The worst a pet shop I have ever seen!

[Chiyo]

I'll admit I've been a little lost since Chiyo died on Tuesday. I wasn't so sure if I wanted another beardie (defiantly not so soon) so I decided to go down to the nearest shop that sells lizards and have a look.

I'd seen advertised that they had bearded dragons at such a cheap price that it surprised me (about 45$ for some rare colors and morphs) but more on that later.

Anyway I went there and was looking around. They had three beardies. Two which I guessed were about six months old and were pastel red. Handsome creatures but they were in cages that were far too small for them! I couldn't say exactly but they were about 6X6" and the poor things could only just turn around in a circle. They were also on tiny pieces of gravel which is one of the worst substrates I can imagine for causing impaction.

The third made them look positively healthy. This little guy looked more like a stick insect than a bearded dragon. I couldn't even find any pictures on the internet to illustrate just how skinny this fellow was! He was maybe 1 1/2" long tops and less than half an inch wide. His cage had no food that I could see, no UVB (the same for the bigger guys) and I'm not joking the substrate they were using was wood splinters - splinters not the sort of thing you'd use for rabbits or guinea pigs but splinters tiny sharp pieces of wood. God only knows what it would do to the little guy if he ate it!

I considered buying the little guy because he really didn't look that well in his cage. When I talked to one of the vendors, he said it was 79 euros! Which works out to about 108 dollars! I told him about the site (saying 39 euros), he just shrugged his shoulders indifferently. Now in my country you can get a baby translucent for less than that, this guy was a regular color and morph who looked as if he was on his last legs to boot.

Sadly, I just didn't have the money to take him, besides to give you an idea of how tiny he was, here they don't sell crickets small enough for him to eat.

I looked around the shop and discovered similar cases : a baby savannah monitor (you know the things that get to over 1m!) in a box so small it could barely move, snakes virtually shrink wrapped in minuscule boxes, iguanas mixed in with dessert tortoises now either the iguana was in too dry an inhabitant or the tortoises were in too humid an inhabitant, two huge nile monitors in a cage so small they could only lie on each other...

I didn't even go into the other parts of the shop which sold animals other than reptiles! The last thing which bugged me was that the only UVB lights they sold were reptiglo, I can testify myself as to how useless they are.

Something that concerned my though is that people were walking around and saying how brilliant it all was. Now, I'm a stranger to these shores and I know that people here can be a little hard nosed (a friend of mine once suggested that I try and keep an adult beardie in a shoe-box saying it would have enough space to turn around!) but in my opinion, pet shops should be setting an example.

I mean when I asked the guy about the tiny lizard he thought I wanted to buy it for a few moments and effectively just handed him to me! They could at least ask some questions!

Anyway, I won't be going back there again. Rant over, phew... I needed to blow off some steam.

 

[CooperDragon]

Unfortunately I see issues like that here as well. Dragons crowded together and sitting in their own filth. When I see it I raise a pretty big fuss with the store manager but I doubt it does any good. Some people just don't care which is a shame. I have some choice thoughts and words for them that I won't post in a public forum. I understand and share share your rage/frustration about the issue. I wish there were a standard to guide and regulate the industry regarding proper and humane care for all animals, not just cats and dogs. I honestly kind of wish Dragons remained a specialty item that major stores couldn't carry, but that would probably prevent a lot of folks from enjoying the wonderful pets that beardies are.

 

[KarenInCA]

Did you ask to talk to the store manager, or is there some place in your area that you can complain to the higher ups about the store mistreating animals?
Oddly, I really don't think most people who make rules about animals being sold, consider lizards or reptiles as the types of animals they are protecting. Some people have a huge aversion to lizards and snakes and others just don't think cold blooded animals need protection, or can feel.

I too, really wish stores would give more education before just handing over dragons. But in order to do that, they have to be more educated themselves. I frequent a very well established reptile store where I live, and with all the education they have and give, they still house around 40 or more babies in a 40 gallon breeder tank together, and its a race to either sell them all, or one or two gets their tails bitten off as the weeks go by and the ones left get bigger and more territorial. They sell the breeder tanks, and have a room in the back with empty breeder tanks, and often have tanks with no adult in it, after selling an adult that was inhabiting the tank, so there's no reason to keep that many in one tank...not to mention, someone looking at all those hatchlings together might assume that BDs can live peacefully together, always. And the employees in that store ALWAYS also promote the loose substrate as if THAT is the only option for a substrate. After all, if you sell the substrate, that's $25 a bag on a monthly basis that they have as income for the store. It's larger substrate chips, so maybe impaction with it is rare, but there are always those smaller ones that break down in the bag after a while. And when I purchased it for ours the first time, I noticed that any liquid that falls down makes the bottom moist and it never has time to dry, so bacteria is inevitable, even if you change it once a month as they suggest. But at $25 a bag, most people are going to keep it in the viv much longer than a month, or just change out the top quarter of the substrate, to make the money stretch longer. feeders need to be purchased too.

