Today i took in a very large cross breed rabbit that was coming in because it was biting the child of the household and had got too big. The lady had rung to say she had gone to Pets At Home to get a small rabbit for her handicapped son. She had been given this rabbit as a netherland dwarf, but it had got way to pig and was biting. When they came i was shocked, the rabbit was huge its weight was7 lb. The netherland dwarf shouldnt go over 2 lb in weight. Needless to say it was far to big to be on the little boys lap to be petted. The boy was heartbroken at giving up his beloved rabbit. Is it to much to ask that the staff at least should know their breeds and how big they will get. This boy has lost his pet because the staff dont know what they are doing. Everyone already know they carnt sex rabbits or stop them getting pregnant , is there no end to their incompedence? . Perhaps to make it easy for them they should buy a breed poster to put on their wall so they can see what rabbit is what. Its not rocket science for god sake. If i were that lady i would have reported them to trading standards.

The rabbit they were sold was not as they say fit for purpose.If you ask for a rabbit that is small they should be able to sell you one that is going to be small, if you buy a young rabbit that turnes out to be pregnant you have been duped. There is an easy way to stop there rabbits and piggies getting pregnant but they carnt do it, put a lid on the pen so the males carn jump over to the girls. Wouldnt you think that was easy? Ive mentioned it to them a few times but to no avail.They have collored the pet market and have no intentions of learning there trade properly and to hell with the poor mugs that suffer in the process. The rabbits they sell are massed produced and come from i beleive Devon. Massed produced animals of any kind are not handled enough before they get to their destination to make good pets. A baby rabbit should be handled from the day it comes out of the nest. If this is done and its handled every day it will be very tame and friendly.  [ have you ever tried to pick up one of their rabbits?] Because there is not the time to do this when your mass breeding the result is an unfit for purpose animal. Children are very easily put off rabbit if they struggle and kick when picked up. This can put a child off an animal, what a shame they end up being scared of them. Its not the rabbits fault but these rabbits all end up in rescue centwers because they are not friendly. Why should rescue centers have to pay to take on all these rabbit?.The vast majority of rabbits that come into me are not friendly, so the children have total gone off the idea. What good is a pet that you carnt cuddle and stroke? I know how much i have to pay out to keep these rabbits and reabilitate them if i can. Why carnt Pets At Home at least litsen to good advise?, its not just coming from me but rescues all over the country and the ordinery pet owner. Please Please think before you buy a pet from there. There are some good rabbit breeders out there that could sell you a proper pet and know its parents and can assure you that its not got bad teeth  or pasturella or be pregnant,and is friendly and been well handled ,and the size , you can see the parents. A lot of people now will only buy puppies and kitten's from a breeder for that reason .You can see the parents and talk to someone that hopfully knows a little about their animals. Alternativly go to your nearest rescue and give a rabbit a second chance.

VAL [ trying to pick up the peices]

THEY ARE NOW TRYING TO SELL CONTINENTAL GIANTS AT PETS AT HOME. FOR ANYONE WHO DOSENT KNOW THESE ARE HUGE RABBITS THAT WOULD NEED A 6FT- 7FT CAGE, THE HIGHT TO COME WITHIN THE RSPCA GUIDELINES WOULD HAVE TO BE ABOUT 4-5 FT HIGH. RABBITS THAT ARE PETS MUST BE ABLE TO STAND ON THERE BACK LEGS WITHOUT TOUCHING THE ROOF. WERE DO PETS AT HOME THINK YOU ARE GOING TO GET A GAGE TO FIT THE RABBIT. GIANTS ARE A SPCIELIST RABBIT AND NOT THE RUN OF THE MILL PET, THEY NEED VERY CAREFULL ATTENTION AND THEIR LIFE EXPECTANCY CAN BE AS LITTLE AS THREE YEARS. THEY DONT TELL YOU THAT.

 THE BRANCH AT CHARLTON DOSENT EVEN HAVE ANY DETAILS ABOUT THE BREED ON SHOW FOR PEOPLE TO READ.ONE OF THE BABY GIANTS I SAW THERE WASENT EVEN OLD ENOUGH TO BE SOLD. THEY TAKE TWO YEARS TO GROW FULLY AND SHOULD NOT BE SOLD UNTILL THEIR ABOUT 14 WEEKS. THIS JUST PROVES TO ME THAT DISPITE MAKING A SHOW AT CRAYFORD BRANCH THAT THEY ARE WORKING WITH CHARITIES THEY STILL DO WHAT THEY WANT AND STILL DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING.

                                               THIS IS THEIR SIZE

Dear GR,

I would like to add to the debate about Pets at Home.

We never  buy any rabbit (we have several!) from a pet shop but I fell in love with a 'giant continental' at our local store.  After going in to see it twice a week  (after it had been stuck there for over 2 months)  and wondering whether or not I was doing the right thing buying from a shop I bought 'him'.

