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.
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.
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.Pogonacave":ktrhrbxz said:Pet supplies plus near me has healthy clean bearded dragons with clean tanks and healthy beardie a.
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.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.
HippieLizards":3cfmbs9c said: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.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.
But that's great that your local petco you sorta work at Is pretty good.
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