Just wanted to make a quick post about this...
We get a lot of calls that start out like this, "Hi, are you an animal shelter?" I always answer back that we are a chinchilla rescue. So then they ask something along the lines of, "ok, so you take in animals?" to which I reply, "only small animals like chinchillas and guinea pigs, we don't take in dogs or cats."
This happens about 3-5 times a day.
Let me share with you the reason I think this happens so often -- people do not read. We have gotten into such a busy lifestyle (and laziness, but I won't even go into that) that people search animal shelter, we pop up, and people completely ignore the fact that it says "Chinchilla Rescue" and call and expect me to take in their animals.
I had one person a few weeks ago, ask me to take in their pit bull. I told her, we only take in small animals. Her response? You guessed it! -- "well, she's a small pit bull..."
Does it take that long, when you search for something, to look at what you're actually clicking on? I understand, you may search dog rescue, and because I have pictures of my dogs up on the "about us" page, maybe my site pops up. However... the whole "chinchilla rescue" thing, should put you on a little notice. When I was looking to get Misty (my younger dog), I was searching for "sheltie puppy" in combination with Indiana or Illinois or whatever. That said, I understand that when I do that, may still pop up the website of a Texas sheltie breeder. And that's fine, because I have some common sense and before I immediately shoot them an email, I take the time to look on the site, see that it's Texas, and say, ok, nevermind, I will move on. But... that must be too hard for some.
Also in the realm of "too hard," must be politeness and common courtesy. For example, if I was to call a company and they weren't able to help me, I would say something along the lines of, "thank you anyway" and I would end the call with "bye," or something of the nature. Just now (what prompted me to write this post actually), the phone rang. I answered it, and the lady said, "what all animals are you selling?" I told her, we have chinchillas for adoption. *click* That's it. No "hi" or any sort of greeting, no nothing after I answered the question. Clearly, that wasn't what she wanted to hear. Maybe she wanted a guinea pig or whatever... but I guess I wasn't raised that you just hang up on someone if they can't help you.
Granted, I get plenty of polite people as well, but sometimes, people amaze me...
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
Hay and water bottles and everything else under the sun
So, it's been busy lately, between adoptions and expos and traveling and all that fun stuff, so I know I have a lot to update on.
Let's start with the hay. I used to get hay from a family that farmed it out in Kouts, but when I first got the hay, it was mostly grass hay. As time went on, they let the alfalfa take over their fields, and for chins, you don't want a hay high in alfalfa. Some is fine, but we were getting to the point that at least half, if not more, of the bale was alfalfa... so that wasn't going to work. So the one day, Jim came over here and we found a new guy for hay. Let's call him Joe. Joe was a farmer who had hay fields and could not imagine, for the life of him, why two people would want grass hay instead of the nice green alfalfa. But, that's what we wanted, and to make it worth his while, rather than buying a few bales, I bought $100 worth of hay from him, and only took $20 of it the first time. He would hold the rest until when I needed it next. And he must have had a few hundred bales, so this shouldn't have been a problem. Of course, I'm telling you about this now, so you may be able to imagine where this is going.... fast forward a few months, I'm on my last bale of hay and I need more hay. So, I call Joe. No answer, and his voicemail isn't set up, so I can't leave a message. I call again, and he picks up, and I get about as far as saying who I am before the call cuts out. Well, I call right back, and then upon thinking, he might still be on the phone saying "hello???," I wait a few minutes and try again... nothing. This goes on for about a week, and I also messaged him through facebook (and we have talked on there before, so I KNOW he knows how to use it), I texted his cell phone, and I posted a message on his facebook wall. Despite the fact that he has been active multiple multiple times and I must have called 40 different times over the course of a week, I have not received any calls back or anything. Jim seems to think he sold the hay in a bit lot to someone else, and now doesn't have my hay to give me... but even if that is the case, I would appreciate if he would own up to it, as it's clear at this point that he's just ignoring me.... and I can't tell you how much that pisses me off.... and how much the rescue could have used that lost $80 for something else....
But, nothing can really be done if he doesn't respond to any of my contacting him, so... whatcha gonna do, but move on to other things. Speaking of, it's the beginning of the month, so it's time to switch out water bottles. We take all the bottles down, clean them, and replace them with fresh water and clean bottles. Sounds easy enough, but there's well over 100 bottles, so obviously this isn't done all at once. Well, I bought used bottles from someone a bit ago, and as I was washing bottles today, it occurred to me that I could grab those and use those, as those would be clean, right? Right?? Wrong. Sometimes I think I'm the only one anymore who sells stuff that is CLEAN. If I sell a used cage, or used water bottle, or whatever, I have scrubbed it and gotten as much of the grime and gook off as possible. Not these people! The water bottles are grimy, the tubes have caked on gunk on them... needless to say, I will not be using them before scrubbing the hell out of them and letting the stoppers/tubes soak for awhile and then scrubbing the hell out of those as well. I just don't get people! And don't get me wrong, the water bottles weren't expensive, but they weren't THAT cheap either, that they should be this grimy... ugh. Those water bottle are a different type than the ones I use normally, so I've just been washing my own today and using those, and I will wash the others when I have more time...
