I'm so sick of petstore care quality

[spyr01h3drag0n]

So ive been going to the local petland every week to get crickets for my bearded dragon and i always look at the baby beardies and they always look skinny and malnourished. Today, one wasnt shedding properly and was skinny enough so you could see its ribcage. The waterbowl in the enclosure was also growing algae, so im assuming they dont clean the tank equipment properly, if at all. Does anyone else agree to seeing reptiles and other animals looking mistreated or unhealthy at local petstores?


I'm just starting to get really fed up and it bothers me that i cant work there because im not old enough but the people that work there dont know wtf they're doing.

 

[Dragoon]

YES.
I am fed up with it. If you're going to treat anything like that, you might as well not have it. That's the thing. Most pet stores are so obsessed with all the puppies and are all like, "Puppies first!" while they don't give a darn about the other things. My local pet store has a paper towel bottom and the water dish doesn't have water in it. And there are always like, 5 or 6 poops in there. There is a very small UVB bulb and I feel like it's animal cruelty. I want to take each and every one of them home and nurse them back to health, but you know, I can't have that many. And recently, the pet store I went to was called Pets of [town I live in (don't want people stalking me)] and they changed it to "Puppies, Puppies, Pets and More!" I mean seriously, I guess nobody cares about anything else now. I haven't seen ANY reptile experts since it had a new name, and I just can't believe it. I'm sick of it. If your store is going to have beardies, treat them like beardies, not rats. I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it. And if you haven't noticed yet, I'm mad about it, too.

 

[Monkey]

Oh yeah Amen on that one.. My first dragon ever was a water dragon, they kept her with a bearded dargon in a desert enviroment!

My petco is actually pretty decent though, several of the guys working there are reptile lovers so they are actully pretty up to date on stuff and fix things. I was more surprised to see several grown beardies housed together in one petstore where all of them were missing limbs, parts of tails etc and none of them were really happy in the color.They were well feed, but they kept away from one another and were just dull looking. Same store had several baby beardies together too, where a couple were so small and skinny and they wobbled when moving around. It was scary looking..

 

[PaganDragons]

yeah you can read my into post to see how I feel about the large pet stores. I mean they should have to know how to take care of an animal that they sell....

 

[ziggy23]

Yesterday I actually seen a nice petstore!

They had no coil bulbs, no heat rocks. They had a wide variety of furniture and commercial foods from standard pellets to canned and freeze dried crickets, worms and grasshoppers. They had signs in each section explaining why you need things, and free pamphlets explaining basic care.

At first I thought they only sold supplies, but I finally found the reptiles at the end of the isle. The vivs were small, but beautiful. Each had 2 bulbs of it's own. They didn't have anything too exotic. I about had a heart attack one day when I seen a petstore selling caimans and a mother was considering buying her 9 yr old son one! Luckily I was there to talk her out of it.

Anywho, the vivs were well lit and beautifully decorated. They had climbing branches that resembled little trees, hides that looked like little caves, fake plants, the water loving reptiles had little pools. They didn't go cheap either. All the furniture was stuff they also sold. And those little trees were $30! No more than 2 or 3 animals per viv. Out of a dozen or more tanks, I only seen 1 piece of poop!

All the animals looked healthy and alert. I didn't seen any bearded dragons at first. But they seen me soon enough. All 3 of them ran up to check me out after just a few moments there. They looked really good.

I wish I had my camera with me so I could sneak a picture. I probably will next week. I was actually feeling down when I went in, but seeing so many happy reptiles brightened my day right up.

 

[kimmie]

YES

While I got our BD from Petsmart, I've not been too impressed with how they take care of their critters, let alone what they've told me in regards to care (compact uvb's are good, infrared at night, mealy worms, etc etc) I only thank GOD for this forum and the wonderful members who have set me straight in the RIGHT care for my boy!

But I still go there to get "things" and while I was there a couple of weeks ago, I saw they had 6 beardies (maybe 3" in length) all together in one small tank. 5 of them looked really chipper and were scattering about. The one that wasn't, well let's just say he/she didn't look well at ALL! While I'm no expert, you could tell just by looking at it that something was definitely wrong. I mentioned it to the clerk and her response was "Oh he probably just had a bath" to which I replied "UMMM no, his problem isn't from bathing" She eventually called out for someone to check on it but we didn't stick around to verify that.

Went back in a week later and only 5 were left. I'd bet $$$$$ that that one didn't survive!

