Unfortunantly I was also another person who went to the petstore.
Sorry about the long story, its hard to explain otherwise.
It all started with my sister being given two boars from her fiance, one of them had a URI from the petshop which was treated thankfully by the good guinea pig savvy vet i use now,
She was going on a long holiday and asked me to care for them.
I knew nothing of piggies, she did however drop petshop fact sheets over thinking that was the correct information.
Basically I followed the horrible advice which included feeding them small amounts of veg 1-2 times each week, no mention of hay, advising bad seed food and housing them on shredded paper.
I thought I was looking after them really well, I woke up one morning to find Sprite laying on his side struggling to breathe, I rushed him to the nearest as i know now non piggy vet where they told me he was having full organ failure(they did no tests to prove this).
It was decided that he couldnt be saved so the put him to sleep.
The next day I knew I had to find Pepsi a friend as my sister had told me they get very depressed without one, so off I went to my nearest petshop.
I picked out a crazy haired guinea pig and named him Bandit,
Only the very next day I found Pepsi dead on the bottom of the cage, so off I went again to get a friend for the new and now alone Bandit.
I found Smokey and at the same time my partner picked up the biggest piggy I have ever seen.
We decided to get him as our own and took him home, we named him Boris.
So now we had 3 boars 2 x 3 month olds and an 8 month old in a hutch indoors big enough for barely one guinea pig, all this was the advise of the petshop!
Boris had a fall at the petshop and the very next day was dragging his legs, we took him to the same bad vet who xrayed him to find he had 3 fractured vertabrae, a few days later I found a UK guinea pig forum who taught me all about guinea pigs, I upgraded them to a C&C cage,got better food, hay,veges twice a day and all the rest.
He was put in a splint and during that 6 weeks suffered many issues including impaction, bumblefoot, internal and external fungal infections he fought for 3 months in total(during this time i had brought a lonely pig named Basil from a petshop to befriend Boris when he was better).
The bad vet put him through hell with incorrect treatments and I didnt know any better, by the time I realised with the help of the forum it was too late and Boris had given up, he was PTS as he just couldnt go on any longer.
When my sister returned she stayed with me and didnt feel the connection with Smokey and Bandit, she neglected them severly so I took them off her and became a proper guinea pig owner.
I also at that stage had Basil and had recently learned about rescuing guinea pigs, I then got Ralph-Saffron as a friend for Basil through a lady who had unknowingly brought a pregnant sow.
I also informed her of petshops/breeders being horrible.
After that i adopted from a guinea pig rescue Zanzabar and Baker, I also got Windsor-Duke for another accidental pregnancy( I drove 14 hours round trip to get him, I also adopted Cooper-Beau at rescue to befriend him)
a few months after that I adopted Blade,Rajah,Prescott,Panda and Prince
and now I am in the process of my final adoption for now which is 9 piggies, I know its alot all at once but I am very good friends with the rescue lady, i am also providing a great home for all these boys.
So my first four guinea pigs were from a petshop which I regret so much.The other 10 were from accidental pregnancys and rescues.
Basically the moral of my story is I got bad information which I think contributed to the first piggies dying, had illness and injury and wasn't giving my piggies the best life possible, this was all from a petshop who were aparently reputable!
A few months ago the lady from rescue asked me to do an inspection of a lady who wanted to adopt as the lady lived near me and the rescue is 5 hours away.
I went around to her house expecting a great setup, what I found was very wrong, the sow they needed a friend for turned out to be a boar, he was riddled with fungal/mites and had bumblefoot.
He had no hay/bad seed mix and was housed in a hutch in the rain outside, his hutch also had wire flooring and access to wet grass.
I explained to the family that his living conditions were horrible and he was very sick and they would not be allowed to adopt, I then spoke with them about treatments for him and they instead chose to tell me " he cost $10 we arent paying that much for him".
The had also informed me they had gotten him from that same trusted petshop only a week before for the 9 year old son.
They ended up giving me the guinea pig and I took him 5 hours drive to the rescue, while there I rang this petshop and informed them that the past guinea pigs they had sold would have most probably mites and fungal and would get very sick, I also said they needed to clean there tanks out to avoid them getting sick, basically they ignored my advice and chose to ignore or hang up my phone calls when I tried to contact, all they were interested in was making a quick buck not the care of the animals.
In the end Trypp stayed on as a resident at the rescue and now has two good friends so thats tory worked out okay but its the many others I worry about that get sold to people like Trypps original family who couldnt care less,
Anyone can walk into a petshop and buy a guinea pig but it takes someone special to adopt!
For the record i will never even set foot or buy in a shop again and haven't since I learnt the true ways of rescue.