Finding a home for your pet when you're too far away for 3R to help.

Q: *Hello,* *I have 2 female gerbils under 6 months. They arent mean but need more handling. My ex left them after a break up and I just have to many pets to take care of them. I live near Pittsburgh PA if you know of anyone ? Thanks*

A: We're kind of far away to be of help, so you may want to contact a rodent rescue closer to you. Go to http://www.petfinder.com/ and search for "Small Animal" in your state. Typically a huge list of animals will come up. All you need to do is click on the names of the shelters and rescues caring for these animals to get contact information, and you already know that they take in rodents. :) It's a fabulous resource!

Best of luck to you and your pets. I hope this helps you find a safe, knowledgeable, and permanent home. Also, please visit our website and take a look at our adoption application for ideas for questions you will want to ask potential adopters who contact you. It's really important to screen anyone interested very carefully. Sadly there are a lot of people out there who think rodents are completely disposable, and they will feed them to reptiles, use them in practical jokes where they will be injured or simply tossed outside to die afterwards, or even worse, torture them for fun. One guy we encountered was buying mice at pet stores to throw them out the window of a moving vehicle to watch them bounce because he thought it was funny. Scary.

Remember, pet stores are there to make a profit, not to help animals, so please, do not give your pets to a store under any circumstances. It is often a fate worse than death to be sold to just anyone who has a couple of dollars, and pet stores don't typically give vet care or quarantine surrendered animals to prevent rampant disease, so things can go bad very easily. They may also dump animals together in mixed sex and/or overcrowded groups that can result in bloody fights or even death. I've seen badly injured animals and blood smeared cages at pet stores resulting from this practice. If you become this desperate, take them to your local animal shelter instead. If your area has a privately run shelter, all the better. Even though they may be put down, it's better than dying in horror in a snake's cage (snakes should be fed frozen rodents, never live, according to herpetologists.)

One last note. Make a point not to give away your pets' cage to the adopter. This is a good policy for several reasons. For one, making the effort to purchase their own cage and have everything set up and ready at home before the adoption shows a certain level of commitment that taking some free stuff doesn't. Also, this helps prevent having people answer your ad to get a free cage to keep or sell to make money, tossing your gerbils away. It's best if you keep the cage (passing along a toy or bed the gerbils are familiar with for their new cage) and either donate it to your local shelter or rescue, or sell it later. Free pets are just too easy to take on a whim without thinking about future costs of vet care, food, toys, and other needs. When the pet becomes inconvenient or costly, they'll likely end up dumped.

Again, thanks for working to find them an appropriate home. They deserve it!

Pet Store Rat Died Shortly After Purchase, When is it Safe to Adopt Another?

Q: I have a male rat, not sure of age. I'm still not sure he is ok following purchase of a rat companion that turned out to be sick. I am skittish about adding another rat due to this bad experience and am paranoid that my rat might now get sick. When is it safe to adopt another?

A: Thanks for your interest in adoption! You're right that you should wait until any illness passes completely before introducing another rat, not only to protect the new rat, but to avoid stressing yours and making him get worse. I'm guessing that he has been treated by your vet but if he hasn't healed entirely by the time his medication course is through, call your vet about a follow-up, since he may require a stronger treatment to prevent him from crashing again.

In petstores and other places that have a large number of rats coming in contact with others (most stores get their rats from "rat mills" with hundreds, even thousands of rats being bred in little drawers) virulent strains of bacteria can flourish. Thankfully these are not transmittable to humans or other pet species, but they can be hard to control. This is one of the reasons that we quarantine the rats we foster to observe their health before adoption. Of course, just like in people, sometimes illnesses kind of just occur, but the risk is lesser if they aren't exposed to other rats or items that have been exposed to other rats (pet stores that don't sell animals tend to have less risk of sending you home with mites or germs). There are some great stores in the area that don't. So, if he hasn't already, we recommend that you have him treated prophylactically for parasites.

You may have heard about myco, a ongoing, contageous condition that causes chronic respiratory problems. Pet stores are usually hotbeds of this disease. It makes pairing rats who are likely carriers a difficult decision. On one hand, you don't want your rat to be lonely, on the other, you don't want to infect another rat. Just to add a wrench in the works, there's speculation that most domestic rats are carriers anyway, while others believe it can be controlled. It's a tough call, but in the end, if I were you, I'd make my decision based on the health of your current rat. If your vet feels that he is healthy enough to handle the stress and excitement of meeting a new companion, I would go ahead and proceed with adoption.

I'm really terribly sorry that your last match went so terribly wrong. How heartbreaking! Pet stores just don't usually do any sort of quarantine or basic preventative vet care so it's hard to know if you're getting a healthy animal. Add to that the stress of transport (according to store employees I've spoken to, animals often die in transit, having been treated much like freight) living on display, often in cages that are too small and/or overcrowded, and you have a very stressed little animal who is probably more susceptible to disease. We make every effort to keep our animals happy by treating them just like our own, with appropriately large cages that include hiding spots, toys, a healthy, carefully selected diet, vet attention, and human interaction. A freak death can happen to anyone, of course, but the risk is lower when an animal's stress level is lower.

Good luck to you and your ratty. Do let us know what you decide.