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Gah! My ethics are frayed. X|

Long story short: My family and I are now in love with a pet store animal. We've been planning to take on a new guinea pig pretty much from the moment we woke to find the house unexpectedly silent last Christmas. I've been spamming my father's inbox with notices of guinea pigs in the local animal shelter.

Buuut... no. This one individual from a pet shop. Bugger. I don't know what to doooo... As they go, this chain is hardly the WORST - they eschew anything even remotely resembling puppy mills, they don't 'get rid of' animals that don't sell or 'excess' - I've passed by and seen the same bird there for years on end, just sort of living there, in good health. Their rodents are of all different ages - the guinea pig in question is definitely into adulthood, much older than the babies I've usually seen in pet stores. They have employees hired more or less with the express purpose of socialising the animals and making sure customers play nice with them. But they are a chain, and they are a pet shop that treats living beings as commodities, however nice they seem.

On the other hand, we've kind of decided it's time to take in a new pig, and it wouldn't be right to go to a shelter and pick one up as a consolation prize. Granted, getting a guinea pig from the shelter is better, and cheaper, and... well, everything....

And I suppose shoplifting the pig is out of the question.  :-\

What I came up with was this:

You buy the pet store guinea pig, it's not really the end of the world in terms of supporting a more decent pet shop.  BUT.  You know that the guinea pig in that store will probably have an OK life, as pet guinea pig lives go, regardless of whether you buy it.  Like, you know he won't be killed prematurely, etc.  You do not know the same thing for the shelter guinea pig.  So by buying the pet shop one you are jeopardizing the life of the shelter one.  By getting a shelter one you know that both guinea pigs will probably be fine.  It's a two for one.


Umm... how bout getting both?! the more the merrier... um... right? (No, wait, don't listen to me! I've got like a billion ex-stray pets--  clearly have no sense of reasonable limits!)

But... they ARE fairly smallish pets; just sayin'....


i agree... get the one u love (i wouldn't though if it were a dog or cat because there r sooooo many in shelters) and when one comes up for adoption get that one too :) then both little "piggys" will have a loving home <3


my sister had piggies - i do seem to remember that they love having buddies


Ah don't go into that pet store and tempt yourself!

Have you checked at your animal shelter?  They seem to have them there fairly often, as well as rabbits.


so what ever happened with the guinea pig?

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