Now we don’t have too much to go on here, other than a Craigslist posting, but it appears as if a small-breed dog encountered some problems while being groomed at the Petco in Los Gatos, California.
The dog’s name was Hurley, and something happened during the grooming session that caused his lungs to fill with fluid, and for him to cough up blood.Up to this point, Petco has refused a formal explanation to Hurley’s owners, and has not released videotape from store cameras on the day of the incident.
The only thing that Petco has done, is to offer to pay for the veterinarian bills for Hurley.
It seems that this is not the only time Petco has had problems like this - if you search Google for “Petco animal deaths“, you’ll return over 13,000 hits.
Craigslist has removed the original post, but here is a copy:
Hello! My name is Hurley and on Saturday, March 22nd, 2008 I was taken into Petco to be groomed. Eight hours later I was dead. My human parents rushed me to an emergency vet hospital where I was drowning from the fluid that was filling my lungs and I was coughing up blood. Two vets consulted with my parents as they did everything they could to save my life. It was determined that they needed to end my suffering and so my parents made the agonizing decision to have me euthanized. Petco wants to pay for my vet bills, but they don’t want to show my parents the video of me being groomed. Petco also doesn’t feel that they should give my parents a reason as to what happened to me while I was in their care. If you think that this is a rare incident, please Google “animal deaths at Petco” and see the long history that Petco has of animal abuse and neglect. Don’t let me die in vain. Please don’t support Petco by shopping there.
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8 comments ↓
At this point I would definately not take my pet to be groomed at PetCO. My sister took her puppy to have it’s nails clipped and the idiot who performed the nail clipping cut almost all of the poor puppy’s paw pads. What kind of people are they hiring?
Hello! Wow! We are the original Craigslist posters and its hard to believe that Hurley’s story has gone so far. Thank you so much for your support and caring.
I do need to make a correction though. Hurley’s death happened at the Los Gatos Petco in the Bay Area. We have reposted our posting in many areas in California and that is how this has become a little confused.
If you have any questions regarding Hurley’s story, please feel free to write to us at seventytwoleft@yahoo.com
what a sad story. Im glad this family has taken up the fight for Hurley, to fight corporate greed, to let people know that for Petco its all about profits and not about care for animals. Once again corporate America has taken a basic service and corrupted it into something ugly and distorted in the name of wall street profits. find a local dog groomer you can trust, a true animal lover to take care of your grooming needs and buy your food from a feed store or local pet supply place. Support the local person who cares. We can all learn a lesson from this sad story
[…] were forced to euthanize their pet dog after the vet said nothing else could be done. You can read the full story here with the original Craigslist posting and the owner even […]
Hurley’s owners have launched their own site, it seems:
http://fighthurleyscause.com/
The address given goes to someone that isn’t the parents of the dog. So if the original poster isn’t from the family who had this happen and the website is based off the craigslist story then were are the actual people who this happened to? where is the news story that result from this? where is any proof that this dog didn’t have a genetic disorder?
I had my dog groomed at petco around the beginning of April / 2008 and he was put under so much stress that we had to take him to the emergency room. He is doing fine now. We have a letter from Petco stating they will pay for his medical expenses. What a JOKE. We are fighting with their insurance company now.
What’s a Joke, is Petco has a vet reimbursement department. Beware of PETCO!!!!!
This is all unfortunate, but you need to realize that these dogs could have had a condition to begin with in order for this to lead to death. If you dog gets stressed from the groomer, then groom your dog yourself. It is not a stores responsibility for that.
There is risk involved with everything.
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