Trial Runs -- most likely "no more"

So, if you've talked to me at all lately, you know that we've had someone majorly pissing me off, due to borrowing a cage and vanishing.  Let me tell you the story.

 

So, we had someone who was looking to adopt a chin, and was ordering cages from Quality Cage.  Her cages were going to take 2 more weeks, plus some, to come in, and she asked if she could borrow a cage in the meantime.  I didn't want the chin to be on hold forever, here, and we only hold for 14 days with a deposit, and I want to say, we were already getting close to that.  So, I told her, we'd borrow her a cage and she could bring it back when she got her cage and got it set up.  She said no problem.  

So the day comes for her to adopt, she comes by.  The cage I had ready to go was our Quality Cage Travel Cage, which mind you, is a $100 cage with $30 shipping to our location.  But, I've lent it out a million times before and always gotten it back.  It was almost funny, because this lady was literally purchasing a quality cage townhome and a travel cage, so it was like haha, you're borrowing the same cage that's going to arrive.  Also, needless to say, there's no doubt she remembers she has our cage, as she now has two travel cages (hers and ours).

So, she borrows the cage and she said she would email when she got her cages in and all that, and then would come bring the cage back.  She also had paid for some supplies that we did not have ready for her at that moment, so she said she would pick those up at the same time.  

 

So, I realized, early February, that I have not heard from her, and send her an email asking how the chin's doing, and asking when we are planning to meet up for us to get the cage back and her to get her supplies.  She replied that the chin was doing great, she'd send me pictures right away.  Never did.  Completely ignored the questions about the cage and supplies.

I re-read my email and it said something to the tune of, "I believe I have all your stuff ready," so I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe she wasn't sure the stuff was ready to be picked up.  I checked that I really did have all of her stuff ready (which now, is packed up in a sealed bag to keep it clean), and emailed her again, this time, stating that I checked and had all of her items that she had paid for, ready for pickup, and wanted to know when worked for her to do the exchange and get the cage.

That was February 6th.  

Today is February 22nd.  I have not received a return email.  

This past weekend, we had an expo.  I guess the cage went to the back of my mind for a bit, until I started packing for the expo and realized -- I still don't have the cage.  So I went and dug out her paperwork -- which was easy, because she adopted on January 1st, so first paperwork of the year.  I called her up, this was Friday the 17th, and left her a message basically reminding her that she had supplies to pick up and a cage to return.  I told her in the message, if I thought she would have the cage this long, I honestly would have borrowed out another cage, as we use that cage for all sorts of expos, and I told her, now I need to scrunch animals together in a cage or something so I can take one of my other cages to the expo.  I asked that she call me back so we could talk about when we could work it out to get it back.  That was Friday midday-ish.

So, she doesn't call me back all weekend.  So, I wait until Monday, the 20th, and call again.  Again, I'm perfectly nice in the phone call, just reminding that she has our cage and we have her supplies. I even mentioned how we might be in the area in the upcoming weeks (cause she's over in Ohio) and that would save her the effort of driving all the way here to make the exchange.  To me, that's being exceptionally nice, considering she's supposed to have already, weeks ago, delivered the cage back to us.  I also told her, I have people wanting to do trial runs that can't..... because that's the cage we use, and it's not here.  It's now Wednesday and... nothing.  

 

I even sent her an email yesterday, explaining that I called her twice, left messages.  Asked if maybe she didn't get the phone calls or whatnot, because while I could understand if she can't just drop everything and come here, I feel like she could at least call back.  I also called late Tuesday night as well.  Same thing, no answer, left a message.

Honestly, I can't even fathom why she's not getting back to me.  In one of her emails, she mentioned that she had gotten the order from quality cage, finally (beginning of Feb), so by now, they should no doubt be set up and the chin should be in the big cage.  So I can't imagine why she's not getting back about the cage and supplies.

What I said to her about not being able to do trial runs because that cage isn't here... that's true.  Just about every single cage we have right now is in use.  We have three cages being used by the rabbit foster, and they are using one of their own cages as well.  We have one cage here that's going to another foster home, so we can't lend it out just quite at this moment.  And the other cage that we always should have available, with the exception being around expo time.... is the QC travel cage.  When I lent it to her, I knew we had the expo in February, but I thought, oh she said we'll have it back in a week or two, no way it's going to be around end of February and we won't have it back.  I was sure we'd have it back, so, that wasn't a concern.  You see how that went.

Now, I know in the past, we've sued the one guy who wouldn't return a chin, and I'm sure some of you remember that.  Problem with doing that in this situation is... this lady is in Ohio.  Pretty sure that's outside the jurisdiction of the little small claims court, and it costs $90 just to file in small claims.  It will cost more because it's out of state and "real court" -- the cage with shipping is $130.  Filing may very well cost that much, if not more.  

Plus, because this wasn't a typical trial run or anything like that, I don't have any signed paperwork saying that she actually has the cage.  I do have emails saying, hey thanks for agreeing to borrow me a cage, but it's not quite the same.

So... at the moment, trial runs are not happening.  Even in the future, I'm not sure they are going to continue.  The reason being... even with the trial run contract signed, and stating the value of the items borrowed and such... with anyone out of state, it is impossibly difficult (not to mention expensive) to track down that person and get out stuff back.  I don't know the exact figures, but I do know that we have a LOT of people from out of state.  And even for Indiana residents, we're still looking at $90 plus time and effort to go to court, if this were to happen again, even more if out of state.

This lady has proven that if someone doesn't want me to get in contact with them, they can pretty much ignore me forever, and there's not much I can do....which is why I say this about the trial runs.  

Without any cages to lend out at the moment, I don't really need to worry about the trial run program right now.  But even when / if I have a cage to lend, I am seriously considering ending the trial run program.  The rescue doesn't have the spare funds to be chasing after people for our stuff (nor the time), and to be perfectly honest, she seemed like a very nice, honest person... I would never have guessed for this to happen.  The only way to make it so that, if someone did disappear with our stuff, that we wouldn't have to come chase them down, would be to charge enough for the trial run to cover the cost of the chin, the cage, and everything.... well, at that point, they might as well adopt.  And, even if we said, ok, if it doesn't work out, we'll refund the money for all of that in 7 days... when all those "new" items are returned... no longer new... we can't sell them for nearly the same amounts, so we'd still be losing out.  Most trial runs end up adoptions, but for the few that don't, we'd lose out on a lot of money as far as the new items.  I even considered taking down a credit card number, which we could charge in the instance someone doesn't bring the stuff back -- but they could cancel the card the second they leave the rescue.  I haven't yet come up with a nice middle ground that would actually be feasible.  Most people are reasonable about this sort of thing, but sadly, it only takes one person to ruin it for everyone.

If someone has some miracle idea for how to get this lady to contact me back, or has any ideas for how to do the trial runs and not run the risk of people walking off with all of our stuff and having no good way to get it back, let me know.  Otherwise, the trial runs are on hold for now.

Understanding the Available Chinchillas Page

Worth mentioning, because I had someone today who messaged me and asked if I would have any of a certain chin ready by the time this one show comes up. 

We always have on the website, a list of the available chins.  If you want to get really specific, there's a list of currently available chins, then a list of chins under evaluation (to be available soon), and then a list of critters on hold. 

As is often the case with rescue... there's a lot more animals here than typically get pics and descriptions on the website.  Oh, they may be listed... it may say, "2 month standard grey male," but that chin may find a home without ever having a picture up or description or anything.  Some people don't necessarily look at our exhaustive list of chins available...and why not?  Well, it's only THIS long:

Chinchillas:

• Electra (8-10 year old standard grey) & Cinder (1 year old dark ebony) -- female pair of chinchillas
• ***courtesy listing*** 4 year old ebony male chinchilla -- "Diesel" ***courtesy listing***
• 3 month old goldbar male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/14/16
• Melo -- 6 month old hetero beige female chinchilla -- dob approx. 6/13/16
• 4 month old pink white male chinchilla kit (baby) -- *special needs* -- dob approx. 8/16/16
• 2 month old white mosaic male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 10/20/16
• Benny -- 3.5 year old hetero beige male chinchilla -- fur chewer -- dob August 2013
• Weezy -- 1 year old standard grey male chinchilla -- special needs (seizures -- NO playtime / wheel) -- dob November 2015
• 7 year old hetero beige female chinchilla -- fur chewer -- culled breeder -- dob 2009
• 3 year old tan female chinchilla -- culled breeder -- dob Nov. 2013
• MNWI F74 -- 2 month old goldbar male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob 10/21/16
• ---
• 1.5 year old TOV white male chinchilla -- dob approx. 6/2015 -- retired breeder -- allergies -- (see upcoming chins)
• Cheerio (previously known as Chincie) -- 8-9 year old hetero beige male chinchilla -- dob June 2008 -- (see upcoming chins)
• 3.5 month old dark ebony male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/1/16 -- (see upcoming chins)
•  3 month old white mosaic male chinchilla kit (baby) #1 -- dob approx. 9/10/16 -- (see upcoming chins)
• 3.5 month old black velvet male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/1/16 -- (see upcoming chins)
• ---
• 3 month old white mosaic male chinchilla kit (baby) #2 -- dob approx. 9/10/16 -- (info coming soon)

