I recently purchased a guinea pig from a Petsmart in Rochester Hills, MI. It was actually about a month ago and nothing for this little guy has gone right. We purchased him on a Saturday, initially the associate that was helping us box him up seemed to care very little for him. She tore him out of his home with little care and simply handed him over. After deciding we wanted him she placed him in a box that was barely double the size of him and placed him in the open box on the floor with little care of the fact that he could easily climb free of the small box.
Then by Monday we were taking him to the vets to get him checked on because he was having both issues breathing and was sneezing nearly nonstop. When we got there we found out that he not only had an upper respiratory infection but had pneumonia as well. His breathing was so bad that the vet couldn't even heard his heart beating over it. We were given the option of not treating it and taking him back to the store or forking over close to $250 for a pet that we were given a 50/50 chance of surviving after only having him two days.
We decided to take the chance even if he may not live because every animal deserves that chance and we already didn't trust PetSmart to take care of him since he'd gotten sick initially in their care.
He made it through that quite successfully and things were finally looking up for him as the antibiotics ran out. The next thing we know he has a wound on his ear that appeared nearly overnight. We decided to take him back to the vet who assumed that it was simply a cut with an infection and that's why it looked so bad. He gave us antibiotics for his ear and to be sure he took a few hair samples to test him for ringworm as well. Two days ago we got a phone call from the vet telling us that he has ringworm and will have to be treated for that as well. Within a month of getting this poor guy he has been sick with not one thing but three because of their lack of care for him.
Now I know there is little we can do about this ringworm because there is no way to prove he got it at the store after a month of being at home with us. It simply enrages me that they could care so little for the animals in their care. Their lives are in their hands and that simply doesn't seem to matter.
They reimbursed us for the money that was spent on the original vet care but that isn't what bothers me anymore. There should be something done for these animals, it's clear that if he could be so sick when we got him with no one noticing that there is something wrong happening. Especially since, not only was our little guy not taken very good care of the girl we also purchased from a different store in Troy, MI turned out to be pregnant when she was in a store that was only supposed to have girls in it (so much for having them seperated so we wouldn't have to worry about having babies).
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