Last year after my husbands dog Buddy of 13 years had to be put down, our girls were devastated. We contacted some breeders and everyone we found had a long waiting list. Seeing the girls so hurt was heart breaking because they had grown up with him since they were babies and even before, Kinsley our youngest was born. He had been in their lives even longer then me, it killed me seeing them so depressed, so I talked to my husband about getting something small like a gerbil or a hamster to help with their loss until we got a puppy down the road-keeping both of course. He agreed since some of the waiting list could have been years. Since our local pet store in Eagle River didn't have any live pets, like hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, yet alone fish-other then gold fish. We had to go to Anchorage, the next closest pet store was in the Tikatanu area. When we went in our youngest, Kinsley was absolutely fascinated by the Guinea pigs but they were all hidden and hard to see. We wanted an employee to help us but we could not find any help anywhere. Once we tracked someone down, we were told in an off-putting tone that someone would be right with us, after another 15 minutes passed we decided to leave and try this Petco, a little further into town. As soon as we walked in were were greeted. We checked out the rodents and once again Kinsley was fascinated by the Guinea pigs who were hiding in their little igloo like homes. An employee came right up and asked us if we had any questions. We told her we would like to see the guinea pigs. She happily made the guinea pigs viewable and talked to us a few minutes about Guinea pigs, snacks they like, how long they live and so on. She was so helpful and polite. We let her we were going to look around some more. She told us where to find her if we had any more questions or needed any help. We did some looking around. My oldest step daughter, Emma wanted nothing to do with the rodents and convinced us to check out the birds. There was one bird in particular that caught her eye. She wanted to ask an employee some questions about it. Walking past us was an employee, she stopped him to asked him her questions. He nicely told us he didn't know much about birds but that he would get us the "bird lady." Well the bird lady came... sooner or later. She was really grumpy and acted like we were inconveniencing her, wow she ACTUALLY had to do the job, that she was there to do. Me and Daniel looked at each other in awe of this women's behavior. It hurt our daughters feeling so bad, she then left and took off to the car the women was being so mean. I told the lady we no longer needed her help and thanked (for god only knows what) and went to go talk with Emma while my husband and our youngest continued to look around. Once I convinced her to come back in she looked around some more with us but was completely turned off of the birds because of this women. Kinsley ended up settling on a guinea pig. The first gal who helped us come over and happily got us the paperwork we needed to fill and on our way to bring home our needed member of the family. Both girls ended up falling head over heels in love with this sweet little guinea pig. Emma was still set on getting a bird though. She had some money saved up, she did some research. She put aside the money for a cage and accessories and budgeted the costs for a bird. But she refused to go back to this Petco for assistance after the "bird-lady" treated us so awful. It was her purchase and we respected her wishes, we ended up finding another pet store, the employee there was more then HAPPY to help her. Since, all this we now have a zoo at our house, with a new addition to our family, Zeke, a super friendly Labradoodle. We have even made this Petco our favorite pet store to go for Zeke's needs. We brought him in after first getting him, the staff who assisted us was extremely knowledgeable with dogs/puppies and you could tell she really cared. We also found that this Petco is much cheaper and have better deals then our pet store in Eagle River. We will keep coming to this pet store with the great customer service they are providing-excluding the "bird-lady" who we docked one star because of. read more