To whom it may concern
This is Dancing’s husband and witness to the incident involving Camelot and the Stealth
This may be the wrong place for this post for this I apologize to admin, eddy you know how often I'm on here.
Dancing was out of town for 3 weeks so I was caring for the gliders. The accident occurred about 2 1/2 weeks into Dancing’s absence. Every night after yogies, CiCi would get into the wheel spinning it in a clockwise direction. And Camelot would jump from the side of the cage, land on the wheel and ride the outside, this seemed to be his favorite game. On the night in question, after yogies, CiCi got on the wheel and spun in a counterclockwise direction. Returning with food I found Camelot under the wheel obviously dead, CiCi still in the wheel. After removing the body and allowing sufficient time to for rigor mortise to set in, I inspected the body, which was stiff but the head still flopped like a limp noodle. According to all the country vets I've talked to this is an indicator of a broken neck, regardless whether it is a glider, a dog, a cat or a cow and there was no need for a necropsy to prove the cause of death was due to a broken neck. As any physics major can tell you centrifugal force increases impact force exponentially. Therefore it is MY belief that he jumped on to the wheel spinning toward him instead of away from him and the resulting impact broke his neck and the centrifugal force carried him under the wheel. It was not the fault of the wheel as this could have happened with any free spinning wheel. I still have Stealth wheels in with all of my gliders as well as with many of Dancing's gliders.

Joe, thank you for your response.

Although you may have been there, and as I stated above it is possible to have happened like that, it can not be a PROVEN case without a necropsy or an eye witness account. You just stated you were not in the room. All I am trying to say here is that there HAVE been eye witness accounts AND health records and necropsy reports that support the fact of wodents being dangerous.

Lets face it, a fall whether on or off a wheel or even the side of a cage could break a neck, if that was the case.

Another reason why necropsy's are important, even if we KNOW what caused the death, it can be documented and in records for future use.

Teresa, I am sorry about your loss of another glider. Seems like you have lost a fair share so far this year. That has to be hard. And once again, it did shock me to read this as I dont recall seeing you saying anything about it before. Its never easy loosing a glider. No matter how we loose them.

I guess I'm just odd then. When the cause of death is KNOWN without doubt (such as Camelot) I do not see any justification what so ever in spending the money on a necropsy where the glider is cut open to where their remains can not be returned unless in the form of ashes. I would rather spend my money helping glider LIVE and stay alive.

Joe and I both know what happened with Camelot. Just as I can wake up in the morning and see snow on the ground that wasn't there the evening before when I went to bed and KNOW that it snowed over night. I don't have to personally see it snow to know that it did.

Ditto that sentiment!!!!

Again, Teresa, I am NOT saying it didnt happen...go back and reread if you are thinking I am...

Secondly, you stated:


I'm sorry, but this is NOT so...I was able to have Bug sewn back up as a whole and bring her body home without it being in ashes and without it being too bad. Guess it all depends on who is doing it and if you tell them you want the remains to take home to bury.

Finding out and putting in records, REAL records, in a veternarian study to me is NOT a waste of time or money. Just because you and I have had something happen, doesnt mean that we will be around in the future to tell others, and that is the importance of having things done. Just as Gina knew what happened with Fawkes and as hard as it was to her, she still had a necropsy done on him and that is now listed. She KNEW it was cancer, so why have it done? I applaud her and commend her for being so brave TO have it done. Now Fawkes even in death will be able to help another glider out there one day.

You will never know IF there was anything else to find out or share with Camelot, because you chose against it. Which is fine, it was your choice. Just trying to say WHY a necropsy is important even if we KNOW what the cause of death was....

Sorry to have taken this off topic...

MY answer to Posters Question:

I personally think the stealth wheels are better than any other wheel out there because of the love and care the creators put behind it. They have thought of everything. From comfort for the glider, safety, cleanliness and keeping them from running in their own feces, and even thought of us and made it the quietest wheel out there.

Stealth wheels are THE best!