As experienced rabbit owners my husband and I were fully aware of how the 'boy' would grow and my husband had built an 8 1/2 foot by 9ft enclosure for him.

The shop made us fully aware of the size he could become and said he had not been neutered (at first they said he had!).

When our rabbit went in for castration the vet phoned to say it was in fact a doe!  After surgery the vet said they found some abnormalities in her womb and had sent them off to pathology.

By this point I was feeling absolutely awful - I love these bundles of fluff and felt terrible that I had bought from a shop who had made such drastic mistakes.

The results have come back only to suggest that our poor girl had already had some sort of surgery which they believe was a spay and this could only have happened whilst in the shop - believe me this reduced to me tears!

I have contacted the Pets at Home head office who said they were very concerned by this situation and would retrain and speak to their staff.  They are also paying for her surgery and tests.

However I feel so strongly about this I have contacted my local trading standards (via my county council)  and urge anyone who has had similar problems to please, please do the same.

So although this has started as a sad story I am hoping that I can do something to stop this happening again.

I have spoken to several people who had said that many rabbits are having to be rescued from pets at home buys as customers were told the wrong sex or they have grown too big.

Please don't buy any animal from pets at home - although I love our girl dearly and she has a lovely temperament and has gone to a good home I recommend that people go to a rescue centre or reputable breeder which is what we have gone back to doing to find our girl a beautiful French lop buck as a companion.

I am writing through you in response to the 'Honey' email which warns readers about Pets at Home. The story is very sad but I would like to say my male rabbit, Cadbury was very healthy when bought and has continued to be healthy until his estimated age of 5+ years that he is now. However, I was never told by Pets at Home that rabbits need injections, or in fact a lot of the useful info on your pages,which I would like to thank you for.

Fizz

This has been added here to highlight the damage being done to rabbit welfare by Pets At Home. Never has a company done so much damage, when supposedly being there to help.As a rabbit rescue i urge everyone to boycot  this company untill they can get there house in order, they are adding to the problems of rescue centers werever they are.

Wake up and smell  the coffee, you could help.

Pets at Home creates more misery for our rescue - 04/02/2006

What follows is the personal opinion of Green Fields Rescues centres manager:

This time around its Pets at Home at Slough we have to thank for the existance of these 17 unwanted baby rabbits. It beggers belief that they are legally allowed to get away with this, but when you purchase an animal from Pets at Home the small print on the reciept you are issued states "we do not guarantee the age or sex of the livestock we sell" which makes you wonder what on earth they are doing selling animals in the first place....however, this doesnt stop the staff from seemingly having a random guess at the sex while convincing the shopper they have been accurate. Sexing rabbits is NOT difficult to do. We have NEVER rehomed a mis-sexed rabbit from our rescue and as its an easy thing to learn to do correctly there is no reason why we ever should. So why cant Pets at Home say the same thing? Surely a big company like this should have a budget for top level staff training. They damned well SHOULD be able to guarantee the sex of the animals they sell.

In this case, the family in question had been sold "2 females". Around 12 weeks later, once they had become old enough to breed, the first litter of baby rabbits was born. As females can get pregnant within a few hours of giving birth, the male should have been removed right away. The staff at Pets at Home Slough however, told the family not to worry about this telling the worried family that "the female cant get pregnant again while she is still feeding the babies". They didnt mention that the father could indeed have killed the young too and that un-neutered males should never be left with newborn kits. They were lucky and the first litter survived. 4 weeks later, the second litter arrived. However, the family didnt discover the litter, hidden in a nest....until the female was pregnant again.

Pets at Home took some of the first litter back into the shop to sell on at just 6 weeks old which they advised the family was the right age for them to be weaned. This is utter rubbish and baby bunnies should never be removed from their mother until they have reached 10 weeks old. It is common practise for Pets at Home to stock baby rabbits of this age and as per RWA guidelines on the correct age for weaning, this is yet another reason to avoid Pets at Home at all costs.

Then followed several months of Pets at Home mis- sexing more of the resulting litters until they were old enough that the remainder of the first litter all became pregnant too and the situation began to spiral out of control. Finally realising that Pets at Home had persistantly misadvised and misinformed them, in desperation, the family rung us for help.

We arrived to find 17 rabbits and just 3 hutches. Pets at Home had also told the family the following gem of rabbit care information: "If you feed the rabbits on a complete food, you dont need to feed them anything else." !!!!!!!!Consequently, these rabbits had NEVER been fed any hay. Infact, hay should make up 90% of a rabbits diet and there is no such thing as an entirely "complete" food. It is utterly amazing to all of us that these rabbits surivived the onset of gut stasis without hay. The family had no idea that the rabbits needed any toys or stimulation so were in totally blank hutches, all were unvaccinated as Pets at Home had omitted to mention that requirement as well, they were on dusty Pets at Home brand wood shavings with the result that we suspected all of them may have myxomatosis due to their irritated eyes and nasal passage ways.

