Complaint Review: PETCO

My boyfriend, an animal lover, bought his first guinea pig back in April 2001. He initially bought a female, and decided he loved guinea pigs, so he bought more over the next few months. By June 2001, he had six guinea pigs, all purchased from different Petcos in the Los Angeles area (Monrovia, Porter Ranch, Van Nuys, and West Hills). The employees in all of these stores ensured us that these 6 young adults s were all females. We wanted all females so there wouldn't be a risk of pregnancy.

In the order we bought them, the pigs were named Chewie, Mama Sow, Baby, Beaver, Gretal, and Homey. Everything was going fine until a couple of months later.

We noticed the pigs were starting to get fatter, especially Beaver. My boyfriend was starting to get worried that Beaver might be pregnant. But, according to Petco, all these pigs had been sex-tested as females. We noticed some distinct bulges in Beaver's stomach, signs that she might indeed be pregnant. We figured she had somehow gotten pregnant while she was at the Petco, and that a male might have been mistakenly placed in the females cage.

A few weeks later, Chewie, Baby, Honey, and Gretal were all starting to develop bulges. We thought maybe we were seeing things or going crazy. We did lots of research on the web on guinea pigs and found that it was easy to test thir sex, so we decided to test all 6 of the pigs. It turned out that Mama Sow was neither a Mama nor a Sow. She had been a HE all along. He had been a very happy pig with his harem of FIVE sows until we discovered his "secret". We decided to rename him Boar because Mama Sow was obviously not fitting.

After a few months, we wound up with 12 guinea pig babies and the original 6 adults. It was obvious as to who the father was (Boar), except in one case. Honey had been pregnant when we purchased her at Petco, and we did not know she was pregnant. The only reason we found out that Boar was not the father of her piglet was because the piglet was purely white with a different hair type, and all of the other piglets that Boar had fathered all had his black color and/or his hair type.

We were able to find homes for 4 of the guinea pigs from mutual friends. My boyfriend decided that he did not want to risk the pigs going to bad homes or being fed to snakes, so he decided to keep the remaining 14 guinea pigs.

At Petco, I saw that they had posted signs about taking unwanted small animals. From my experience, Petco seems to have staff that "mistakenly" mix up male guinea pigs with the female pigs. If you buy a female pig, she could very well be pregnant, and what happens is the owners wind up dropping the babies back to Petco, and thus their stock is refilled. My boyfriend and I have gone into different Petcos to look at guinea pigs that were supposedly one sex, but when we test them , they are the opposite sex. Boar, who was supposedly a female, was in a cage at Petco with 10 other females. If those 10 females were fertile, you can only imagine how many babies that adds up to just because of an employee's mistake. Each pig usually has between 1 to 5 babies for a first time pregnancy.

Just last week we went to the Van Nuys Petco to save a guinea pig. The pig was lethargic, extremely underweight (about 1/4 the weight of his healthy pigs at home), had an eye infection, the hair was extremely brittle and dried, and this white pig's coat was stained from all the urine and filth he was sitting in at Petco. His coat smelled of urine a foot away and we had to bathe him 3 times just to remove the smell.

I felt really bad for the dozen other pigs there that we could not buy. We told the employee that their conditions are filthy, but he honestly did not seem to care. The Van Nuys Petco is not an exception. I see this kind of neglect in many of the Petco stores, not only with the guinea pigs and small animals, but with the reptiles as well. I noticed that the diet given to these animals is not sufficient ... usually they are just given dried food/pellets. Most of these animals that Petco has are herbivores and need LOTS of fresh veggies as their main diet!

I think a lot of Petco's care of the animals depend on the employees and the manager. A great Petco is the one in Burbank on Victory and Hollywood Way. The employees care, they are very knowledgable on each type of animal, the animals are fed well, and their cages are clean. Unfortunately this store is an exception to the care that the other Petcos are giving to their animals.

Elaine
Woodland Hills, California

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