I did have an incident happen with one of my gliders in the stealth. I'm at work and don't have time to tell the story right now, but I will when I get home. But, I think, as long as I have had them, and as many gliders as I have had use them, with no incidents that they are very safe.

I'll be back later to post about my Stealth/Wodent experiences.

I get my stealths directly from atticworks cause I need the ones with the PVC stands.

When we first got gliders we had wodent wheels and HATED them. I had to clean them EVERYDAY and the were NOISY! When we added a glider I ordered a stealth for her, it arrived and the NEXT day I ordered 2 more for my other cages because I was so impressed with them. The wodents immediately went in the trash.

I will NEVER use anything but a stealth in my cages.

Anita and Charlie, thank you for making such a wonderful wheel.

That is sooo true Peggy!!!!

my input on the stealth...

Stealth vs. Wodent

I've had both and I'll never use a wodent again other than for tent time. Stealths are so much cleaner, I don't have to take the stupid thing apart and try to get that TINY pin back in place. I set my stealth in the sink or bathtub and use a bottle brush. Or we use the power washer.
I also don't have to clean it as often since most of the waste falls straight thru.
Stealths have a much wider running surface and I've noticed that ours seem more comfy with that. Plus, they have the added benefit of holding on and just spinning with the wheel. Bonnie seems to love that... Another thing she does is what we call the "Hi Ho Silver". she runs up beside it and jumps to grab the edge and flings herself in and runs like the wind. Never misses a beat.
Wodents were great until I found the stealth. As far as safety goes, the Stealths have much more going for them than just the absence of the center bar. The wheel itself is further away from the stand (which, by the way, is available in PVC and DOESN'T RUST!!!) and even a fat suggie can't get stuck. When Clyde was about 17 weeks OOP we could have lost him due to being stuck between the stand and back of the wheel. Especially since Bonnie was running in it. We were lucky, I've heard of others that were not.
The other safety feature that comes to mind is that it sits higher off the ground. Now that all of our gliders are full grown, it's much easier to see that benefit. Clyde, being the largest, can hang out under the wheel and munch a treat, while Bonnie pretends to be a marathon runner. Lahni likes to run inside her stealth while Indi prefers to RIDE the outside and let Lahni do all the work. Because of the ground clearance, I don't even flinch when Indi goes all the way under. She doesn't even skim the bottom of the cage.

Don't get me wrong, I guess in some opinions the wodent is great, I even thought so. I think they're great for travel and tent time now, but that's about it.

Oh and advice to newbies when they get a wodent. Patience... If your glider still runs from you, good luck getting that little bugger out of a Wodent wheel without taking the thing OUT of the cage and possibly completely apart. there are advantages and disadvantages to both, apparently, but while opinions and needs may vary, obvious structural facts are not easily contested.

edited to add:
I also know that if I ever have a problem, Anita and Charlie are right there to help me. And they have! Apparently you must be smarter than the side mount kit to install it... LOL I made it harder than it was.

Teresa and Joe, you know that each and every one of us is sorry for the loss of Camelot. We are not trying to be insensitive, just trying to avoid mass panic and placing blame on a wheel that may not be responsible for his death.

What worries me is that it appears you two are pointing a finger at the Stealth, while in a backwards way saying... it's not really the Stealth, but... if it was taller… this death would not have occurred. This is causing pain for Anita; it tore her up thinking anything she made could be responsible for the death of any glider. This is putting fear in many glider owners who use Stealth wheels and this is casting a negative impression of the Stealth wheel. IF it the Stealth wheel truly was responsible for the death of your glider, any glider and IF you were sure of the cause of death, I would totally say this needed for this topic to be brought out, redesigns made. The only thing you had Joe are basing this on is your own speculation; there is no evidence or proof. Had a necropsy been done and the cause had been trauma, a broken neck, then there would be no doubt.

Teresa, if noone was in the room and saw what happened, honestly, it could have been a number of things. Perhaps he simply fell? or glided and missed? Maybe a seizure and he fell? There are so many many things that COULD have happened. Unless someone actually saw what happened, it doesn't seem fair to put the cause on the Stealth wheel.

