Next time you think about purchasing dragons @ PetCo....

PoppyTheBeardie · Dec 4, 2017

Alright, this might be considered a "rant", but I don't know.

I am outraged :angry5:

. I recently visited my nearest PetCo, and I don't have the greatest eye for detail, but I spotted things wrong with the way bearded dragons were kept there.
The main basking area was kept consistently at a ~75 degrees (Fahrenheit) temp. :banghead:

Every reptile keeper with a right mind should know that beardie basking areas should at least be kept at ~100 degrees.
The next thing was the droppings. They were everywhere, like 4 droppings/enclosure. That is disgusting :puke:

. If one beardie has a sickness, and the droppings just lie there, other small dragons could contract it too.
Tank size was a huge problem as well. They house 2 baby beardies in a less that 10g enclosure, that just makes me sad. Those dragons would have more space to roam living in a waste basket.

Hope you enjoyed me ranting. I hate ranting but I think about this every day now and plus I saw a Leopard Gecko literally as skinny as a pencil and he/she also had stick tail.

JessPets · Dec 4, 2017

I hate almost ALL petstores. I only buy from them when I have to, and even then I hate supporting them. Our local petco/petsmart sells beardies that can't be more than a few weeks old, or they are just extremely malnourished at around 4"! None of their animals (IMO) have proper care, and their employees (though usually friendly) are honestly clueless.

PoppyTheBeardie · Dec 4, 2017

Poor babies

. Well I bought Popcorn out of PetSmart but at this point it's less like buying and more like saving. Well, at least she's happy!

Mushu321 · Dec 4, 2017

I work in the petcare department at petsmart. Trust me, we all love and want the best for every animal we care for. However, there is very little training on the details of what the animals need. Luckily I have had small animals all my life so I knew the basics, but as for reptiles, I didn't know and still don't know hardly anything. I have been doing my research so I can better inform customers, but let me tell you, when I decided to buy a bearded dragon and got on this website-- I was in shock and could only think about all the beardies I've sold and only provided the information that I got in training. I hope those people did their own research after the fact because if not... those beardies won't make it. Its a sad thing.

PoppyTheBeardie · Dec 4, 2017

That's great, Mushu! I prefer PetSmart over PetCo for a lot of reasons, but I wouldn't like to ramble on.

JessPets · Dec 5, 2017

Mushu321":3gkztu3f said:
I work in the petcare department at petsmart. Trust me, we all love and want the best for every animal we care for. However, there is very little training on the details of what the animals need. Luckily I have had small animals all my life so I knew the basics, but as for reptiles, I didn't know and still don't know hardly anything. I have been doing my research so I can better inform customers, but let me tell you, when I decided to buy a bearded dragon and got on this website-- I was in shock and could only think about all the beardies I've sold and only provided the information that I got in training. I hope those people did their own research after the fact because if not... those beardies won't make it. Its a sad thing.

And honestly, it is the company's fault, not the employees. If you saw my original post on this thread, you'll see that I said they are friendly. And that is true. But due to Petco/Petsmart's lack of training, many, many, MANY customers get misinformed, and sadly this occasionally leads to the animal's death.

CooperDragon · Dec 5, 2017

I think a lot of this is reckless marketing too. I recently walked through both a Petco and PetSmart to do some research. I found that at both stores there was an aisle that was full of items that had a bearded dragon's face on them. They ranged from decent, to useless, to downright harmful. It was good to see that some of the starter kits are now shipping with carpet instead of sand. They have insufficient lighting with them though. Lots of sand bags with dragons on them too. I was with my friend who knows nothing about dragons and after we walked through I asked him if it was clear what was good and what was harmful and he was very confused. I explained each component and why it was either good or harmful and all of the info at once was confusing as well. I think it comes down to carrying too many choices combined with reckless marketing by the vendors. Store employees being well educated and having the power to carry different items would be a big help.

I also noticed that both stores had fairly harmful setups for their stock dragons. One was using a purple heat light and a T8 UVB sitting on top of a plexiglass top that had some holes cut in it. Dial thermometers on the back wall (which read very low anyway) and sand. The other had no basking light and just a T8 sitting much too far away to be useful at all. Both stores had stock sitting on their shelves that could be used to modify the housing to keep their dragons much healthier. Having a healthy dragon stock would help them increase profitability by reducing loss to illness and cost of returns (I'm trying to think analytically here). I would think these changes would incur a minimal cost to put in place. I'm not sure if the staff has the authority to make those changes or if they just aren't aware of the changes that should be made.

apndi · Dec 5, 2017

CooperDragon":37ugazu6 said:
I think a lot of this is reckless marketing too. I recently walked through both a Petco and PetSmart to do some research. I found that at both stores there was an aisle that was full of items that had a bearded dragon's face on them. They ranged from decent, to useless, to downright harmful. It was good to see that some of the starter kits are now shipping with carpet instead of sand. They have insufficient lighting with them though. Lots of sand bags with dragons on them too. I was with my friend who knows nothing about dragons and after we walked through I asked him if it was clear what was good and what was harmful and he was very confused. I explained each component and why it was either good or harmful and all of the info at once was confusing as well. I think it comes down to carrying too many choices combined with reckless marketing by the vendors. Store employees being well educated and having the power to carry different items would be a big help.