 

[SidandSpike]

Its good to hear that there are at least some places that know what they are doing

But I agree that there are too many that mistreat their animals. I've only had my beardy for 3 weeks, and have only been on this site for about 1 out of those three and have already had to change everything we had been told was okay for him..sand..a second beardy with him..coil lights..ugh its so frustrating.

Im in canada & so im not sure if this is a canadian store or not but we were at a Pj's Pets & they had 17 of the skinniest baby beardies I had ever seen all housed togather in probably a 10 gal tank.. and they were housed on black sand which a few of them were eating as we watched. & one light and one log for them to all fight over. I was so upset for them we left in a hurry before I cried ! ( Though im 7 months pregnant & cry at coffee commercials :roll: haha )

So upsetting..

 

[kimmie]

Its good to hear that there are at least some places that know what they are doing

But I agree that there are too many that mistreat their animals. I've only had my beardy for 3 weeks, and have only been on this site for about 1 out of those three and have already had to change everything we had been told was okay for him..sand..a second beardy with him..coil lights..ugh its so frustrating.

Im in canada & so im not sure if this is a canadian store or not but we were at a Pj's Pets & they had 17 of the skinniest baby beardies I had ever seen all housed togather in probably a 10 gal tank.. and they were housed on black sand which a few of them were eating as we watched. & one light and one log for them to all fight over. I was so upset for them we left in a hurry before I cried ! ( Though im 7 months pregnant & cry at coffee commercials :roll: haha )

So upsetting..

:lol: Hey I cried after reading a Stephen King novel when I was preggars - it's understandable!

 

[SidandSpike]

Hehe it's so hard to stop too !
But all the emotional ups & downs will all be worth it in the end. I'm looking forward to Spike & our new arrival growing up together..he'll only be 4 months old himself when she is born
Glad we saved him from pet store problems

 

[Elijahsmom]

I'm not sticking up for the petstores or anything but I'm going to say something from the other side of the isle. I spent 10 years of my life at petsmart going through high school, college and nursing school. Unfortunately it is a big chain store and the only thing that matters to the GM is $$$$. I didn't know a whole lot about reptiles until I got Elijah. He was in one of those small tanks that petsmart has for it's reptiles though thank goodness no one is on sand or anything, cage carpet only! He was small and he had a HUGE growth spurt when I got him home over the next few months. The manager there (who is a very good friend of mine, at my wedding any everything) explained to me about need to feed him veggies (dandlion greens, collard greens, etc.), replacing my UVB bulb every 6mos (though granted they only have reptiGLO's at the store and thats all I have had Elijah under but not eye problems thank goodness and the repitSUN will be here soon.), anyways she really cares about her animals. Many of the people she hires there have beardies, birds, etc of their own and are very upset if someone doesn't do it right, all the way down to the fish. I look at the baby beardies every time I go in there (I'm trying to convince hubby we need a baby- pringles right? ) and many of them don't always looks well, they are dark, skinny, and they pile on top of each other for the heat light. I've asked my manager friend about this and she explained to me that she has to go by where the store wants her to put the animals at in the habitat area. She was even told to house them of different sizes together if she could, she always says she can't because they fight and fights won't sell a beardie. She always worries about them eating well, they always have pellets, greens, and she takes out the furniture and cage carpet to feed them so the crickets can't hide. She is a rarity among managers, when I worked there I was allowed to argue with people even over their fish tanks about them needing to do it the right way (no goldfish in bowels, etc...) and even refuse to sell animals, but eventually the GM caught up with us and we had to agree to any sale even after the information was given and the people weren't doing it right but we had to take away the 14 day guarantee! They could return the animal but not get their money back if they did it wrong. Many people ended up bring back animals (dead sometimes) and admitting we were right (like I sat through hours of training for my health! ) Anyways I'm starting to ramble, I just wanted to let you guys know that there are people who care but unfortunately their hands may be tied. But I'm still glad I got Elijah from thats store, he is my boy! :love5:

 

[PrettyPetunia518]

