On Saturady 04/14/05 My wife and I went to the Pets Mart in Waite Park, MN, and purchased a female short hair hamster. We had every intention of buying this hamster to mate her with a male that we already had.
She was fine and in good health, until Tuesday night when she made a bed out of Keenex Tissue in the exercise wheel and laid down. She never came out again.
My wife thought she may have been impregnaeted by the male and we left them alone, shortly there after I cleaned the cage out and needed to clean the wheel she was in also, Thats when we noticed that she had problems.
Although I didn't know it at the time she had a condition called "Wet Tail", where she wouldn't eat, drink or play with the others. She had no energy to even move from the corner when I was cleaning her cage. My wife and I thought she may have had a miscarriage since we also thought she was pregnaet. So we took her out of the cage on Friday afternoon and put her in the box. I called PetsMart here and talked with Jessica, the manager. She said to bring her in and let her look at the hamster.
The next morning (Saturday 04/23/05) I got up, and went to see how she was doing. The hamster was dead. I brought the body of the hamster back to PetsMart and they issued me a gift card for $9.04 (the cost of the hanster). I'm thankful that my kids were not around to see this since they have gotten very attached and showed all of our hamsters love and attention. Now since the female was kept in the same cage as the male, we got concerned and went to check him out. He was showing the same symptoms for this "Wet Tail" condition and we got very concerned.
I called PetsMart back again and told them of my concern, Jessica once again told me that there is not much they can do. So I told her that we are going to have our Male looked at by Banfields (the vet office in the pet store), and much to our disappointment, the vet said he also has wet tail. Our Male hamster is a Teddy Bear Hamster and cost us $59.00 at another store (not PetsMart) and now we are afraid we are going to lose him also. The vet gave us medication to give to him but was sure to tell us that there isn't much that we can do, (verbatum) "If he's too far gone... Then he will die". So we wound up paying $30.00 for the medication to give the male, just to prolong his life for my kids sake.
I went out to the store and told the manager on duty (John) that because of the female that PetsMart sold us, our Male is now sick and there is a good chance he will die too. I asked what kind of options I had and he plainly said "I'm not going to give you your money you paid for him back, but I'll give you another Hamster"
I told him that I don't want another sick hamster, and that we had already spent a small fortune on cages and tubes and premium food for these animals at his store, and that if this was the best he could do, then just be prepared. I plan on writing letters to newspapers, and other people who are active in animal protection laws around my area. I don't know what else to do. But I will tell you this, PetsMart doesn't care what kind of condition the animal is in when they sell them, they just want the money. Just be fore warned... Buyer beware!!!
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