I'm not trying to start anything but nothing was ever said before now.

Peanut was sewn back up and you couldn't tell she had a neucropsy (not that I was looking hard..I wasn't) and given back to us as she was taken in.

I'm so sorry you lost your baby. It's not something any of us should go through

Okay, here's my story. I came home from work on Tues, Sept 2nd to find Stitch dead in his Stealth wheel. He was face down, and laying weird. The white part of the stealth was a quarter of the way up in front of him, meaning he had been running. There was blood on the floor of the cage below him. I panicked, of course! And at first thought he had broken his neck while running in the wheel, and maybe bit his tongue or something when he fell. I decided to take him in for a necropsy. I called Peggy later and we talked about it, and I decided not to post in a panic about the wheels, just to wait. We were fairly certain it was NOT the wheel, but what if it was??? So, long story short, I got the necropsy, and it was completely un-related to the wheel, that just happened to be where he was when he died. Peggy has seen the pictures, and it would be very easy to believe that the wheel caused his death, without the necropsy. There are many things that we cannot see and know.

Now, the reason I dislike Wodents? They collect pee and poo. I have seen the tracks seperate from the sides more than once while gliders were in it. The center bar is dangerous, even with the guard. And they are noisy.

I have had exactly 1 problem with a stealth. It is about 6 years old and is starting to get wobbly in the middle. I guess they don't last forever...

Just wanted to say sorry about your loss, I know that was hard to go through.

Here are my opinions regarding the wheels...

Wodent: noisy, track has come apart somehow, difficult to clean the Trim Trak ... it collects pee and poo, difficult to side mount it and a pain if you need to take it in and out often to clean it when it is side mounted, pin is difficult for me to remove which I have to do often to clean it and change out the tracks, difficult to get the Trim Trak to fit properly and get the pin back in. However, my gliders love it.

Stealth: had a little trouble getting it to side mount because you have to hold the bolt still on the inside while your tightening the nut on the outside which limits where you can side mount it if your arms are short, it isn't noisy, needs to be cleaned less often, trak can be easily wiped in between cleanings, trim traks are pretty easy to remove and replace, don't feel it trims my gliders nails as effectively but it does work, gliders can hang on to the outside, my gliders love it.

I feel there is no way to make any wheel 100% safe and you take a risk of injury to your glider with the use of any wheel. I prefer to use the Stealth wheel because it is easier for me to clean and my gliders love it just as much as they loved their Wodent wheels.

6 years old?? you sure it is a Stealth??

Sorry about your baby Shawna. I hate to hear about any we lost for any reason. I am still over sensitive to my own loss.

I do know they would NOT let me bring Sprite home once she was cut open. I had to do the cremation to get her home again so I did.

quoted from my first post on this..





I have said that time and time again. IF I thought it WAS do to the STEALTH, I would NOT have one in any of my cages BUT I DO! NOT once have I bashed or put down anything about the Stealth in this thread. I have always said, and always will say, Stealths are GREAT wheels.

You all can nit pick all you want. You can say without a necropsy there is no proof of trauma and broken neck. Joe FOUND the glider. Joe EXAMINED the glider. I SAW THE GLIDER. I BURIED this glider. WE KNOW his neck was broken. It does not take any type of medical degree (or vet degree) to know that when a head flops and moves the way his did that the neck is broken. And WE are certain it was due TO A FREAK ACCIDENT INVOLVING THE WHEEL.

Dancing:

I am sorry for your loss. The loss of any pet is extremely upsetting. This has been a bad year for us. A chinchilla we rescued 2 years ago passed away from kidney/liver disease; our 12 year old german shepherd passed away due to age according to the vet.

It was only my hope to obtain information on 2 products.I did not want anyone to become offended by this thread.

We spoke to the maker and based on overall discussions and opinions here, we decided to go ahead and start purchasing stealth wheels to replace our wodent wheels.

