Why pet stores are bad

Up until we got Nicodemus I was none the wiser. We’d heard the horror stories about puppy mills and the like for cats and dogs but with small animals it had honestly never occured to me that there was a problem. Call me informed now. Our first few guinea pigs where purchased as were all eight of our ferrets. I’ll admit it I was completely clueless. Where we live we have a PetCo, a PetsMart and a local pet store that is horrendous. The ferrets where purchased from PetCo and the Guinea’s from PetsMart. To say the animals in the stores are taken care of is questionable. At PetsMart I can at least count on the staff to be knowledgable and genuinly care for the animals, at PetCo I wouldn’t trust them with anything. At PetCo the rodents they sell almost always look entirely too young or sickly. When we purchased Eben and Marlow the girl grabbed Eben by the throat. Not the scruff as you are supposed to hold them, full on by the throat.

After Simon passed away we vowed to not purchase anymore and four of our eight guinea pigs are adopted and one rescued. It was brought to my attention last year when US Global Exoctics was raided in Arlington Texas and thousands of small animals were rescued from putrid conditions. To say it was sad is an understatement. By then I was semi informed of the conditions this critters go through but to see the pictures first hand made me ill.  Finding out that the vets that work for both the Ft. Worth Zoo and the Dallas World Aquarium actually defended the people who owned US Global infuritated me and we no longer patronize either place. It’s also where they got some of their animals. Of course any thought about the well being of the animals can be answered when you look at the recent PetsMart add offering $10 off any reptile with your Rango ticket stub.

Shortly after the raid our youngest guinea pig Raziel became ill, his brother had already passed on at PetsMart. We took him to the vet and after xrays found out he’d only been born with a partial lung. Total. When looking at the xrays only a fraction of what he was supposed to have was visible. Inbreeding and overbreeding are the cause. Thankfully with a good vet he made it to a year and a half, though it got very scary at times.

The ferrets are a completely different story. Because of the fact that they are altered at such a young age, within hours after birth their bodies go haywire. We’ve lost three of our babies in the last six months to insulinoma, two more diagnosed last week. It’s heart breaking and hard on them as well as us.