Other Animals:

• Nio -- Abyssinian male guinea pig -- 11 months old -- dob 1/22/16
• Ratticate -- black hooded male rat -- 1ish year old -- dob approx. October 2015
• Chomper -- 6 year old white w/ agouti spots male rabbit -- dob approx. Nov. 2010 -- fostered in Highland, IN
• Nessie -- American crested female guinea pig -- 11 months old -- dob 1/22/16 -- (info coming soon)
• Toffee & Fatty -- pair of male guinea pigs -- dob Dec. 2014 (Toffee) & June 2015 (Fatty) -- (info coming soon)

 

Chinchillas & Critters Being Evaluated (can be put on hold now and taken home soon!):

• MNWI F70 -- 2.5 month old hetero beige female chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob 10/3/16 -- available soon
• 2 month old black velvet female chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 10/21/16 -- available soon
• 3.5 month old tan white / ebony pink white male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/1/16 -- available soon
• 3 month old light tan female chinchilla kit (baby) -- front leg stump -- dob approx. 9/10/16 -- available soon
• 4 month old standard grey female chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 8/10/16 -- available soon
• 3.5 month old standard grey male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/1/16 -- available soon
• 3.5 month old hetero beige male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/1/16 -- available soon
• 3.5 month old white mosaic male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/1/16 -- available soon
• 2.5 month old standard grey male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 10/1/16 -- available soon
• 3 month old tan female chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 9/10/16 -- available soon
• 4 month old brown velvet male chinchilla kit (baby) -- dob approx. 8/10/16 -- available soon
• Thisker -- 4-5 year old standard grey male chinchilla -- dob approx. June 2012 -- available soon
• Zoey -- 2 year old standard grey female chinchilla -- dob approx. 1/1/15 -- available soon
• Tikii -- 5.5 year old hetero beige male chinchilla -- dob approx. June 2011 -- available soon
• Mija -- 2.5 year old standard grey female chinchilla -- dob approx. June 2014 -- available soon

... most people choose to scroll past all of that and look at the pictures of all of the fuzzballs.  Nothing wrong with that, but believe me, if all you look at is the cute pictures, you're missing out. 

Right now, there's pics and descriptions (including "up and coming chins" and "on hold" chins) on the website of a total of 21 critters (chins, rabbit, guinea pig, and rat).  However, look at that list of how many are actually here?  Regardless of them being available or not, there are 37 animals total here that are listed.  That means, 43% of the animals here do not have pictures or any information about them on the website.  

Now, knowledge is power.  See a chin that's not available yet (or at least, not marked as such)?  Ask!  We had someone ask about F70 the other day... they said she's been listed as "under evaluation" for over a month now, and they wanted to know if maybe we'd decided to keep her, or if she was on hold for someone, or what.  When we weaned her from mom, she actually had some fungus on her nose and we were treating it.  Now, most of her fur is growing back in, but before I list her as available, I want to be sure that the fungus is completely gone, so I'll give her probably another week, and then look at her again and re-check fur growth.  If she looks good and the fur's all working on growing back in, then she'll be moved to available.  If not, she'll get another fungus treatment, and we'll go from there.

It's not necessarily that I don't want to list all of the chins.  Rather, there's only so many hours in the day, and in addition to listing chins, there's quite a few more things to accomplish, so if you're wondering about one that doesn't have pics or a description, you don't need to wait for that chin to be listed, feel free to inquire!  

Some of the chins on the evaluation list haven't been here long enough to be available.  Adult rescues are housed for 30 days to ensure they are eating, drinking, pooing, maintaining weight, and generally doing well.  Before that 30 days is up, they can go home if someone really is dying to take them -- but without a health guarantee.  The grand majority of people want that health guarantee, which is completely understandable, so they wait the 30 days for us to list them.  Still within their initial 30 days are Thisker, Zoey, Tikii, and Mija.  Younger chins don't necessarily need to stay as long, provided they're doing well, but going along with not necessarily always having time to list them, occasionally, chins may not have been moved to the "correct" category yet.  For example, I can tell you that right now, several of the chins that are listed in the "under evaluation" category are actually available and ready to go.  Which ones?  Well, I don't know off the top of my head, but I have them marked, and need to move those chins to another category.  Again, what this means for you -- if you're waiting to see a chin be moved to "available" -- feel free to ask if the chin may already be ready, as sometimes, we get behind (I know, you just can't imagine that, right?).

Finally, also worth mentioning... if you are looking for something specific, feel free to ask.  Someone today was asking about curly carrier females.  I don't have any listed, and I don't intend to have any young ones upcoming, but I do have a chin that I took out of breeding, which might be of interest to them.  She's nowhere on the website, which is intentional, as she'll have to clear her pregnancy watch before she would go to a pet home... but this is another breeder asking, so she could go home before that.  Even for chins not-for-breeding-purposes... if someone emailed me asking for a violet wrap, I may not have it... but I can sure try to get it.  Or sometimes people want an older chin that's sweet and calm, and I will admit, if I'm switching up breeders, I may pull some out of breeding and have them chilling in a cage for awhile before I think, I could have had that chin listed this entire time.  Notably males, which can't be pregnant, obviously, but I had a white ebony male that sat around for at least 6 months before he was listed.  If anyone had asked about him, he was available, and he did find a great home, but he wasn't on the website for the longest time.  If someone had asked, hey, did I have an adult male... often I will actually physically go down to the basement to see what I have, and I would have noticed him and told them... 

And I suppose what this all comes down to is, if record keeping was perfect and if I had all the time in the world, I could have the website perfectly up to date, and there would never be discrepancies between which chins are available, or there would never be chins that are available, but not listed, or without pictures, or whatever.  But... let's be real.  This is the real world, where real life keeps us on our toes and typically behind schedule, and we do what we can.  So, that said, if you're looking for something that's not listed, or want to know about something that is, ASK.

Volunteering & Signing Forms

So, this happened a bit ago now, but I wanted to write about it then, and I'm finally getting to it now.  I suppose I likely don't have this posted anywhere, but the way I've always handled signing volunteering forms (for school, clubs, whatever), is that I will sign them or fill them out on the day the volunteering is being performed.  As in, that is the only time I will be signing them. 

I want to say the ONLY time there's been an exception to this, was we had someone doing community service here, and needed a letter for the court from the rescue, stating that they completed the requisite number of hours, what they did, etc.  This was after, mind you, like 25 hours of community service / volunteering.  So, that's a tad bit different... at the end of the 25 hours, I wrote the letter for the court.

However, the average person volunteering comes once or twice, for 2-3 hours at a time, and usually, if they are doing the volunteering for school or whatnot, they bring the form with them.  I will sign it, fill it out, whatever needs to be done -- that day.  The reason for this is because, if 2 months later, someone asks me to sign that they volunteered... sometimes these forms asked what they did.  For volunteers that are here for an hour, maybe they only did one task, but if they were here for multiple hours, you can bet they did multiple things, and you can also bet, 2 months later, that I may not be able to recall what those multiple things were.  Not that there aren't typical things that volunteers tend to do, but I like to have these forms be accurate, and a sure-fire way to do that is to fill them out that day, when I know exactly what the volunteer did.  Plus, I know exactly how many hours they spent there... there's no guessing about this, months later.

This has only been a problem once. 