Teresa, it would be different if this has been your only FREAK ACCIDENT lately, or the only glider of yours to die lately, but it’s not. Thus giving several people reason to question the exact cause death. So, if you’re going to publicly question the death of your glider from a Stealth wheel, and then later come back in and promote the TGI wheel
which just so happen to have taller stands, like you suggest would have prevented the death of your glider, you are in a backwards way creating doubt about the Stealth wheel. No mater how you want to spin it, you’re a smart cookie and you know what your doing.

First off, you told me Camelot died while you were out of town, and that Joe didn’t want to tell you because of this fact. But not while you were in Arizona for 3 weeks, much later and after you had gone on some glider run, Springfield Mo maybe, a shorter trip and after you got back from Arizona, and after you had already had several gliders die, which was the reason I questioned you about a necropsy. You had two conversations with me about Camelot and you never said his neck was obviously broken until it comes up in a post about the Stealth wheel. You told me Joe found it, it looked like it had trauma from the way it was laying.

You see, one freak accident is one thing, several gliders dying is something all together different.

I can’t remember if you had one die while you were in Arizona, you may have, but I know it wasn’t Camelot, which was just the most recent death you told me about. I know you had a glider die while you were at Linda’s late October of last year, either Dexter or Chip, I can’t remember which. No necropsy.

I do know once you got back from Arizona, you found Marcel weak, thin, and holding onto the cage the day after you got home. You said you took him to the vet, the vet couldn’t get a urine sample, and may or may not have been able to get a fecal sample (I don’t remember) but he came home with an antibiotic. I clearly remember this because you were worried since you weren’t able to isolate what was wrong, you were worried the antibiotic might mess up further testing and/or might not be the right antibiotic. But, Marcel died anyways. You said you didn’t have a necropsy done on Marcel because you felt he died from not eating, stressed and he missed you while you were gone for 3 weeks, or because the routine was changed with Joe taking care of them, and that Joe feeds every night your gone but might not notice Marcel was not eating, or that the was losing weight. This worried me because when Astrid got giardia, the only sign I had was she stopped eating. I thought you should get the whole family checked just to make sure they didn’t have giardia, you said it wasn’t needed. Again, no necropsy done.

Now the order I am sure is not correct here and I think I am leaving a glider out but these were after Marcel and before Camelot, all after you got back from Arizona.

Duncan, your hand raised joey that was about 2 years old, died recently. You told me you saw neurological signs from him, but no seizures, that his gait was off, seemed strange and before you could get him to the vet, he died. Again no necropsy, you said that because he was hand raised and they don’t normally live that long, it would be pointless.

Nebraska mother, you told me you also found her dead recently. Again, no necropsy. You said since she was a rescue and has recently had a hard life, questionable diet, housing, could have inbreeding, and a lot of stress, there was no need for a necropsy either.

Another female found dead, sorry I can’t remember her name. You said you had given her a treat through the cage bars and she was fine. A little later you went in and found her dead at the bottom of the cage with an obvious broken arm. You said there wasn’t much blood but she must have died due to stress or internal bleeding. Again no necropsy.

A long time ago you had another female with a broken arm, no known reason, you had it repaired, she lived for a while, and then she later died. Another freak accident with no necropsy.

I know there is at least one more I am forgetting about. I thought you had one die of seizures before Duncan died, that is why you said Duncan had neurological signs, but no seizures, to show me the two were not related. But I am not positive about this one.

I know the last time we talked about Camelot, you said you have had 5 or 6 gliders die in a short time, from going to Arizona until him/Camelot, which was about a month ago. I questioned if it could be something at the house, something going on, and you said no, that each case was different from the rest. And you went over each glider that has died in the past few months, the cause, and the reason for no necropsy. Personally I think that is too many glider in too short of a time to not be related, or at least not check into it to make SURE they are not related. And I don’t think you have to have a medical degree to come to that conclusion.

We all know you have a past with Anita and the Stealth wheel. If I felt that you had hard proof that the Stealth wheel or any wheel was responsible for the death of your glider, I’d say we all need to know about it. But you don’t have proof. You only assume. You’re guessing what events lead to his death. Neither of you saw him get injured, just like you didn’t see the girls break their arms. You’ve had too many gliders die in the last few months without any necropsies to know why any of them died.

