California
Protection Dogs

A trained protection dog can be bought from Texas and brought home to California. The dog is the same dog on both sides of the state line. What changes is the law around it. California makes a dog’s owner liable for a bite in a public place or to someone lawfully on private property whatever the dog’s history. Its Penal Code has a section written about dogs “trained to fight, attack, or kill.” Its Dog Act defines a guard or attack dog to include “any dog such as a schutzhund,” and puts duties on whoever buys one. And since 1 January 2026, a dog brought into the state to change owners needs a fresh veterinary certificate filed with the state.

Then there is the insurance. The state’s largest home insurer, and another in its top ten, have spent years closed to new homeowners business, and the California FAIR Plan, where many households have gone instead, does not offer liability coverage. For a household with a bite-trained dog, where the liability cover sits is the first question to settle, before the dog and before us.

We train dogs; a California attorney or a licensed broker signs off on the legal and insurance parts below, and nothing here is advice from us on either. What follows is the reading we think a California buyer should do before a deposit, with every statute linked so you can check us. If you want to know what we sell first, the fully trained dog program and Build Your Own Pup are the two options. The bite-training provisions below are about a trained dog, and a Build Your Own Pup puppy is not a trained protection dog when it comes home.

The statute is two sentences long where it counts. Section 3342(a) says “The owner of any dog is liable for the damages suffered by any person who is bitten by the dog while in a public place or lawfully in a private place, including the property of the owner of the dog, regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owner’s knowledge of such viciousness.” A person is lawfully on your property when they are there on a legal duty, such as a mail carrier, or “upon the invitation, express or implied, of the owner.”

Three things follow for the owner of a protection dog. The guest you invited in, the contractor you hired and the neighbour’s child your kids brought home are all inside that wording, and in your own house. A clean record is no answer to this section, because it does not ask whether the dog had bitten before. And the section is about a bite; a dog that knocks someone down without biting is not what subdivision (a) describes, which is a question for a lawyer rather than a reason to relax.

Subdivision (b) is the exception people expect to find for trained dogs, and it is narrow. It protects “any governmental agency using a dog in military or police work,” in defined situations, and only where that agency has a written policy on using the dog. A family’s protection dog is not a governmental agency’s dog. We would plan as if the strict rule reaches yours. Texas does not handle bites through a statute of this kind, and how a Texas court approaches the same bite is in our guide to Texas dog bite law. If you are moving from Texas to California with a dog, that difference is the reason to reread your homeowners policy before the move.

Section 3342 covers every dog. This section names ours. In full, the first sentence of Section 399.5(a) reads: “Any person owning or having custody or control of a dog trained to fight, attack, or kill is guilty of a felony or a misdemeanor, punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not to exceed one year, or imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170 for two, three, or four years, or by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by both the fine and imprisonment, if, as a result of that person’s failure to exercise ordinary care, the dog bites a human being, on two separate occasions or on one occasion causing substantial physical injury.”

Read the conditions, because they are the whole of it. The crime needs a failure of ordinary care by the owner, and either two bites or one causing substantial physical injury. The same subdivision adds that nobody is criminally liable “unless he or she knew or reasonably should have known of the vicious or dangerous nature of the dog,” or if the victim failed to take reasonable precautions. Subdivision (c) excludes bites to a trespasser and to someone who provoked the dog, and it defines provocation to include “situations where a dog held on a leash by its owner or custodian reacts in a protective manner to a person or persons who approach the owner or custodian in a threatening manner.”

Why it matters to you: a dog trained in bite work is within the kind of dog this section describes, and a court decides how it applies. You will know what the dog was trained to do because you paid for it. The leashed-dog wording is one illustration, not the whole defence: the statute says provocation “includes, but is not limited to” that situation, and subdivision (c) also excludes bites to anyone who “contributed to his or her own injuries,” as well as bites by military or police dogs at work. Still, the one example the Legislature chose to write down is a leashed dog answering a threatening approach. That is the practical argument for a dog that is neutral in public and engages only on a real threat or on your command. How to tell whether a dog is engaging the person or the equipment is in our guide on whether a dog will bite without a suit.

Separate from any lawsuit or prosecution, when an animal-control or law-enforcement officer finds probable cause, Section 31621 has the head of that agency petition the superior court, or a hearing procedure the city or county has set up, to declare the dog potentially dangerous or vicious. The hearing is decided on a preponderance of the evidence and “A jury shall not be available.” The chapter was added in 1989, and the sections below were current on leginfo when we read them.

Sources for the cards above, in order: § 31602, § 31603 and § 31604, § 31626, and § 31642, § 31644 and § 31646.

Breed is not the trigger in California. Section 31683 lets a city or county run a stricter program of its own, then says “Except as provided in Section 122331 of the Health and Safety Code, no program regulating any dog shall be specific as to breed.” The exception, Section 122331, allows breed-specific rules “pertaining only to mandatory spay or neuter programs and breeding requirements,” and even then no breed may be declared potentially dangerous or vicious. So a California city can require your Malinois to be spayed under a breed-specific program, but it cannot list the breed as dangerous. What gets a dog listed is what it did. Your city’s own program can be stricter than the state’s in other ways, so read it. Los Angeles is the clearest example: the City licenses sentry dogs, holds its own bite hearings and sets a three-dog limit, all set out on our Los Angeles page.