I had someone adopt some chins from the rescue, and then later bring them back to the rescue when they couldn't care for them any longer.  This person would occasionally bring their teenage daughter to volunteer, and drop her off for a few hours at a time.  Well, on this one occasion, the mother texted me, saying the daughter wanted to volunteer that upcoming weekend, and informing me that I had a form that I needed to sign.  So I told her, ok, bring the form with when you bring the daughter.  Well, as it turns out, she needed the form ahead of time, that day to be specific.  She needed it that day, because they had waited until the very last day to turn in the form, and so they had to get it signed and turned into the school that day.  The weekend was a few days away, so the daughter wasn't going to volunteer for a few days.  Because she had volunteered in the past, I told the mother, ok, if you know the daughter is going to stay for 3 hours that weekend, I will fill out the form for 3 hours, with the anticipation that the daughter would actually come by and stay three hours volunteering in the following few days.  This wasn't quite what the mother had in mind.  She said, well, the daughter had been volunteering in the past, and I needed to fill it out for x hours, and sign it.  Now we're not talking about that weekend's to-be-volunteered hours, but for previously volunteered hours.  So, I informed the mom, that's not typically how I do things... I fill out the forms when the people volunteer.  HOWEVER, I did tell her, because I did know that the daughter volunteered before, I would sign the form that one time, for the previous volunteering.  I told the mom, that I was letting her know, for the future, that I needed the form on the day of volunteering.  Oh, apparently that was too much to ask. 

First, she went off on, how dare I ask her to have the form the day of volunteering, when I knew the kid volunteered before.  Yes, she did, and that's why I had said I would sign the form, this one time, even though it wasn't what I usually did.  To me, that's being nice.  Then she said, well, did she have to bring the form all the way to Hammond?  Well, yeah, I mean, that's where I was, that's typically how you sign a form, in person... and she says, well, but she's all the way in Crown Point, she'd have to drive to Hammond, then back to Crown Point, then to the school to drop it off.  Note, it wasn't my fault that she waited until the last day to get the form signed... so she proceeded to ask, could she just sign it for me?  I told her no.  I said, then what happens when I sign the next one, and the signatures don't even vaguely look similar?  She didn't care.  She literally wanted to forge my signature.  Since I wasn't willing to either drive to Crown Point to sign the forms for her, or let her forge my signature, she basically let me have it, telling me the rescue is completely for-profit, and how dare I use volunteers to make money, how dare I re-home her chins and make money twice off of them.... and how she would never have her kid volunteer for me again... and so on and so forth. 

I never did see them again.  I thought about calling the Crown Point school system and telling them that if they received a volunteer form with my signature, that it was a forgery, but I'm not quite that mean.  I wouldn't want to punish the kid...  But I did think about it, as I was trying to be nice, agreeing to sign the form, way after the fact, and her blowing up and basically saying I was being unreasonable, and how dare I not bend over backwards for what she wanted.

By the way, I should mention, this happened in Fall of 2016... I looked up when the daughter had last volunteered, after all this went down, just out of curiosity -- it was early Spring of 2015.  So literally, she had volunteered a freaking year and a half prior and wanted to use that as her "current volunteering" that she had to do for some school thing.  Apparently, every 3-4 months, they had to do so many hours of volunteering.  Not many, like 4 hours or something.  And apparently, four hours of volunteering is too much, so she wanted to use volunteering from a year and a half before, to fulfill the requirement.  Personally... that's asking a little much.  And then, further, to want to forge my signature to save some driving time and effort... yeah, no. 

So... if you volunteer and want a form filled out... bring it when you come, because I will not be offering again, to sign a form later. 

Setting Appointments

This is one of those things I wanted to share with you, purely because I think many will read this and understand just how much I sometimes want to bang my head against the wall. 

Little back story here.... I had a person set to come for their appointment, and they texted to cancel:

Them:  Not going to be able to make it today.  My next time off is the weekend.
Me:  Ok, when are you thinking for the weekend?
Them:  Whatever is good for u
Me:  Ok well let's start with, what day would you prefer?
Them:  Saturday?
Me:  Ok so Saturday I will be home until 6 pm.  Does a time before that work for you?
Them:  Yes
Me:  Ok, what time are you thinking?
Them:  What time is good for u
Me:  Would you rather come in the morning or afternoon?
Them:  Morning
Me:  Ok, how about 10 am?
Them:  Can u do 8?
  
Honestly... the reason I ask people when they want to come, is to give them the opportunity to tell me, like in this case... "hey, I want to come Saturday at 8."  This conversation was a complete waste of effort on both our parts.  She keeps asking me when's good for me... and then when we finally narrow it down and I specify when is good for me... she wants a specific time that's NOT the time I specified.  So what was the point of her asking when was good for me?  I guess I don't get it.

She really could have said, "hey, I can't make it today, can I come Saturday at 8?" and had this conversation turn out the same way.  Really.  And it would have saved us both some effort. 

I don't bite, people.  If you want a specific day and time, ask for it.  If I'm not around, I may tell you that, and maybe it won't work out for that specific day and time, but there's no point to dance around it like this.  That is all. 

Shipping (other animals)

Since people have been asking about shipping lately, and then today we had someone ask about shipping our rescue rat... I wanted to do a quick blog post on this.  We are only shipping chinchillas at this time -- and without sounding like it's all due to the money... it somewhat is.... but also, due to the time and effort involved.

Let me explain.  The two times we have shipped this year (well, last year I guess) were three chins each.  Both times, the total cost of chins was $575-600 and then of course, shipping was $200-250 because of weight differences.  Now, out of that $200-250, most of the cost is taken by the actual shipping.  The flight ranges from $97-143, plus the crate which ranges from $30-40.  Let's add in gas to and from the airport, let's roughly say that's $30 for my gas guzzler.  So, adding this all up, we have a total of $157-$213.  Yes, I realize, that's less than the cost of $200-250... by a range of $37-43.  Yes, that's money the rescue makes for shipping the critters (and we'll get back to these numbers), but let's keep in mind that to ship these animals, I need to book the flight, get the pickup address at the destination, get the chins to the airport and then get back home... and have all this work with the schedule and life of the adopter on the other end.  At all points in time, both us and them have all the flight information, we're communicating back and forth about which day for the flights, which flight, what time the flight will arrive, how the new owner will go about picking up their new family members... you get the idea. 

On shipping day, between getting the carrier ready, packing up the chins, going to the airport, shipping the chins, getting home... it's easily a 4-5 hour ordeal.  2-3 hours are spent just traveling to and from the airport, then there's an ungodly amount of paperwork when we get there, plus of course, getting the crate ready and... perhaps most importantly... taking pics of how the crate opens and closes, and what the new owner will need to do, in order to open it when they get it (as this is not necessarily obvious)...and passing this info along to the new owner. 

Further, because shipping is weight-dependent, where we would normally include a goodie bag and 2 pounds of food with each chin... we typically cannot just strap this onto the crate, because it would push us over the weight limit and into a higher weight class (and higher shipping fees).  So, for both instances when we shipped, we also sent a medium flat rate priority mail box to the new owners with their food and goodie bags.  We absorb the cost of this, as these items come with the chins, and we want their new owners to have these.  But note... this also costs us.  So, that box costs $13.45 to ship.  So hold on, that $37-43 that we were making on shipping?  Oh yeah, it's now down to $23.55-$29.55.

The reason I mention this all is not to complain, or to gripe about the cost.  Shipping is great, and if the new owner wants to splurge for it and get a chin or chins from us, hey, more power to them.  The reason I mention all of these costs, though, is to show that we're not getting rich off shipping.  As you see, it breaks down to $23-29 bucks for 4-5 hours of work.  Honestly, I'd do better sitting here making houses or dyeing loofah, or doing just about anything around the rescue, to make more money than that for the rescue. 

Which brings me to the topic of this post -- shipping other animals (as in, not chins).  It's fine to say, ok, we're close to breaking even on shipping, making $20ish, when we're bringing in $500-600 in adoption fees.  Heck, even one chin adopted at $200 would be worth a good amount of effort.  But the reason we've been telling people that, sorry, but we cannot ship the guinea pigs, or sorry, we cannot ship the rat, is because honestly, it is not worth it.  The rat has an adoption fee of $10.  Bless his heart, he's a sweetie, and deserves a great home just like the chins... but for a $10 adoption fee plus $20ish that we make, for 4-5 hours of effort, it's just not going to happen.   While $10 is $10, effort and time spent has to count for something.  Unfortunately, there's not enough hours in the day, already, for me to accomplish everything I'd like to get done, much less for me to find 4-5 hours to make a combined total of $30.  We've always been able to find good homes for the other animals locally, and I have no doubt that we can continue to do so.  Shipping is a luxury that's available for some, but we are restricting it to chinchillas at this time.

Typo's in regards to chins, appointment times, etc...

So, I'm writing about this because it's come up twice in the last few days.  If you make a typo, and it's obvious, or even fairly obvious, I may notice.  For example, if the typo is something spelled wrong, I may notice it.  "I want to come at niht."  See the typo?  Ok, good, I do too.  And chances are, you, like me, know that that word should be "night."

