Ángel Franco/The New York Times

New York City pet shop ownership has its challenges: Pushy customers. Yapping pooches. And, it seems, drunken puppy purchasing.

On Tuesday, the news Web site DNAinfo.com reported that two Greenwich Village pet shops had policies barring visibly intoxicated patrons from buying, playing with, or even cradling puppies.

It turns out that the phenomenon is even more widespread. Of seven city pet store owners or employees interviewed by The New York Times, some with multiple shops, all but one said the store had explicit guidelines for dealing with intoxicated customers.

“Buying a dog is a decision that might last for 18 years,” said Michael Brigrante, manager of American Kennels on Lexington Avenue and East 62nd Street. “I want to make sure they’re not doing it because of a couple tequila shots.”

At Le Petit Puppy on Christopher Street, a ritzy marketplace for pint-size pooches — employees said that Hugh Jackman bought a French bulldog there and John Mayer a “Yorkiepoo” — the puppy-populated front windows often entice stumbling patrons from the surrounding bars and restaurants.

The remedy, according to Dana Derraugh, the shop’s manager, is a familiar command: Sit.

“We have a chair if we’re unsure of someone,” she said. “We make them sit down, just to make sure they won’t fall on a dog.”

During one such sobriety test, Ms. Derraugh said, a customer fell asleep, credit card in hand, near the register. Last weekend, an apparently intoxicated woman attempted to open the display window, where puppies frolic among bits of shredded paper, and scoop up the animals.

“She wanted to hand them around to people in the store,” recalled Andrea Crocitto, an employee.

Despite the potential for increased business, Ms. Derraugh said the store closed on days when the neighborhood is abuzz with revelers, like Halloween or the day of the gay pride parade.

At Puppy Paradise, on Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, Michael Rubin, the manager, said one customer called the police when Mr. Rubin refused to sell him a puppy. Mr. Rubin believed the visitor had been using drugs, he said.

Mr. Brigante, of American Kennels, said that during last year’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, a passing reveler, whose first attempt to purchase a small bulldog was rejected, then offered to pay double. The refusal stuck, Mr. Brigante said, even after the man offered to throw in the contents of his flask.

Alex Mynatt, a bartender at Joseph Leonard, a restaurant across the street from Citipups in the Village, said he could recall only one instance in which a customer went directly from the bar to a pet shop. About four months ago, he said, a married couple sipping bloody marys with brunch sat beside a young woman at the front counter. She wanted a puppy, they overheard her tell the restaurant staff repeatedly.

So the husband left the table, headed to Citipups and returned with a dog, handing it to the grateful stranger.

“I think he just wanted her to stop talking about it,” Mr. Mynatt said. “So he could go back. And sit.”