I also noticed that both stores had fairly harmful setups for their stock dragons. One was using a purple heat light and a T8 UVB sitting on top of a plexiglass top that had some holes cut in it. Dial thermometers on the back wall (which read very low anyway) and sand. The other had no basking light and just a T8 sitting much too far away to be useful at all. Both stores had stock sitting on their shelves that could be used to modify the housing to keep their dragons much healthier. Having a healthy dragon stock would help them increase profitability by reducing loss to illness and cost of returns (I'm trying to think analytically here). I would think these changes would incur a minimal cost to put in place. I'm not sure if the staff has the authority to make those changes or if they just aren't aware of the changes that should be made.

I work in the pet care department at Petsmart as well. It’s a combination of both (your last sentence) depending on how well educated employees are at a certain store. At my store, our UVB bulbs desperately need to be changed. The reptile habitats provided to us only fit certain types of bulbs that need to be shipped to us from a warehouse. We are all well aware that the UVBs really need to be changed but we keep ordering the new UVBs and they never arrive. The warehouse sucks. It’s incredibly frustrating feeling that powerless, knowing what’s wrong with the habitats but being held back by the company (or the suppliers).

I’ve been to Petsmarts and petcos that make me cringe. My store generally does quite well in the employee education department. It really depends on how dedicated the managers are to animal health and care education. I’ve always had really knowledgeable managers thankfully. You won’t hear sand being recommended at my store, lol

Pogonacave · Dec 5, 2017

Pet supplies plus near me has healthy clean bearded dragons with clean tanks and healthy beardie a.

Pogonacave · Dec 5, 2017

Pet supplies plus near me has healthy clean bearded dragons with clean tanks and healthy beardie a.

PoppyTheBeardie · Dec 5, 2017

I know this is going to make me sound stupid, but I didn't know Pet Supplies Plus had pets until like a month ago. :lol:

HippieLizards · Dec 1, 2018

Pogonacave":ktrhrbxz said:
Pet supplies plus near me has healthy clean bearded dragons with clean tanks and healthy beardie a.

Yeah same here, every single PSP that I've visited has been amazing, Very healthy animals, clean proper set up tanks, Very helpful and informative staff with proper care info. It's really great. I honestly do try to go there much more often then a petco or petsmart.

Like one day I walked into a Pet Supplies Plus and one of the employees had a 3 foot iguana hanging out on his shoulder that Looked super healthy. It is Great that there is at least one Pet shop that is good.

Xanelic · Dec 1, 2018

I don't work at a petco but they consider me as an employee (for some reason they do that even though I'm too young to be working there. I'm 15) and I clean up after the snakes and dragons, as well as feed the snakes. I always tell the employees to make sure to tell all of the customers who wanted the animals to tell the expenses, as well as the food and pretty much basics.

The petco in Georgia absolutely HATES me because I told them that their snake is unnaturally thin, royal pythons are quite chunky and I could see the spine of the royals. I'm banned there now because I also told them that their dogs could've died of a heat stroke from being out in the sun at 93F (it was an adoption) and I kept telling them, over and over, Leo's, crested, swifts, dragons, etc do NOT belong on sand. The only correct husbandry they had was for the sand swimmers there.

HippieLizards · Dec 1, 2018

Xanelic":2sd4khe9 said:
I don't work at a petco but they consider me as an employee (for some reason, I'm too young to be working there. I'm 15) and I clean up after the snakes and dragons, as well as feed the snakes. I always tell the employees to make sure to tell all of the customers who wanted the animals to tell the expenses, as well as the food and pretty much basics.

The petco in Georgia absolutely HATES me because I told them that their snake is unnaturally thin, royal pythons are quite chunky and I could see the spine of the royals. I'm banned there now because I also told them that their dogs could've died of a heat stroke from being out in the sun at 93F (it was an adoption) and I kept telling them, over and over, Leo's, crested, swifts, dragons, etc do NOT belong on sand. The only correct husbandry they had was for the sand swimmers there.

That is awful! You Don't deserve to get banned from petco (which is Ridiculous) For telling them what was wrong, I would've done the exact same thing (and maybe even more so), That really sucks.

But that's great that your local petco you sorta work at Is pretty good.

Xanelic · Dec 1, 2018

HippieLizards":3cfmbs9c said:
Xanelic":3cfmbs9c said:

I don't work at a petco but they consider me as an employee (for some reason, I'm too young to be working there. I'm 15) and I clean up after the snakes and dragons, as well as feed the snakes. I always tell the employees to make sure to tell all of the customers who wanted the animals to tell the expenses, as well as the food and pretty much basics.

The petco in Georgia absolutely HATES me because I told them that their snake is unnaturally thin, royal pythons are quite chunky and I could see the spine of the royals. I'm banned there now because I also told them that their dogs could've died of a heat stroke from being out in the sun at 93F (it was an adoption) and I kept telling them, over and over, Leo's, crested, swifts, dragons, etc do NOT belong on sand. The only correct husbandry they had was for the sand swimmers there.

Click to expand...

That is awful! You Don't deserve to get banned from petco (which is Ridiculous) For telling them what was wrong, I would've done the exact same thing (and maybe even more so), That really sucks.

But that's great that your local petco you sorta work at Is pretty good.

My parents threatened to sue since the manager refused to save the dying snake but never did since they promised to change (don't know if they've changed) but I have heard from a friend that the snake that was dying is no longer there and was replaced with a cornsnake... Uhh a royal python and a corn snake? Errrrmm....

Next time you think about purchasing dragons @ PetCo....

PoppyTheBeardie

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JessPets

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