But let's try some harder ones...  

How bout this one:  "I will see you at 4!"  --  Where's the typo?  Don't see it?  Let me tell you... it's the number "4."  So, this person showed up at 3 (because that's what they meant to type, that's what they had in their head), and I wasn't home yet, because I had them down for 4 pm, because, well, they literally typed the number "4." 

How bout this one: 

Me:  Which chinchilla are you interested in?
Them:  The 3 month white mosaic male
Me:  That one found a home, would you be interested in a similar one, same color, similar personality, but a few weeks younger?
Them:  Sure

They get here, I pull out the 2-3 month white mosaic male.  Oh... no they meant to tell me they wanted a grey chin to be put on hold (which I have none of right at this moment).

I'm not sure I'd personally call these "typos," but that's what these other people are calling them, and I suppose at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.  But here's the thing... I just want you all to know that I'm not magical and I can't read minds.  If you type "4 pm," I will assume you mean, gosh, well.... 4 pm.... and that's the time I will have you marked down for, and that's the time I will be here for as well.  Same with the chin one... I don't actually know which chin they wanted, because I even went back and looked, and they very clearly had typed "3 month old mosaic male" -- and I had one of those (that had gone home earlier that day, hadn't had a chance to remove it from the site), so it seemed reasonable.

I guess the point behind all of this is -- when you send an email and it's referencing which chinchilla you want, or what time you want to come, please, proof-read so that you don't make any typos, so that we're all on the same page.  Cause I honestly won't know you meant something else...

Time Zones & Appointments & Being Late

Quick blog post here... if I know you're in a different time zone, or even think it, I will bring this up when we are setting an appointment, to make sure that when we say 11 am, it is the SAME 11 am for both of us.

So, let's take today.  I had an appointment coming from Indy.  They are an hour ahead, so 10 am here is 11 am for them.  So, I went through the email an realized, I never mentioned the time zone, which means, they likely don't even realize there is a time zone different (you'd be amazed how many people are clueless that this portion of NWI is in a different time zone), so I would assume they'd come at 11 am, their time... which would be 10 am, my time. 

But in case they really did mean 11 am, my time... well... it's now 11:24 and they are not here.  So, even if they meant 11 my time... they're 24 minutes late already.  Now, maybe it's just me, but if I'm running late, I call, or text, or something.  I have somewhere (well, multiple somewhere's) to go today, and was planning on leaving as soon as this appointment left.  Well... are they coming?  I sent them an email at 11:15 and asked if they're still coming, but it's been 10 minutes, and so far, nothing. 

Going forward, when I set an appointment with someone, I am going to ask for a phone number, so, should something come up or they not show up, I have an immediate way to get ahold of them... versus email, where they may not check it for hours. 

So... here comes the conundrum... now what do I do?  I mean, should I wait for them?  They're going on 30 minutes late, and clearly don't have the common courtesy to let me know that they're running late.  This happens all the time.  People show up 45 minutes late, and think nothing of it. 

I used to have a few paragraph blurb that I would send to people when they set up an appointment, which included the address and house description, payment options, bring a carrier, time zones, and.... being on time.  At the time I had that, it basically just said that the person needed to call if they were going to be more than 15 minutes late, to notify us, but I think I may re-implement this, and it may NOW include, instead of just saying "call us"... NOW, it may say, "if you're more than 15 minutes late and you DON'T call, we have the option to pick up and leave, since we would think you are a no-show."  Worded better, of course.  But the issue here is.... are they running late, or are they not coming at all?  If running late, well, of course I want to wait for them, but if they're not coming at all, then time is wasted just sitting around waiting for them... to never show up.  It gets old.

Really? I mean, REALLY??

So, customers are killing me right now.  Stupid questions and idiotic things are always pretty common here, but lately... oh boy.

First thing.  I have up on the website that we can ship.  So, naturally... everyone asks, "is there a fee for that?"  Now, if you have a brain in your head, you may have figured out that, unlike a hammock or chew toy, these are live animals that you can't just throw in a priority mail box and mail out.  I'm sure some of you are sitting there scratching your heads, saying... why not??  Anyway, they fly out on the airlines, and that's not free by any means. 

So, naturally, I mention, ok, there's a cost for the flight, for the carrier, for the paperwork, my gas to get to and from the airport... runs $200-250 for 1-4 chins.  Mind you, these people are typically asking about shipping a $75 chin, so no, I can't eat the cost of $200 shipping to ship you a $75 chin. 

Which bring up, then someone will say, well, on chinchillas.com, they sometimes have free shipping.  Have you seen the chins on there?  They easily go for a few hundred, and by a few hundred, I mean $600-800, and quite a few go for THOUSANDS.  People often buy several at a time, so, even on the low end, say someone buys 3 chins at $500 each, that's $1500 for 3 chins... they can eat $200 in shipping.  Me?  Not so much.

Second thing.  People that can't do math and have no sense of logic.  I had one person email asking about the cost of adopting two chins.  As it was a male and a female, and the multi-chin discount only applies for same-sex pairs, the adoption fee was... the total of the two adoption fees.  Each chin was $200, so $400 total.  So, then she asks about shipping, and I told her, likely $200 for the two, for shipping.  So, she says, oh, $200 total?  As in, $200 for the two chins and shipping.  Cause, you know, if you buy one, it's full price, but buy two, and I'll only charge you for one, AND throw in free shipping (sarcasm).  Yeah ok.

Third thing.  People who think the policies / rules don't apply to them.  I hold chins for 14 days.  Let me repeat -- 14 DAYS.  THAT IS IT.  Don't like it?  Show me any place that will hold them for longer, and won't charge you for it.  When it's not the busy season, I may go a few extra days one way or another.  If the deposit is for 14 days, and you want to pick up in 16, it's not going to be the end of the world, most likely.  However... during the busy season, when just about every other chinchilla is on hold... it IS a big deal to hold that chin just a little bit longer.  So like today, someone emailed about this one chin, and we're emailing back and forth about it, and I ask her if she's wanting to set up an appointment to come see it.  She says, no, she wanted to pick it up after the holidays, and I tell her, ok, well, our deposit holds for 14 days, and I tell her how she can go about putting down the deposit, if that's what she wants to do.  So, her response is, "ok," and since it IS the busy time of the year, I sort of need to know if you want the chin or not, so I questioned, ok, did she want to put down the deposit?  So she tells me, she wants to pick up the first week of January.  I repeat, our holds are for 14 days, which is only until the 29th at this point, and I suggest that she email back around this time next week, because then we will be within the 14 days.  So, she says, well, she'll pay for the whole thing now, if I'll hold it, PLEASE.  Honey.  At least half the chins on hold here, right now, are fully paid for, and THEY are only getting 14 days to pick them up.  It's not like she's offering MORE money, she's just offering to pay in full... which, no offense to anyone, but doesn't make me any more likely to hold it.  I'm going to get $200 for the chin whether she pays it all now, or part now and part in January, so when she pays it really makes no difference as far as holding it. 

Now, let me explain a bit more WHY we only hold for 14 days, and I know I've gone on about this before, but let me reiterate quickly.  Say I have room for 10 chins here (I know, some of you are dying laughing, shut it! lol), and 5 of them are on hold for 14 days.  Well now, I only have 5 that are available.  Say two more get on hold, now I only have 3 available... and I can't get in any more, cause the other 7 are still here and on hold.  That means, rescue chins not able to come into the rescue, other chins not able to be brought in, sometimes I can't wean babies here and have to leave them with mom extra long because I don't have open cages... all because those chins are on hold.  It's not to be mean or unfair to anyone, but 14 days is more than enough for you to come pick up your chin.  To be perfectly honest, I'm not even sure why people WANT to pick out a chin that much in advance.  They're not ready to bring it home, and (talk to other breeders / rescues, you will find out this is the case) MOST places will NOT hold the animal for ANY length of time (much less 14 days), so these people are usually setting themselves up for disappointment, when the animal is gone before they're ready.  Like this person, she said she's moving.  So, why not move first and then, once settled in, then get the pet?  I just don't quite get it.  And what it comes down to, is that if I extend the 14 day hold for her, then to be fair to everyone else, they all should get extended holds as well.  EVEN IF they would never know that I extended the hold for someone, in my mind, it's not fair, so I don't care to do it.  But really... why is it so hard to say, ok, it's 14 day hold only, so I will wait until I only need the chin held 14 days?  Why should they get special treatment.