One of them actually told a patron that he needs to buy a leash, not because he could get lost in their own backyard or house, but because (quote) "they LOVE going on walks outside". If I were to hear that, and not know about dragons now, I would really think they were more like dogs than lizards!

I have had three opportunities in the past 3 weeks, in which I have been in that store purchasing feeders and I've "re-educated" someone interested in and/or purchasing a dragon that day. I have even given them the online address to BD.Org at the end of our conversations, and told them to come to this forum for more help or questions they might have.

I really feel as if I have possibly SAVED 3 BDs from the very least, health issues with loose substrate. While at the same time, saving the patron some money on unnecessary monthly bills. And this is a REPUTABLE reptile shop that is also considered a safe haven for surrenders. For the most part, they're great. They house every reptile in its natural environment, and are kind to the animals they have in there. They are just a little bit "tight lipped" I get the feeling that maybe they are told what they have to do/say, regardless of their own knowledge, to keep their jobs.

Most importantly what I am trying to say is, they do not tell anyone that there is any other choice, whatsoever, and bottom line, at the end of the day they need to make a profit for the store. But, to keep their good reputation, they really should list the options, even if it means losing part of that income for the shop.

The owner also has a reptile museum/store in a nearby store, and he charges admission to view the reptiles that were surrenders (also for sale), so he is not losing that much money in educating patrons about substrate choices. So for that he gets graded down, in my books. Rin HATED that substrate, and is still getting used to walking on tile because he was so used to it being those loose chips. But if I would not have come here and read what other people posted, I would still be using those chips. Not because I wanted to, necessarily, but because I would think it was THE ONLY choice. And I trusted them to be the "experts"

 

[Chiyo]

It's so frustrating to see animals being treated like that. I wonder how many animals die every year from poor conditions in pet shops (I once saw some mice literally eating each other because someone hadn't bothered to feed them; this was in a major shop) .

I don't blame people who unintentionally damage their beardies through inappropriate conditions (I was one of them) but personally selling animals and then just saying stuff like "any UVB dessert bulb will do" just isn't right! The amount of lights that claim to be good for beardies but actually aren't is just scary (I include bulbs that show a picture of a beardie in this).

Sometimes though some people know what they are doing but can be downright cruel. I've seen beardies in pretty tiny cages, way too small for them but the owners knew their stuff, they just didn't care. In my opinion, that's the worst kind of owner.

I was talking to this guy who had some of the most beautiful baby beardies for sale I have ever seen. Here's a picture :

What do you call the color of the one in the top right, by the way?

 

[CalBeardie]

It's so frustrating to see animals being treated like that. I wonder how many animals die every year from poor conditions in pet shops (I once saw some mice literally eating each other because someone hadn't bothered to feed them; this was in a major shop) .

I don't blame people who unintentionally damage their beardies through inappropriate conditions (I was one of them) but personally selling animals and then just saying stuff like "any UVB dessert bulb will do" just isn't right! The amount of lights that claim to be good for beardies but actually aren't is just scary (I include bulbs that show a picture of a beardie in this).

Sometimes though some people know what they are doing but can be downright cruel. I've seen beardies in pretty tiny cages, way too small for them but the owners knew their stuff, they just didn't care. In my opinion, that's the worst kind of owner.

I was talking to this guy who had some of the most beautiful baby beardies for sale I have ever seen. Here's a picture :

What do you call the color of the one in the top right, by the way?

I would also like to know the answer to your last question as my beardie resembles that color very closely

 

[KarenInCA]

That IS a beautiful color. Ours has dulled in color quite a bit since we got him. But that's okay, he's my sweetie.

Ive seen a video when I was looking for info on dragons, and they had the dragons eating/fighting with scorpions and eating other, smaller reptiles. It was so awful! Im pretty sure these dragons were probably either really hungry or territorial, or had been raised with a fight or die mentality...or all three. I'm thinking now, I should have turned in the Youtube video, but it would have probably be ignored.

 

[Stolzieren]

it really angers me that pet shops have all these animals and take such poor care of them, it makes me want to buy them all up and give them a good home...

luckily the local pet shop here is fairly good, they're not perfect in their ways seeing as they have a lot of the reptiles on sand substrates but they all look healthy at least

 

[Chiyo]

I know! How do they expect people to take good care of reptiles if they don't themselves?! I guess they just don't care that much or rather it costs quite a bit of money to keep a beardie healthy (UVB, food, etc...) they'll be trying to keep up their profit margins. Still, you'd think that they'd have something like the RSPCA (doesn't exist in my country) check out the stores.