So, we now have 17 unwanted, unvaccinated, unneutered rabbits. The cost of getting these rabbits ready for rehoming will be in the region of £1800 which we are going to have to scrape and fundraise like mad to acheive.

Pets at Home meanwhile, profited from the mis-sale of the "female" rabbits in the first place, profited again from the sale of the litter they took from their mother too young at 6 weeks old and profited again from the sales of the sub-standard food they recommended as "complete" and from the dusty bedding they sold.

What makes me as a rescue centre manager angry is that we dont understand WHY Pets at Home should be allowed to profit from these animals misery and we have to pick up the pieces, struggling every single day to make enough money to keep the rescue going. And its not just us, we know of countless other rescues affected in the same way as our rescue is and the majority of the time all of these rescues are so overwhelmed we dont have the energy or finances to do anything about it. I know only too well the feeling of hopeless desperation of "one little rescue" in the face of a corporate giant, but we HAVE to start to stand together to do something about this. THIS time it was Sloughs branch responsible for the situation of these 17 rabbits but we also pick up the pieces from the stores at Reading, Farnborough and Wokingham and its time it stopped. Are you a rescue centre manager? Do you have documented evidence of the impact that your local Pets at Home is having on your rescue? Please get in touch if you do.

Its NOT difficult to correctly sex baby rabbits, we do it every day and have NEVER got it wrong. The bottom line is that while the law allows for Pets at Home to hide behind the disclaimer of "We do not guarantee the age or sex of the livestock we sell" then there is no incentive whatsoever for the staff to do so correctly.

VOTE WITH YOUR FEET AND VOTE WITH YOUR PEN AND VOTE WITH YOUR WALLETT.
1)Dont buy your pet supplies in Pets at Home or any other store which stocks animals. Go to a garden centre or independant shop who doesnt stock any livestock.

2)Write to your MP. Tell them you are appauled that the law allows Pets at Home to practise pet sales in the way that they do and tell them about how rescues such as ours struggle to keep going in the face of the overwhelming numbers envolved.

3) Go into Pets at Home and look at the animals. Make sure they have plenty of water and lots of hay. If they havent complain loudly to the manager. Also complain if the rabbits and guinea pigs share a pen. Mention that the RSPCA, RWA and Cavy Trust ALL say rabbits and guinea pigs should NEVER live together. Talk to people who you can see looking at the rabbits and guinea pigs. Tell them about RESCUE centres as an alternative and tell them Pets at Home create misery for rescues up and down the country and that they consistantly mis-sex the animals they sell hiding behind their disclaimer.

Can you help?? Green Fields Rescue would like to launch a legal challenge against the get out clause Pets at Home uses on their reciepts as being an "unfair disclaimer" but we need funding and legal support. Do you know a corporate law solicitor who would take on this case as pro bono work? Please contact us if you do. We would also like to press Pets at Home to meet the costs of getting these 17 rabbits ready for rehoming. Are you good at letter writing? Could you draft something we can send to their head office?

Can you make a donation to help us get these bunnies ready for rehoming? A donation of £10 feeds a small group of these rabbits for a week, £15 pays for vaccinations, a donation of £40 pays for a male to be neutered and a donation of £60 pays for a female to be spayed. Please give what you can via the "help us" section of this website or send a cheque payable to Green Fields Rescue to the address on the contact page. If you email us we can give you the account details for the rescue if you would to do an online bank transfer.

Want to adopt from this group? 8 have gone to ARC in west London www.animalrescueandcare.org.uk and the rest are here at Green Fields Rescue. They will be listed on the rabbits available page under the heading "Rescued Group of 17"

***UPDATE***
Thankyou so much for the letters, phone calls and emails of support. We are collecting a rather amazing amount of evidence of Pets at Homes incompitent staff country wide. I even took a call from Scotland on this subject this morning.

We also now have a contact working INSIDE PETS AT HOME who will be obtaining film and audio of consignments of dead and dying baby rabbits arriving from the mass breeding centre that Pets at Home use to supply their stores, some so young they dont even have their eyes open, some who have been so poorly bred they have teeth malocclusion at just 6 weeks of age. As well as several other pieces of evidence to take to the national press should we need to.

Please continue to send us your Pets at Home horror stories for our file and thankyou once again for all your supportive messages.

Remember, boycott stores and spread the word...
"PETS AT HOME....LEAVE THEM ALONE"

THIS WAS BORROWED FROM THE GREENFIELDS RABBIT RESCUE SITE,theres a link to it on the link page please visit.