I too am sorry for his loss, for the loss of all your gliders. I know you loved each them and were upset with their deaths. I am not saying any of their deaths are your fault, or Joe's. What I am saying is you can't blame one death on any one product when you had so many others die around the same time period. More investigation needs to be done.

Cyndie, okay it might not be 6. I probably made it seem older to make a point, it's old. It is a stealth, though! I love my stealths I even have one for every travel cage

Shawna...that was quite odd and I am SOOO thankful you did that necropsy to find out what happened.

I have to say, looking at the pics it was like, what in the world happened...how many different scenarios played through our minds?

To look at Stitch, he looked perfectly healthy. The pictures were very disturbing and anyone who saw them would think first thing it was some sort of accident...

THAT is why a necropsy IS so important when there is not an EYE WITNESS account...

O.k., I haven't had gliders or Stealths for long, and I haven't had any gliders die or know of any first hand, but I want to add my "2 cents" anyway.

I started with a Wodent and switched it out to a Stealth. Then, I added Stealths to the rest of the cages. For the record, I prefer Stealths over the Wodent for all the reasons already stated.

What I do want to add to this thread is concerning the fantastic customer service I received from hushpuppy. Due to this insomnia thing I have acquired since I got my gliders, I thought the white plastic on the track was a new thing and was concerned about it. The white plastic was not something new, but instead it was my brain not functioning well with lack of sleep. I made a post on GC with my concern, and within about 15 minutes, I received a call from the makers of the Stealth. I was so impressed with the fact that the makers of this product would contact me with such speed and concern about their product. I have never received such wonderful customer service like that with any product.

Like I said before, the white plastic piece was just fine and is on all of our Stealths - it was simply me not noticing that it was on our other ones too. IMO, I feel that if someone gives you unbelievable customer service like they did, they also put a lot of time and effort in providing a safe and well-made product.

I'm also a firm believer in the stealth. I've got them in all my cages, and I've got several of the different versions of it. I've not had a problem w/them at all w/them and my kids love them.

I have a stealth, and I have never had such awesome customer service. The wheel was squeaking, so I e-mailed them and they got back to me when they could, since they went to a suggie event. Charlie called me and we talked about it, so when I got home, I checked it, and figured out that it wasn't the ball bearing squeaking, and that it was the stand. I called him as soon as I could the next day, and I was amazed that I didn't get an answering machine. He remembered my name too!
They're not just running a business, but they're making friends.

I have 14 stealths and 2 more on the way. I have used stealths for about 3 years now and have never had any freak accidents. The stealth is by far the #1 wheel in my book.

I have the PVC and metal stand Stealth wheels as well as the side mount Stealths and have never had a problem and they are the most played with item in my cages. All night, the wheels go round and round. I feel the Stealth wheel is the safest thing in my cages.

My suggies will do running dives in them, run in pairs....you name it, they've done it. They love their Stealths!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you Anita and Charlie for making the Stealth wheel what it is......the BEST wheel EVER!!!!!!! Also, your customer service is EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!

I have 4 Stealth wheels and my gliders also love them. There hasnt been a night in over 2 years those wheels havent been turning - and gliders running and playing with glee! They play all kinds of silly, fun games in them. They hide behind them when they dont want to be seen.

I have never had a problem with any of my Stealths and if one of them should break - I would order another tonight.

Anita and Charlie's customer service is the BEST! I also thank you both for making the BEST glider toy on the market!!!

How long do you leave the trim trax in the stealth wheels?

If it is the trim trax made for the stealth wheel, you can leave it in there all the time. Just be sure to replace the sandpaper every so often.

Is the trim trax sandpaper difficult to put in the stealth wheels?

oh it's easy peasy!!! the holes don't exactly match up, but they won't rip apart or anything. Trust me, they're pretty strong.

they come with instructions, but the long and short of it:

Put trax on OUTSIDE of the wheel with the abrasive side facing INSIDE the wheel.

Put the little plastic bolt thru the INSIDE and tighten the plastic nut on the OUTSIDE

done!