Absolutely. We got our first beardie from Petsmart, we thought he was cute, we picked up supplies for him from there, you know, stuff that's obviously for them since their picture is on it or we saw it in the viv they had set up- some calcisand :roll:, a rock cave, a water dish, a basking light, and crickets (we'd give him about 3-4 per day). About a month or 2 later, he started having terrible seizures- falling from the top of his branches onto the ground and just laying their twitching. For some reason it was instinctual to me to put him in some water and then take him outside. We made an emergency trip to petsmart to see what was wrong with him and the reptile guy said oh he needs a uvb light, ok simple enough, he went and got one off the shelf for us. a few weeks later there was still no improvement, it was terrible we felt so bad. Our saving grace came from our new puppy's dog trainer at Petsmart, she was amazing, we happened to mention to her we had a bearded dragon from the store that looked like he wasn't going to make it. She asked us a few questions about what we were feeding him and what his environment was like. She told us she has 2 bearded dragons of her own and that the store (talking about her own store!) treats them terribly and doesn't educate people at all when they purchase them. She told us get him off the sand, take out the uvb light petsmart sold us (she told us it was better for him to have no uvb while we waited for the new one to come in because the old one was so bad for them, that amazed me), get some calcium to dust his food, and go buy some baby food squash to feed him because his stomach was probably impacted from the sand. She is the reason we came to this site (she provided the url to us) and why our Norman is alive.

I definitely believe there needs to be more customer education before they purchase ANY pet. We had no idea this little tiny lizard we bought was going to be eating 30$/week in crickets, but lets be blunt, they hadn't told us anything about him. Once we made the changes that the dog trainer (the dog trainer! why didn't the "reptile guy" tell us any of this!) told us about, we had a changed lizard who was much much happier. Not to mention he grew like a weed! We had made the major changes then and then my fiance continued reading on this site and we have been learning so much more about how to make sure the temps are right, etc.

We look at the bearded dragons everytime we go to the petstore to buy crickets, and I'm so saddened by their condition and you can tell they're not happy either - some we have seen are completely black, stomachs and all. We were at Petco the other day and one was dancing on the window and was so happy when we were walking back and forth it was following us, and i just thought, i need to get this little baby out of here. so we adopted our second beardie and are excited to be able to raise her and give her a great life from the get-go knowing everything we know now.

But I must mention, all we did was point to the one we wanted and the girl got it out for us. She didn't say one word about how to care for it or anything that we needed (we had everything set up at home already so all we bought with her was a cricket container and a water bowl - I guess that's all they need :roll: ) We also signed an adoption paper that I didn't read all of until we got home, and it says "I have received a care sheet for my new animal". Nope, didn't even get that.

I think there needs to be stricter rules and enforcement of how they are sold and how they are kept in the store. It's just cruel. If you can't house them correctly or give the customer some information before they buy them so that they know what they're getting into, your store does not deserve to sell them . I just wish there was a way to make the big corporations hear these concerns and make changes to what they're doing.

 

[kimmie]

My Petsmart made way too many wrong recommendations IMHO. The compact uvb, the infrared, mealy worms, 4 crickets a day maybe, that kind of advice. Even the size of tank wasn't suggested I go larger (told them I had a 10 gal tank). Only thing I'm glad about was that they didn't recommend sand for the bottom!

Some managers understand and know better and some don't. And yeah it sucks when the main chain is only interested in the $$$ factor.

 

[Elijahsmom]

I agree with you both prettypetunia and kimmie. I wish that the big chain hadn't gotten all over us about refusing to sell to people who wouldn't do what was needed and the best for their animals. No Petsmart did not educate me all that well when I bought Elijah (I was told that a 10 gal would be good enough for a while) I had no idea about everything I would need for him until I became a member here. I'm so thankful for this website, I wish that I could adopt them all and given them love and care.

 

[genarie19]

I went to a petco today and it was really nice, very clean. The only MAJOR problem I had was the guy that came over to me while I was looking at bearded dragon stuff told me that my viv which is a 4x2x2 was way, way, way too big for a bearded dragon. Even a full grown one. He then told me that the enclosure they had was the perfect size for the bearded dragons they had there and that I needed a ten gallon tank to house mine in. I just looked at him and said oh. He then told me that with an enclosure that big there was no way to keep the temps right and no way to heat the whole thing. I just looked at him. I mean my other beardie was 16 inches long there is no way I would put my new one in a ten gallon tank!

 

[ziggy23]

I went to a petco today and it was really nice, very clean. The only MAJOR problem I had was the guy that came over to me while I was looking at bearded dragon stuff told me that my viv which is a 4x2x2 was way, way, way too big for a bearded dragon. Even a full grown one. He then told me that the enclosure they had was the perfect size for the bearded dragons they had there and that I needed a ten gallon tank to house mine in. I just looked at him and said oh. He then told me that with an enclosure that big there was no way to keep the temps right and no way to heat the whole thing. I just looked at him. I mean my other beardie was 16 inches long there is no way I would put my new one in a ten gallon tank!

ROFL. He'd probably go into shock if he seen mine.