Hello everyone.  It's Kathy from Petco writing in about who else?  Petco
and our handling of "older" ferrets.
 
I have to say this first: I can only speak for my store which is in
Hicksvile NY by the way.  I know for sure how we do things but sadly all
stores don't follow the same standards as we do.
 
Anyway in regards to the comments made about Petco considering a ferret
over the hill at a very young 12 weeks.  In my store we definitely do
NOT see things that way!  Do you want to know who considers the ferrets
undesirable once they lose that tiny kit look.  THE CUSTOMERS!  I cannot
tell you how may terrific fuzzys are past up because they are to "OLD"!
This happens all the time and it breaks my heart to see ferrets sitting
for months waiting for a family.  Its really terrible that we get them
in at 7 weeks and we have to push to sell them as bad as that sounds-
because like I said once they lose that "look" they are not really
wanted.  Other stores do something we do not do- when we have the
situation where we have a ferret or a few ferts that aren't selling
because of their age and size we will not take in any tiny kits until we
find them homes.  Once the tiny kits are put in with the older guys their
chance of getting taken goes way down.  Up against the little ones they
look even bigger to the customers.  My manager will discount the older
ferts to obviouly draw customers into taking the bigger guys.
 
That said, there are good people that come in who have no prejudice as
to size.  Just this week we finally sold 2 "old" at 4 months sable boys.
Today a nice woman and her family came in actually looking for an older
male and it was a perfect match for the both of them!  So happy endings
can happen.  My whole point was that sometimes its not the pet stores
fault.  Sometimes we have to look at ourselves first.
 
Sincerley,
Kathy and the Troublemakin' fuzzys
[Posted in FML issue 4206]