can be repossessed.
“After making all the payments under the lease, you’d still have to make a payment to buy the dog,” Sugar said.
Earlier this month, the attorney general’s office announced a settlement with Monterey Financial, including a $50,000 fine. The company is also paying $175,000 to reimburse people who overpaid for their dogs, partly due to high fees and interest rates.
“And all the dog-related leases that they own at this time, they’re ceasing to collect on them and transferring [ownership of] the dogs to the individuals who have them,” Sugar said.
Monterey Financial told GBH News in a statement that it “has and continues to strive to employ business practices in full accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
“While we disagree with the state’s findings, we have elected to come to an agreement to move away from this issue to best serve our clients,” the company wrote.
Monterey Financial denies ever repossessing or threatening to repossess any dogs. The statement also boasts of an A+ rating with the Better Business Bureau. That rating was downgraded to an A- because of the settlement, the bureau says, and now the profile shows no grade at all — it’s in the process of “being updated.”
Pet Express, the store where Ortiz got the dog, did not respond to a request for comment.
For Ortiz, the attorney general’s settlement was a huge relief. She’s no longer scared of having her dog taken away, she said.
“I was very happy, very happy to have him officially be mine again,” she said.
Ortiz said she never tried to catch up on her payments once she heard about the attorney general’s investigation. Over time, the $4,000 she owed ballooned to $14,000, and her credit rating was trashed.
But with the attorney general’s settlement, that debt disappears and her credit is restored.
“When people are out to get a dog, I think they are vulnerable, very vulnerable, to getting into anything in order to get the dog that they want,” she said. “And so I think that was my situation. I think that I kind of just got myself into this mess and they kind of took advantage of me because I really wanted this dog.”
In the end, Ortiz says the lesson she learned is a simple one: do your research — and read the contract.
For families looking to bring a new pet into their home, Holmquist of the MSPCA says there’s another option.
“There are dogs available for adoption with the MSPCA and local shelters around the state,” Holmquist said. “So for folks that want a dog, want to be assured that the animal is healthy, and to know where the dog is coming from, that is a great resource.”