Ok, I'm done with my rant for the day.  Other than these few people, things are going well :D  Will post more about that another day...

New Item -- hay cube holder!

So it's been a bit of time since I've had a new item to add to the store, but now we actually have something!  A hay cube holder!

So, it only looks little... it's actually 6" wide, 4.5" deep, and 8" high.  I had a customer that wanted a hay holder, so I made one, and it turned out halfway decent, so, it's going to be available now.  It has two bolts in the back, to attach it to the side of your cage. 

This was the original drawing for what I wanted it to look like... turned out halfway decent, eh?  

It will be $10 for the hay holder.  :D

Cost of Items and Adoption Fees

I've had a lot of people lately who have either missed sales, or wanted discounts, or whatever.  Let me share about a few of them for you.

One person saw my sale ad and asked about a chin.  I told them the price, said it was only going to be on sale for another few days (to make them aware, so they potentially had time to come adopt), and told them, after the sale, the chin would be regular price, and said what that price was.

So, naturally, sale ends, and they come to adopt and ask me if they can have it for a lesser price.  I said, sorry, no.  They did adopt for the regular price.

Now, before you say, what a bitch!  Think about this.  If the sale at Meijer ends Saturday, and you go there Sunday... is anything you say going to make that sale apply to you?  No.  It won't.

Even aside from sales themselves, I'm noticing a trend lately where people want to basically name their own price.  Apparently there should be Priceline for Chinchillas or something like that.  Anyway, people will literally text me and say, I know that chin is at this price, but would you take this?  Ok, here's the thing.  No one's asking me if I'll take less when they buy 3 chins, or when they buy a senior, or a chin with special needs.  These inquiries are all for tiny little babies that are just able to go home, that would have no problem finding homes.  Even better is when they want something specific -- hey, I should let them know when I have a curly female available, just weaned so they can get it as young as possible, oh and they'd like it for $150.  Thanks.  Um... no?

I do have the multi-chin discount, and if you don't know what that is, that's where if you buy a second chin, you get $25 off the total, and $25 off for every additional chin.  So, get three chins, $50 off the total, four chins $75 off the total, and so on.  And yes, people really have gotten four chins before.  The sales tend to be better deals than this, but that's the point, that's why they're sales.  This is just a minor incentive for people to get their chin a buddy.

Short of the multi-chin discount, if there's not a sale, the adoption fee is the adoption fee.  Again, not trying to be a mean crab, but... go to the Humane Society.  Go to any rescue out there.  Their stated fee is the stated fee.  If you don't like it, do you argue with it?  Well, maybe some of you do, since you ask me about the lower fees.  There's a breed-specific rescue out there that charges $400 for their adult dogs.  I would consider adopting one of them... but not for $400.... so I move along.  Key words there.  If people are unhappy about the prices, I tell them, feel free to wait for a sale (though the specific chin may not be here, there are others)...but honestly, you usually get less with a pet store animal, no support for the life of the animal, and then you all call me up when that pet store animal is sick anyway (and of course, I'm happy to help). 

The point is... it's incredibly frustrating when (I would like to think) people wouldn't ask a store to get the sale price the day after the sale, or ask for a discount for no reason ("hey, I know the baloney is $3 a pound, but can I have it for $2 a pound?  Just because").  Because they won't change the price for you.  And I know I've said it before, and I will say it again -- this is not a garage sale.   

Shipping Costs (for items)

So, someone emailed and asked today if I charge money for shipping items.  If you have ever tried to buy something from my webstore or emailed me asking about getting items shipped to you, you already know the answer to this -- yes. 

But let me share why, in the world where everything is free shipping...

So, most of the items I sell are hardly marked up.  I think the highest mark-up I have on anything is 30%, and that's the herb sampler and supplement jars.  Now, let me break that down for you.  I don't know exact prices of this stuff, because I figured it out awhile ago, so please bear with me.

For me to get $8.50 to charge you for this, that means the herbs themselves and the jars they go in, together, cost $6.50.  Great, you say, you're making $2 on the jar!  Hold on, back it up.  Whatever portion of that $6.50 the herbs are, that's not including the cost to ship them here, that's the literal cost of the herbs when I buy them.  Same with the jars, I have to go get them.  Every time I order herbs from one of the two places, shipping is $15-20.  How many jars and herb baggies does that make?  I don't exactly know, but not many.  Say one order of herbs makes 40 jars, just to make it easy, so it's 50 cents per jar, with shipping divided out.


Well, someone has to put these jars together, as in, mix the herbs up.  If it was just a handful of this, a handful of that, it'd be real quick, but I've actually taken the time to figure out how many ounces (or half ounce, or 1/4 ounce) of each herb I want in there, to have a nice mix where all the herbs are well represented, without having too much of anything and too little of everything else.  So, I have a little sheet which tells me, ok, I need an ounce of rosehips, and ounce of rosebuds.. and so on.  So, I get all the bags out, scoop out the required amounts, and mix.  Wait!  I know you're saying, why don't you make one huge batch!  Well, the thing is, some of these herbs are significantly heavier than others.  I can fit 8 ounces (that's a half pound) of rosehips in a quart sized baggie.  But for calendula, 3 ounces almost fills a gallon baggie.  It's a lot lighter.  So say I mixed up huge batches... the rosehips, being heavy, will sink to the bottom, while the calendula will sit on top, being super light.  So, one jar at a time, I mix.  I don't pay myself, so there's no actual cost in this, but there is time. 

Oh and the labels.  Each jar has a cute little label on top that says what the jar is, and has a little chinchilla picture.  A lot of them come in a package, so for ease of this, let's just say, between printer ink to print them and the label itself (which naturally, are Avery labels, since the super cheap ones don't stick worth a crap), it's 25 cents per label.

But hold on... that amount of herbs mixed, mentioned above, doesn't quite fill the jar.  If you've ever opened one of these jars, you know that I pack them down quite well and stuff quite a bit in there.  Well, the amount mentioned above will fill the jar, but I need to top it off.  So usually I make one more batch of the mix after I've made my jars and use that batch to top off the almost-completed jars.  I never figured this amount into the cost (I know, really, all of this should have been figured in, but...).  Anyway, I can top off about 5 jars with one mix.  So, $6.50 divided by 5 jars is $1.30 in additional herbs.

And that's it! 

So we then have:
-Herbs $6.50
-Shipping / gas $0.50
-Time to measure out herbs and mix up jar
-Label $0.25
-Additional herbs $1.30
-------------------
$8.55 cost + time

Well crud, I only charge $8.50 for the things!  The nice thing is, since they are herbs, they don't go bad and can pretty much indefinitely sit in those jars.  But see, the mark-up is from the price of what's literally going in. 

Same for the herbs that are in baggies -- I've never actually calculated what those baggies are costing me, per little herb bag sold.  And I know, you're out there saying, well, maybe you should.  Ok, grant me an extra few hours a day, and I gladly will.  LOL.

Anyway, for purposes of shipping, I'll pick a lighter item, say a toy.   The reason I didn't use a toy as the example is because there's much more labor involved, and I feel that's harder to price.  Anyway, let's say the toy is priced at $5, and it costs me $4.50 to make.  That $0.50 profit will not pay for shipping to you -- the lightest toy will still cost at least $3 to ship in a first class envelope.  So, hence, I charge shipping. 

The places that don't charge shipping or boast of this "free shipping" -- a lot of them are really making good money on their items.  I used to work at Meijer, and we could look up in the computer the price actually paid by the store for an item.  I have a diamond ring from Meijer that they sold at a price of $1100.  You know what they paid?  $110.  That is a 1000% markup!  People used to flock to the jewelry counter when they'd have 70% off jewelry sales... so that ring would be $330... heck the store was still making a 300% markup even with the 70% off sale! 

The point is, the free shipping sites are the same way.  My toys range from $4-8 unless you get some specialty holiday toy that's huge or something.  Some sites have toys that start at $15 and go up.  They can offer free shipping, because if that $15 toy costs $4.50 to make, just like my $5 toy, and costs $3 to ship, they're still making $7.50 on that toy.  And of course, you're not just buying the one toy, so of course with the combined profits from the multiple items, they can ship your entire order for free. 

The rest of us are happy with our $0.50, and have to charge for shipping.

People on the phone...

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...

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..... 

Costs of Chinchilla Care

Ok, so I would like to share with you all the story of a chin that I heard over the phone, when someone called inquiring whether we'd take the chin into our rescue.  We actually referred her to a much closer rescue to her, but we may still get the chin, if that rescue is full.