A chapter of the Health and Safety Code that “may be cited as ‘The Dog Act of 1969’” regulates attack, guard and sentry dogs, and its definition is broad enough to include a family protection dog: “any dog trained as a sentry or to protect, defend, or guard any person or property, or any dog such as a schutzhund or any similar classification.” Its definition of an owner is anyone who has bought or obtained legal custody of one. How guarding and protection differ as working terms is in our guard dog versus protection dog guide; the statute does not draw that line, and these are the duties it attaches to the person who buys the dog.

The general questions about protection dogs and homeowners policies, breed lists, trained-dog exclusions and what to disclose, are in our guide to protection dogs and homeowners insurance. What is particular to California is the market those questions are asked in.

On 18 September 2026 the California Department of Insurance reported that State Farm General, the state’s largest homeowners insurer, had filed to resume accepting new homeowners applications “for the first time since May 2023,” and that Allstate had filed to write new residential policies “for the first time since 2022.” The same notice says “These companies are not open for new business yet.” The notice’s advice is to “Talk to an agent or broker about admitted market options before turning to the FAIR Plan,” and more households have turned to it anyway: the FAIR Plan’s own figures put its dwelling and commercial policies in force at 696,562 as of June 2026, up 157 per cent since September 2022.

Here is why that matters for a dog. The FAIR Plan’s own page lists liability among the coverages “not available through the California FAIR Plan,” and says those come from a separate Difference in Conditions policy, which the FAIR Plan does not sell. If your house is on the FAIR Plan, your dog-bite liability, the money behind a Section 3342 claim, is not in that policy; it has to come from a separate one. Read that policy’s liability section for animal, breed and trained-dog exclusions before the dog arrives, with your broker on the phone.

A bill to take breed out of the decision did not pass. In 2023, AB 703 would have barred insurers from refusing or surcharging a residential policy solely because of a dog’s breed. It died in committee on 31 January 2024. We are not brokers, and this is not insurance advice; it is the order in which we would ask the questions.

A privately owned dog driven into California needs proof of rabies vaccination. CDFA’s entry sheet says “All dogs over 4 months old must have a certificate of current rabies vaccination” showing the vaccine type, its lot number and the date given, and that a certificate of veterinary inspection “is required for dogs changing ownership, but not privately owned dogs.” A dog you have just bought is changing ownership.

That paperwork changed on 1 January 2026. SB 312 replaced the old county-filing rule with Food and Agricultural Code § 31000: whoever sells, transports or imports a dog into the state “for the purpose of resale or change of ownership” must get a certificate from a licensed veterinarian dated no more than ten days before the dog enters, and send it electronically to the Department of Food and Agriculture and to the buyer. It must state rabies vaccination within the previous twelve months, the microchip number if there is one, and a real physical address at both ends; a parking lot or an airport will not do. Ask any out-of-state seller, us included, who books that exam, who files the certificate, and when you will see your copy.

One part of the new law deserves a protection-dog buyer’s attention. The certificate carries the buyer’s full name, physical address, email address and telephone number, and under the same bill it is “a public record subject to disclosure, without redaction,” which the department must keep for five years and hand over on request. If privacy is part of why you want a protection dog, know that this record exists before the dog travels.

Then the distance. By our own query of the OSRM routing engine on OpenStreetMap data, it is about 1,440 road miles from downtown Dallas to Los Angeles, about 1,360 to San Diego and about 1,730 to San Francisco, with the engine putting the driving time alone at roughly 23 to 31 hours. That is a multi-day drive for the dog. What the airlines require of a dog this size, and why a cargo hold is a poor first day in a new home, is in our guide to flying with a protection dog.

Delivery is in person rather than by shipping the dog, and the handover takes place in your California home with the people who will live with it. At roughly 1,400 road miles, the timing depends on where in the state you are, so we work it out with you on the call.

The honest part is afterwards. California runs two hours behind us, so a call at seven on a Saturday morning in Los Angeles reaches us at nine. Maintenance sessions with a decoy are part of keeping a protection dog sharp. Ask any seller who would do that near you, and ask us on the first call. The full list of questions for buying at a distance is in our guide to buying a protection dog from out of state.

California law gives you one specific check. Section 121916 says a person who “operates or maintains a business to sell, rent, or train an attack, guard, or sentry dog shall obtain a permit from the local public agency,” meaning the city or county, or the shelter or humane society contracting with it. Ask a California protection dog company which agency issued its permit, then call that agency and confirm it. A permit is not a measure of how good the dogs are. It does tell you the business is known to the local agency that issues the permits. We are a Texas business, and how that section reaches a seller based outside the state is a question for the local agency or a California lawyer, not for this page.

Our own checkable credential is that both owners are listed as decoys on PSA trial schedules; the clubs and dates are there, so you can ask the clubs. Hold any seller to the same standard, and see our guide to protection dog scams and red flags for the rest.

And with every seller, local or not, ask the California questions this page raises: whether the dog can come into shops, restaurants and offices with you given Section 121935, how its training fits the protective-provocation wording of Section 399.5, and who near you will work it with a decoy after the handover. A good seller has answers to all three. If the answers make you doubt the purchase, whether to buy one at all is a fair question to come back to.