Friday, February 17, 2012

More and more emails

I'm starting to feel like I spend more time emailing than I spend with the chins. 

So today... started out the day with an email from someone saying she had a female rat and wanting to get company for her rat.  As we only have males, and it is a trio of males that we have, I asked her if she intended for the rats to play together or be together.  Obviously, asking because as a rescue, we get in our fair share of unwanted animals, and the last thing we need is someone putting together a male and female and creating MORE pets to end up on craigslist.  Not to mention, while I'm not all up-to-date on my rat knowledge, I'm pretty sure 3 males would fight over one female.  Or at least, that's how it is in the small animal species that I feel pretty knowledgeable about.  No response yet, and it's like 2 am now and she emailed me like early early morning, so we'll see. 

Moved onto an email from the father of someone who is on our waiting list for a BV baby.  Wanted to know how to best build a cage with a wood frame and wire rest-of-the-cage.  He asked if "any untreated wood, other than cedar" would be allright.  This really got me thinking of how we all know that cedar is bad... mainly because it's often marketed as animal bedding... but that people really aren't aware that there are a lot of woods out there that aren't safe to use in a chin cage or make a cage out of.  So I emailed the guy a pic of someone's cage that we once got some chins from and said it was a good example.  Cage:



Answered his questions which involved describing cage layout, good accessories, good things to have in the cage, and so on.  Probably wrote way more than he wanted to know, but I'd rather go with overkill than forget something important. 

Next email (told you this was an e-mail filled day!) was the person wanting to return us some degus, who is trying to find a time to come here from around Indy.  She wants to come Tuesday, but I think I work... as has been the case every time she's tried to find a day to come.  But, I won't know my schedule for sure until tomorrow or Saturday, so I can't confirm or deny Tuesday as a possibility yet.

The following email was the person from a day or so ago emailing bout the rats. She said she might be able to get them but she had to get everything together first.  So, I asked how long that would take, because if we're talking like a week to get a cage, that's one thing, but if we're talking like a month...well, the rats would need to be on hold then.  So we'll see what she says when I hear back.

Next email was from someone about 3 hours away, of course asking if we ever come in that direction.  As we don't, I tried to nicely point out that a large portion of our chin-homes come from 2+ hours away, and cited some people on my happy customers page that are from over 3 hours away.  Dunno if they'll end up coming here  or not, but other people have found it worth their while, so maybe these will too.  They wanted to know good brands for cages, and wheels, and other things, and what I'd recommend, so they seemed like very nice people, and people who wanted to do the best for their potential-new-pet.  So at least they're doing research, hopefully they follow the advice given and get a good cage and good wheel and all that.  If they come to us, we can set them up with a lot of the stuff they'd need, but if not, I gave them good resources for where else to get this stuff. 

Next email (I know! busy day) was from someone in California who can't find anyone closer to her (really? come on) and no one will ship to her.  I didn't even bother going into the whole "shipping would cost 4-5 times as much as the chin, honey" though I wanted to (I have to restrain myself) but rather, I just PMed Dawn and asked her about the breeders and rescues she knows of in California.  I know there are a ton, because I recall her saying that CA is littered with breeders/rescues, so once she gets back to me, I'll email the girl back. 

Last two emails of the night were two different people wanting to know my schedule for Sunday (which I don't know yet), one wanting to drop gerbils off, the other wanting to come look at some chins.  Man, I wish I knew my schedule earlier in the week! 

And then, just for fun, to top the night off, I got a fake email from domesticsale (one of the places I use for free classified ads) saying they'd noticed unusual activity on my account and I had to log in to confirm it was me.  Like I'm that stupid, the email was from like blackwolf-something-something-@ yahoo.com.  Um... yeah that's legit, for sure.  *rolls eyes* 

Ah well.  Ran downstairs for a bit to take some pictures of the kits cause the 3-hour-away person wanted updated pics, so I got those to him.  Fed all the chins, gave scritches, and got sprayed.  Fun fun.

Interesting fact, I've been having to mix up a crapload of the mom-n-kit formula lately.  I don't know exactly why these mom's are so crazy about it, cause never in the past... but currently, the chins are like chowing down!  For those that don't know, the mom & kit formula is:

1 parts powdered goats milk
1 part crushed pellets
1 part half and half  - baby oatmeal cereal and baby rice cereal

It vaguely looks like powdered infant formula, except for the brown specks in it from the crushed up pellets.  Currently have a coop cup hanging in both cages that have kits in them and the kits and moms are chowing down!  It's good though, it's good for them, it just seems a little unusual that in the past I couldn't get some chins to touch the stuff but the current litters are eating it like it's gold. 

Well, spent some time with the chins today, but would have liked to have spent more.  But today was my last class before the final, and had an interview, and a hair appointment, so it was a busy day (other than the emails).  Oh and got in the bird cage and set it up.  It's nowhere near the "heavy gauge" that it states on the page, which makes me mad that I paid $50 for this piece of junk.  If I wanted this thin wired bird cage, I could have gotten a bigger one for the same price in the pet store, but oh well.  Now that I've got it though, I really hope the person shows up with the bird tomorrow.

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