So the lady tells me, the chinchilla keeps getting respiratory infections.  During these respiratory infections, the chin stops eating, and the lady has to get critical care and handfeed the chin.  During these respiratory infections, the chin drools.  The vet is the one diagnosing these as respiratory infections... now let's be honest, this sounds like classic malocclusion. 

The owner did say the chin has had the teeth filed once or twice, and that has helped immensely, and the chin bounces right back to eating after the filing.  But her main concerns were time and money.

Now, this lady said that she works 8-10 hours a day.  Raise your hand if you, also, work 8 hours a day.... I imagine that's a good chunk of the living population of humans.  Everyone has their own perspective for how long chin care "takes," but I always find it interesting when people tell me that they don't have time, but they actually have about as much time as everyone else, to devote to their pets.  But if she doesn't think that's enough time, especially considering the chin has been sick and has to go into the vet a few times since she's gotten the chin, all means, that's fine.

I guess the part that irks me is the money.  Don't get me wrong, I don't advocate putting malo chins through filing after filing after filing.  If people want to drop $10-15k on their chin over the course of the life, have the chins constantly under anesthetic every month, have to handfeed the chins... by all means.  To me, that's pretty much no quality of life for the chin.  However, when taking on any pet, I do believe that the owner should be willing to spend some amount of money on vet care for the animal.  Just because they didn't take in a dog or a cat doesn't mean, in my opinion, that they should be cost-free, if the animal were to get sick.  This lady, for example, told me that she has already spent $300-400 over the last 6 years on this chinchilla, and that the last vet bill was over $100.  Maybe it's just me, because I remember Shiloh's $2900 vet bill that we had a few years back (and again, I don't think people have to go quite that far with expenses, everyone has their limits, but...), but I feel like in the scheme of things, that's not all that much money.  It is, but it's not.  A vet bill being over $100 is pretty standard... I can rarely get out of ANY vet's office, even for something super simple, for under $200, so to me, over 6 years, $300-400 for a chin that's constantly sick is practically a steal!  Haha.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that she shouldn't release the chin to a rescue or anything of the sort.  It's perfectly fine if she's over her head and realizes it's too much to care for a sick chin, on top of her already busy life.  That's fine.  But the money part... that's really not that much to spend, to be honest. 

And, mind you, this is the same person that complained that it is 30 minutes to their vet's office (omg, much too far to drive), the cage cost them $80.  The fur on the chin is matted (likely due to the drooling) and she doesn't want to pay to have the matts removed by the vet....

Ugh. 

Here's the point of all of this.  When I get people here who are filling out our adoption paperwork, I routinely get people ask me -- "do I have to answer all the questions?"  Now, personally, I want to bang my head up against the wall, because it's really not that difficult -- here it is -- http://www.nwichinchillas.com//NWI%20Chinchilla%20Adoption%20Form%20-new.doc -- 2 pages.  Half of the first page asks where you live and info about your living situation.   So there's two questions on there about vet bills -- the one basically asks if the potential adopter understands that vet bills can be expensive, and the other asks if the potential adopter can afford possible vet bills.  Again, I will clarify, that I don't expect people to spend thousands on their chins, but I do expect them to at least take them to the vet and get some vet work done (and I give kudos to this lady for at least doing that).  The reason these questions are on there are because people seem to think, ok they'll get a chinchilla, and it'll be super cheap because it doesn't routinely need to go to the vet (which is true, routine visits aren't necessary).  But then, the second the chin gets sick, people immediately tend to go "omg, that's too much, let me find the nearest rescue."  Now, I'm not saying that's all people; some people do legitimately spend a lot of money on the health and well-being of their chins, but the ones I tend to run into, as a rescue, are the ones where they've spent some money, and that was more than they ever wanted to spend in the first place, and so the chin ends up in rescue.  Again, not saying people have to spend their life savings on a chin, but I would just like my own potential adopters to realize that if the chin ever does need to go to the vet, there will be a cost.  Not $20, but rather, more like the cost of taking a cat or dog to the vet.  If that's a problem for someone -- well, I was going to say, maybe a chinchilla is not the right pet for them, but actually, maybe no pet is right for them, as any pet, even as small as a hamster, could possibly even go to the vet and wrack up huge vet bills.  What it comes down to, is people need to think about these things before they go and get a pet.

Shelves and other changes

If you've paid much attention to our website lately, you may have noticed some changes.  For my toys, the muncher's delight toy went up to $4 and the fun chewies toy went up to $7.  If you've ever helped me make either of those toys, you know those are two of the most labor intensive toys I have.  While hay cubes aren't necessarily expensive, they take forever to drill (AND a good chunk of them split and then cannot be used for the toys), which means at least 1/3 of a 40 pound bag of hay cubes cannot be used for toys, and the rest that can takes forever and a day to drill.  The fun chewies toys have those small circular cutouts that are used (3 per toy)... they require a power sander, some patience, and a good grip to sand those.  The effort required for the toys has made the price raise, so that we're not making 10 cents per toy, without that including the effort required to make them.

The shelves have had an overhaul as well.  Remember how we had custom shelves of all lengths, and you'd hear me talking about getting boxes from online to fit them and all that...  well, that lasted a very short period of time, as I actually had in some good sized boxes to fit the larger shelves... and that worked great... except for everyone who wanted those larger shelves, also wanted like 3 houses, or a motorhome, or something else that wouldn't fit in the box, and they didn't want shipped separately.  Oy.  Well, the alternative was HUGE boxes, think 4' square, which cost a mortgage payment to ship cause they have to go balloon rate.  So, the idea of custom boxes for the custom shelves was scrapped.

And then, even the custom shelves themselves have sort of gone by the wayside.  I used to think, oh how nice, I can make any size shelf anyone wants.  And that's great, in theory, but in reality, I schedule an appointment right before I'm set to leave to go somewhere, and they want custom shelves... I end up covered in sawdust and need a shower before I go... even though I was supposed to leave right then, not right then + shower.  Yes, I realize, the solution to that is to require knowing what the shelves are ahead of time, but as many of my people show up the same day they contact me... that's not all that practical either.  So, for the sake of my continued sanity, now we will have standard shelf sizes.

We will continue with our perch shelf, circular perch, and corner shelf, but will no longer have the small, medium, large, and x-large shelves, where the customer gets to pick the sizes they want.  We now will have 6" shelves, 10" shelves, 12" shelves, 18" shelves, and 23" shelves.  Larger custom shelves will be available to customers who are able to pick them up from the rescue in Hammond, IN. 

You may not have noticed these changes, partially because the host of our website has the webstore only marginally working right now.  Can't say I'm thrilled about that, because the less time the webstore works, the less you can all place orders, the less money the rescue can make.  And obviously, the rescue needs to sell items to make money.  But anyway, point being, since the webstore isn't working, I can't edit the items either.  So if you happen to view it, when the page is working, but before the website gets a chance to update itself, you may still see all the original shelves up and such.  The web host has said it should be officially fixed by tomorrow.  Hopefully... I'm not holding my breathe, but we shall see.... 

And then final change that you may have noticed is that in the Chinchilla Sales Policy, now our hold period (with deposit) has gone down to 14 days.  This has changed because of the fact that we had oh so many chinchillas here that would always be on hold, and we would be unable to actually wean our own babies or take in new ones, because we were holding so many for people.  What partially caused this change, as well, was that it occurred to me -- I chin-sit chinchillas and other animals, and I would not chin-sit an animal for 30 days for nothing.  Well, I suppose not for 2 weeks for nothing either, but 30 days with no additional gain would be excessive.  Other than that, we get a lot of people who want to adopt once they get back from vacation or whatnot... and so they would pick out a chin prior to vacation and then want to pick up a month later.  Which we were doing... but realistically, they could have just as easily picked out a chin when they got back.  And so, we're down to 14 days now...

And I believe, for the time being, that is all...

Good with kids? dogs? other pets?

Someone came by the rescue the other day and told me that the reason they got their chinchilla elsewhere (they were here for supplies) was because they had seen another ad that had specified that the chinchilla was good with kids.  I've definitely seen that before, along with some variations, but I will not be including that in our ads anytime soon, and I would like to explain why.

So, the variations I've seen are...
--good with kids
--good with older kids
--good with dogs
--good with cats
--good with other pets

Here's the difficulty with saying that a chinchilla (whether in general, or a specific chinchilla) is good with any of those -- you could take the calmest, sweetest, chinchilla, and put it in front of a kid.  A calm kid, where mom is showing the kid how to gently pet it, chinchilla is fine.  What about a kid that's being unsupervised and sticking fingers in the cage?  Maybe the chinchilla reaches out to test nibble.  What about with kids that corner the chinchilla and scare it? 