Last thing for now, because I have to go and get more stuff done. You may have noticed that the website looks a bit different... The webhost for our site had different site builders available. We were on the original site builder, and they were up to sitebuilder 3 for a different option for editing the website. I put off and put off and put off some more... switching to the new one, because I knew it would be a headache. Well, they finally sent out an email saying they were going to switch over all the sites sometime mid-October, though we could switch them sooner if desired... well... fall is a bad time for that, cause it's super busy, so I waited until one day I opened my site and it was switched over... and... yuk. What a mess. The entire website is now what is called "legacy paragraphs" which have to be edited through multiple steps, rather than just clicking where I want to change something and deleting and typing, like in a word document... so now, I have to go through each page, page by page, and re-do them and switch them over to the regular paragraphs so that if I ever want to edit the site in the future, I can do so without going through 10 steps on every page... and I tell ya, it is a pain. Also, the nav bar at the top no longer has the option to be 3 rows, so we have drop down menus for everything. I'm not a fan... but it is what it is. And the available chins page isn't up to date at the moment, since everything is all over the place, and I'm trying to go page by page to fix all of this. So please be patient, thank you.....
Let's start with the hay. I used to get hay from a family that farmed it out in Kouts, but when I first got the hay, it was mostly grass hay. As time went on, they let the alfalfa take over their fields, and for chins, you don't want a hay high in alfalfa. Some is fine, but we were getting to the point that at least half, if not more, of the bale was alfalfa... so that wasn't going to work. So the one day, Jim came over here and we found a new guy for hay. Let's call him Joe. Joe was a farmer who had hay fields and could not imagine, for the life of him, why two people would want grass hay instead of the nice green alfalfa. But, that's what we wanted, and to make it worth his while, rather than buying a few bales, I bought $100 worth of hay from him, and only took $20 of it the first time. He would hold the rest until when I needed it next. And he must have had a few hundred bales, so this shouldn't have been a problem. Of course, I'm telling you about this now, so you may be able to imagine where this is going.... fast forward a few months, I'm on my last bale of hay and I need more hay. So, I call Joe. No answer, and his voicemail isn't set up, so I can't leave a message. I call again, and he picks up, and I get about as far as saying who I am before the call cuts out. Well, I call right back, and then upon thinking, he might still be on the phone saying "hello???," I wait a few minutes and try again... nothing. This goes on for about a week, and I also messaged him through facebook (and we have talked on there before, so I KNOW he knows how to use it), I texted his cell phone, and I posted a message on his facebook wall. Despite the fact that he has been active multiple multiple times and I must have called 40 different times over the course of a week, I have not received any calls back or anything. Jim seems to think he sold the hay in a bit lot to someone else, and now doesn't have my hay to give me... but even if that is the case, I would appreciate if he would own up to it, as it's clear at this point that he's just ignoring me.... and I can't tell you how much that pisses me off.... and how much the rescue could have used that lost $80 for something else....
But, nothing can really be done if he doesn't respond to any of my contacting him, so... whatcha gonna do, but move on to other things. Speaking of, it's the beginning of the month, so it's time to switch out water bottles. We take all the bottles down, clean them, and replace them with fresh water and clean bottles. Sounds easy enough, but there's well over 100 bottles, so obviously this isn't done all at once. Well, I bought used bottles from someone a bit ago, and as I was washing bottles today, it occurred to me that I could grab those and use those, as those would be clean, right? Right?? Wrong. Sometimes I think I'm the only one anymore who sells stuff that is CLEAN. If I sell a used cage, or used water bottle, or whatever, I have scrubbed it and gotten as much of the grime and gook off as possible. Not these people! The water bottles are grimy, the tubes have caked on gunk on them... needless to say, I will not be using them before scrubbing the hell out of them and letting the stoppers/tubes soak for awhile and then scrubbing the hell out of those as well. I just don't get people! And don't get me wrong, the water bottles weren't expensive, but they weren't THAT cheap either, that they should be this grimy... ugh. Those water bottle are a different type than the ones I use normally, so I've just been washing my own today and using those, and I will wash the others when I have more time...
Last thing for now, because I have to go and get more stuff done. You may have noticed that the website looks a bit different... The webhost for our site had different site builders available. We were on the original site builder, and they were up to sitebuilder 3 for a different option for editing the website. I put off and put off and put off some more... switching to the new one, because I knew it would be a headache. Well, they finally sent out an email saying they were going to switch over all the sites sometime mid-October, though we could switch them sooner if desired... well... fall is a bad time for that, cause it's super busy, so I waited until one day I opened my site and it was switched over... and... yuk. What a mess. The entire website is now what is called "legacy paragraphs" which have to be edited through multiple steps, rather than just clicking where I want to change something and deleting and typing, like in a word document... so now, I have to go through each page, page by page, and re-do them and switch them over to the regular paragraphs so that if I ever want to edit the site in the future, I can do so without going through 10 steps on every page... and I tell ya, it is a pain. Also, the nav bar at the top no longer has the option to be 3 rows, so we have drop down menus for everything. I'm not a fan... but it is what it is. And the available chins page isn't up to date at the moment, since everything is all over the place, and I'm trying to go page by page to fix all of this. So please be patient, thank you.....
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