Same goes for dogs, cats, other pets.  Some dogs and cats are harmless and wouldn't hurt a fly.  Heck, my 50 pound sheltie is afraid of my white doves.  For those sort of dogs and cats and other pets, maybe a chinchilla would be fine with them.  Maybe not.  But what about a dog with a high prey drive?  Or a cat with a high prey drive?  Or...?

See, notice, the difference isn't the chinchilla, it's the "other" that I'm talking about.  Chinchillas can react differently to different people, different animals, what have you.  I've seen chins that will sit nicely to be petted for one person, yet will bite another.  No real difference, but the first person can reach right over and pick up that chin, no harm to the person.  Does that mean the chin's good with people... or not?  Depends who you ask.

I think, in talking about whether chins are good with kids, a lot of that depends... on the kids.  How are the kids going to interact with the chins?  Are they going to be supervised?  Are they going to walk around with a death grip on the chinchilla, and then run to mom when the chinchilla finally has had enough and bites them?  Are they going to calmly hold the chinchilla and pet it and make sure it feels secure in being held, so that its not afraid?  The thing is, there's no way to know.  Even the calmest chinchilla out there can be startled by something, or someone, and act uncharacteristically.  They're creatures of habit, but that doesn't mean they can't change their behavior.

As far as the dogs, cats, other pets... I leave that one alone, because personally, I don't let my animals interact with the chinchillas.  My dogs can go right up to their cages, sniff them, play bow, whatsoever, but that's the extent of it.  My smaller dog would probably LOVE to play with one, including catching and eating one, if given the opportunity.  The thing is, at the end of the day, chinchillas are prey animals.  If they even SEE a dog or a cat or predator, they immediately think OMG.  Even if you don't notice the reaction, they can smell the other animal, and it can make them uncomfortable.  People ask me why I don't take ferrets in at the rescue.  My answer has always been a sort-of-meant-to-be-funny, well, if someone opened every cage right now, without ferrets, none of the other animals would eat each other.  Which is true, because everything I have at the rescue is a herbivore (or on occasion, omnivores like rats).  I have had little kids here open many cages (often, without parent correction, tsk tsk) and I wouldn't want a loose predator in a room with prey animals.  But see, that's exactly the point.  I won't take in ferrets because doing so would be introducing a predator into a prey animal area, and would stress out the prey animals.  So why do it? 

Everyone can make their own choice about whether to let their chins roam free with their dogs and cats.  They know their animals better than anyone, and that's their choice to make.  However... believe me, I've heard enough stories of that sort of thing going wrong... which is where the no-ferrets-thing comes in.  Not saying that your dog or cat intentionally stresses out your chins, but the chin no doubt sees that as a predator. 

So to say, the chin is good with dogs and cats... well... hold on, let's back up a moment.  If the chin was NOT good with dogs and cats, what would that mean?  The chin launches itself, ninja-style, at the cat or dog and bites it?  If that's the criteria we're using, then sure, most chins are "good" with dogs and cats.  But for me, I wouldn't let them all out together, so that sort of negates saying that oh, they all get along.

Just my input for the day.

Oats

I know I haven't posted in forever, but unfortunately this is going to be a short post because I'm trying to get through emails.  But I emailed myself this pic so I'd remember to blog about it, so here goes.

Look at these oats:

I took this picture, because I purchased the oats on the left, and someone else brought us the oats on the right (brought in with their surrendered chins).  The oats on the right are NOT safe for chinchilla consumption.  Do you notice the difference?  The oats on the left are old fashioned oats, which means they take forever and a day to cook.  The oats on the right are what we call quick-cook oats, notice, it says "quick 1-minute" (cooking time) right on the box.  Those are not safe for chinchillas.  The reason is, since they cook so fast, they swell when they absorb liquid (which is what helps them cook so fast).  Unfortunately for chinchillas, when the ingest quick-cook oats, they swell in their stomach, which can lead to bloat and probably other problems as well.  I imagine possibly even impaction... though for sure bloat.  And let's be honest, the possibility of bloat should be enough to keep you away from the quick-cook oats and looking for the old fashioned oats. 

So remember, when you're looking to buy oats for your chins, remember to keep it simple, do things the old fashioned way :)

Appointments

I know it can be hard for some people to keep appointments.  I've even, on occasion, had to contact people and say, hey, I can't make the appointment that we have scheduled, we need to reschedule.  But if that happens, I do my best to give as much notice as possible, so that no one is too badly inconvenienced.  But I'm honestly starting to think no one else has any common courtesy anymore.

Let's talk about the other day.  I had someone scheduled to show up, 11:30-12.  Had another person scheduled to show up, 1-2 pm.  I figured, between the two, I could run to the store real quick to get something.  I should apparently know better.

So at 10:15, the person who was supposed to come at 1-2 pm calls me up and asks how to get to my house from the Walmart in Gary off of 94.  I have no idea.  Honestly, no idea.  I ask them, do they have a gps?  Could they input the address?  No, they don't, so they can't.  These people were coming from at least 5 hours away (what they told me), so I guess they thought they were going to wing it, until they got close.  So they said, ok, they'd call me when they got to Hammond.  So I said ok.  Then they ask, "well, what city do you live in?"  "Hammond."  "No, but what city?"  "Yeah, Hammond."  "No, but is that like Chicago Heights?"  "No, it's Hammond."  I explained, Hammond is it's own city.  Like really, it's not a neighborhood or something, it's a city.  So they say they'll call when they get to Hammond.  Oh and I do tell them though, if they do get here soon, that they will have to wait, since they were scheduled for 1-2 pm and it was considerably earlier, and I had other appointments.  That was at 10:15.

At 11:46 they call back... they took a wrong turn, they're in Chicago.  They want to know what time it was here, so I told them.  They said ok, they would be by soon.

So then time passes, and shortly after noon, my 11:30-12 person texts and says there's more traffic than they thought, they're going to show up around 12:30.  Which they did end up showing up around then, and I do appreciate them letting me know that they were running late and were kind enough to tell me.  So they were  a dropoff, so they come by, drop off their chin to the rescue, and leave... and it was then 12:51... and the other people were still not here.

So I got a call at 12:57 from those people, telling me they can't make it... that it's too far from where they live..  I looked up the area code on their phone... from where the live, they actually went about an hour PAST where I live if they went into the area of Chicago they said they were at... but without a GPS, not sure how they ever expected to find it (cause they also didn't mapquest it or anything).

Orders

So, let's start with talking about orders.  I know I'm always talking about how many I have to do -- which I typically do -- which means I tend to work on them piecemeal.  If you're ordering a motorhome, it gets built in pieces.  I first start with the base and glue the back three pieces on.  Let those dry.  ONCE those are dry (the next day), the I move onto the next portion.  So if I'm waiting to hear from you about something regarding your order, it's usually no problem... except when all I'm waiting for is payment.

Let's talk about this one person.  She messages me with a list of items she wants to buy, and wants to know what shipping is.  Word to the wise, I need to know your zip code to calculate shipping.  People have told me everything from "I'm in Springfield" (Massachusetts?  Nevada?  I don't know...) to "I'm on the east coast (so... Florida?  New Hampshire?) to "I'm in the US."  Now all of those statements may very well be true, but USPS does not let me put in "east coast" when figuring out shipping, I need a zip code. 

So anyway, I email this lady back and just nicely say that I need a zip code, and she gets back to me that day with a zip code.  So a day passes, and I haven't emailed her back yet (see above regarding multiple orders) so she calls me up, asking if I'd figured out her order yet.  I tell her, no not yet, but I planned to work on it that day.  So I tell her, I will end up emailing her later if I need any more information or with her total, or whatever the case may be.  Well, she mentions that she thought her package might be able to go first class, and I suppose I should have thought of it then (but I ship SO few items first class, it's not top of my mind, like out of hundreds of packages a year, maybe 5 are first class... everything else is just too heavy)... I need a full address to determine first class shipping, and all I have is this lady's first name and her zip code.

So I email her and I mention that yes, I put all the stuff in the package and yes, she is correct, it can go first class...and because of that, I need her full address.  Three days pass, and I don't hear anything.  So I call her up, since I had her phone number from the first phone call.  I leave a detailed message about needing the full address and so on... she calls back 3 days later and asks what I need.  Clearly didn't listen to the message, or anything.  So I take down her full address, and she mentions that she wants to take an item off the order.  And then she asks how this is going to work once I determine shipping.  So I tell her, ok, I will figure out shipping, and I will email her with the total.  And I ask her if that's fine, since she hasn't been responding to my emails and she says yeah, perfectly fine.  So then I tell her, ok, if she wants to pay with paypal, I can email her an invoice, or if she wants to pay with a card, she can call me back and we can do that over the phone, and she says ok, she'll watch for the email.

So I take that item out that she no longer wants, input her complete address, determine shipping, and get that email out to her within the next hour or two.  That was the 23rd.  It is now the 28th, and I have yet to hear back from her.  I called her just a bit ago and left yet another message saying hey, this is what your total came out to, I sent you an email, still haven't heard back.

Mind you, this is an $11 order, mostly herbs which have very little profit, maybe $2 of that is profit... and I've been chasing down this lady with this order for like 2 weeks now.  It's not that I don't value the orders, but to me... this is ridiculous.  Either you want it or you don't.  Shipping came out to like $4, so the total (for a 9x11 envelope STUFFED with items) is $15... so it's not breaking the bank for anyone...but she apparently can't be bothered to get back to me... and frankly, I'm too busy to keep chasing people down like this.

And this isn't the first time.  I have an order completely packaged up... from I dunno even how long ago.  At least a year ago, I had someone tell me they wanted a custom tunnel and something else. I honestly don't even remember what the "something else" was now... cause they wanted it, they wanted it, they'd pay next week.  Well, next week turned into, after their court date next month, which turned into, after this the following week... I still have the box under my table downstairs.  I had been emailing this person periodically, saying hey, I need payment for this, cause I mean, she had me convinced she was going to pay so much that the package is literally SEALED and everything.  Every time I'd email her, she'd have her reason why she couldn't pay now, but she'd pay next week...and yet never did.  At this point, I need to cut open that package and sell those two items... but what I've learned from these experiences is that in the future, I need to give the people a set amount of time... say 7 days to pay from when I give them a shipping quote, and if they don't, their order gets taken apart / back on the shelf / whatever.  Cause that box under the table is LARGE and is taking up a lot of room, and I know that whatever is in it could have been sold awhile ago.  And the unfortunate thing, is that people like this are what delay everyone else's order... like because I'm taking the time to chase after these people, that's less time to devote to everyone else's order who IS serious and IS planning on paying... so a line needs to be drawn.

Getting stuff done and funny contacts

So the last few days have been super productive... have gotten a lot of cages cleaned, a lot of stuff washed... very happy with that.  The one guy that was coming over to wash literally vanished into thin air, but one of my friends suggested that they could take the job over, and they're doing an awesome job of that (and everything else I need), so that's going well at the moment.

Over this current week, we're hopefully going to get a lot done, have a lot more toys in stock, a lot more of that sort of thing, since as you all know, I'm constantly having to make stuff since there's only one of me and 4000 people who want orders.  Which is awesome, don't get me wrong, but I would like to get orders out faster to my customers, and that's where this all comes in.

So today, I have a doctor's appointment in another hour or two, so I'm working on clean stuff in the meantime (as in, nothing that's going to cover me with sawdust), so this morning I've been going around and seeing what chins are here and taking pictures and writing notes about those chins so that I can list them on my website and on the other places that I use.  And in doing so, I ran across two messages from April 17th (oops!), that somehow I never received a notification for, on this one classified site.

Well, these people wanted a chin for their 2 year old.  Probably not messages I really care to entertain anyway, as I don't exactly see most 2 year olds holding a chin properly... usually they squeeze it... whether intentionally or not... and parents rarely correct... but I digress.  But anyway, this was mildly amusing, so I'm going to share it with you.  In one of these messages, the person tells me that their husband used to breed chins, so "we know what we need to do."  I'm assuming that means, they know how to care for chins.  Now, in no way am I saying that they do not know how to care for chins... however... just because they bred chins doesn't mean they do know how to care for them, either.  I have run into umpteen people who have told me they had a chin live to a ripe old age... of 5.  And they think that's awesome!  And those same people tell me, oh they did LOADS and LOADS of research.  And maybe they did, but they somehow missed the part where chins can live into their 20s.  Point is, just because someone's had chins, or raised chins, doesn't mean they've done it right, or that they know what they're doing.  Few years ago, I remember buying some "pedigreed" (and you'll see why I put that in quotes) chins from someone selling out (and I know some of my friends reading this will totally remember when this happened).  Now, for reference... here's what your average pedigree might look like (few examples):

Here's what the pedigree I got from this person looked like:

Notice the difference?  That pedigree is pretty much useless.  If that chin developed malo, for example, there's no way to track the parents.  Oh there's a dark ebony mom... well, what if that breeder had 5 dark ebony females?  Which one is it?  Is it one they bred?  Or from another breeder? If it's from another breeder, especially a large breeder, good luck knowing which one, out of thousands of chins born... it was.  Same with any of the chins on that pedigree.  Absolutely useless.  I believe, if I remember correctly, we didn't get the pedigrees until much later after we got the animals -- which were sold as pets (rather than used for breeding, which was the actual idea).  Maybe somewhere along the line, some of those chins actually were pedigreed, like an actual pedigree, but those ones we got weren't, and it wouldn't be reputable to breed them with no sort of information whatsoever on the parents. 

...and let me also mention something else... anyone could make up a pedigree like that pretty much on the spot.  It's not hard to come up with what two colors of chins created another color of chin as a baby.  Oh you have a beige baby?  Great!  Standard grey mother, beige father, and POOF! beige baby.  Look!  A pedigree!!!  And I've seen this, sadly, way more than I would like.  There was a girl (I think I called her the problem child, you may remember me writing about her) who contacted me about breeding her chins, and ALL her pedigrees looked like this.  And the sad part was, for her, it was even worse.  Like at least for the pedigree for that one chin above, it's not every color under the sun. The chin that the pedigree was for, was supposed to be a chocolate (it wasn't, but that's beside the point).  For a chocolate / dark tan, you would need beige, tan, and ebony.  So that pedigree at least vaguely makes sense...  For the problem child girl, her chin would be an ebony... and would have a violet in there... and a tan... and a beige... and a sapphire... but she'd tell me, oh the breeder was breeding for sapphires... so I'd ask, ok, why add in the ebony then?  Oh, because it will get rid of the red coloration in the chins and make it more blue.  *facepalm*  If you have any knowledge of chin genetics at all and how the colors and all that work, you know... and if you don't, let me tell you... that is such a crock of shit.  There's no way to breed the red coloration out of an animal... you just try to AVOID breeding animals that have red fur tips.  But you sure don't add ebonies to get rid of red.... 

Anyway, moving along... the second message from these people stated -- "He has raised and bred purple sapphires with vet papers" -- now, let's assume you're a pet person, don't breed, don't know much about genetics.  Tell me, what color is sapphire?  Ok, I imagine we can all answer at once -- BLUE.  So if he bred purple sapphires... those were either some really off-color sapphires, or he had blue diamonds and she has no idea what she's talking about.  But since blue diamonds are more of a new thing... I'd imagine the first...

Vet papers?  How many of you can say you've taken a chin to the vet, and it's clearly sick, and one of two things -- either (1) the vet has NO IDEA what's wrong with the chin, or, possibly even better, (2) the vet can't tell the chin's sick, or (3) the vet gives some random off the wall explanation for why the chin is the way it is, such as "the chin is homesick" (and yes, I've heard it happen -- "stressed" would be a better way of putting it, I think "homesick" is giving that chin a little too much mental credit).  But for sake of argument, let's say you have a smart vet, and they actually can tell you, and be correct in telling you, ok, your chin is healthy.  Does that mean that genetically, it's fine?  Doesn't carry malo or any other illness?  No, unfortunately, they can't tell you that.  These aren't dogs, we can't do genetic testing on them.  So, even if your vet has said, ok, the chin is healthy... that doesn't mean, ok, go ahead and breed it, because you just don't know what that chin might be carrying.  And that's why pedigrees are so important, because that way if something comes up, we can trace it back.  But a vet paper saying, oh the chin is healthy... really doesn't mean much.

This is one of those things where I get that this person was trying to let me know that they've had chins before and they know what they're doing... but they really proved that they probably really don't know what they're doing, at least as far as the breeding with vet papers and purple sapphires...  I feel like this is an interesting case of... if you really don't know what you're talking about... best to leave it simple.  If they had just said, oh they bred chins, and left it at that, I wouldn't be writing this blog post (well, maybe a much shorter one).  And don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I know everything either... but I know what color sapphire is...