Help! Bad Pet Store! (Warning: will be a long post!)

[sapphire_moon]

I went to a pet store to get crickets for my parents beardies and the place was horrible! There were 12-13 yr old kids "handling" things in the back! One of them had a red tailed boa (4-5 ft, he was as long as the kid was tall!) hanging around his neck, and he was leaning over an open top mouse cage with tons of mice in it! There were about 5-6 other kids picking the mice up by the tail, hanging them about 1-2 feet in the air then just droping them! The kid with the snake around his neck was walking around with a baby beardie on his shoulder while with one hand he was trying to get some other small lizard out of a container and with the other he was grabbing a handful of crickets!
There was a Plated lizard that looked dead! He was leaning over on his side, his eyes half open, and his tounge sticking out a little. I couldn't tell if the poor thing was breathing! They had some sort of large turtle (tortosie (SP?) running around that was about 40-50 lbs! Then when the kid with the snake couldn't get what he wanted he walked to the middle of the room and set the snake down on the floor! I was hoping the thing would crawl up my pant leg and let me walk out with him! But of course not. The cages were dirty they had a foggy look to them especially down by the bottom, dirty water and dirty paper! They called it the ''cricket room".......I was leaving and I said "you all got a tortoise running around (he had come out of the herp room and was wandering around by the front, by the cage of the big mccaw ) and she said "ya cute huh" I'm just like right as I have a disgusted look on my face, and I walk out.......WHO DO I CALL! That was a disgusting place and they let the kids terroize the poor animals!!! Any advice would be appreciated!

[Linds]

Wow that's pretty bad! Poor animals, and that store is gonna end up with one hell of a suit if and when those kids get seriously hurt or worse. Nothing wrong with having the tortoise walking around though, they are roamers so the more room you can give them the better, and the large ones are drier climate animals so they dont require any elevated humidity. Just as long as the area is tortoise-proofed its fine, but I bet this store was far from it :( Not sure who the best authority to call would be however, hopefully someone wll be able to give you better direction ;)

[sapphire_moon]

Well see I think that the people that are running this store, I think that those are their kids...(atleast a couple of them), Yes but no need for the thing to be running around by loose birds, and such.......It's definitly NOT tortoise proof....They need to have the animal in it's OWN enclosure!...I feel so bad for those animals.....:( They had a wallabe (sp?) there to....and personally I think that it's enclosure was WAY to small...:*(

[meow_mix450]

Well i heard a simlair thread like this...how animals (pets) are not being treated right, in pet stores. I have never been to the back of the a pet store, but i believe what you say. This makes me really angry hearing things like this, i always wanted to do something but i dont know what to do, cause if i do call someone and the pet store is gone. Where can i get crickets? etc i could get it by mail but i dont like doing that.

At my pet stores, i see reptiles not placed in right tanks. Like i saw 10 beardie's all in a small criket book. I got really upset, when i saw those poor guys. I also saw a baby veiled chameleon only about 3 weeks old, they were being sold at a $100, the little guy didnt have a UBV light, and all was in the cage was those bendable vines. Poor thing. I can name a lot more stuff but i dont want to make it long.

Those kids could have got hurt. Hope there was someone there watching them. But even if someone was they should have known better. Im srry but i just had to let out my thoughts about how pet stores are selling these guys.

thanks for reading. Hope someone can do something about it

[sapphire_moon]

Ya sure there was someone there..at the front desk. And it wasn't the "back room" it was the herp room.....a room just for herps off to the side.......*shakes head* stupid stupid people!!!!

[Ladyhawk]

I've worked in two different pet stores and yes, what goes on behind closed doors is even worse than what you see on display. Absolutely sickening. In both stores, I was the best employee they had and got paid practically nothing. In one of the stores, boys doing summer jobs got paid more than I did. One of them--the so-called herp "expert"--would disappear for hours at a time, leaving me to clean all the enclosures.

I'm telling you this because this is the reason why pet stores are so bad: untrained, uncaring, underpaid staff.

The things I've seen...*shudder*

In one of the pet stores, a maroon-bellied conure lived permanently in the back room because he had a broken or dislocated leg. The owner told me crossly, "Just snap it back into place!" I tried to, but I think the leg was too damaged. The owner was too cheap to take the bird to the vet.

I had to play veterinarian with no training in both stores. I had to euthanize animals. I even had to amputate a cockatiel's leg (no anesthesia). That one makes me tear up every time I think about it. The owners were too cheap to take the bird to the vet, but without an amputation, the bird would have died.

Once, a lady customer noticed a rat was having babies and suggested we move her and the babies to a separate cage to prevent the other rats from harming them. The manager, Barbara, tactlessly informed the customer that we had "too many" rats and that if the other rats in the cage ate the babies, that was fine by her. The customer was outraged. Righteously so!

I went to the back to prepare a separate cage for the mother rat and her babies. The manager came back there and bawled me out for doing so without her permission.

When she saw that the customer wanted to purchase the mother rat and her babies, Barbara tried to charge her for every single one, even though she had been willing to let them die moments before!

I took a long lunch that day, crying in my car. I was only eighteen years old at the time and it was my first real job. I've learned since that a lot of people can be complete @$$holes. :( :( :(

I realize that the kids at the pet store you mentioned might be the children of the owner, but there's another truth I learned while working at pet stores: parents expect you to babysit their children for them. They drop the kids off at the pet store, then go do their own shopping. As you can imagine, this makes for some horrible disasters: kids harming animals; animals harming kids. Sick. I don't think I can even count the number of parrot bites.

[Samba]

This was a pretty intense thread for me so I'll keep this short and sweet. To see what actions you can take against pet stores such as this, view the following thread detailing my own account with such a pet store. I think it's worth mentioning that this battle is STILL going on to this day. I am thinking of calling animal control authorities at this point but am hoping persistance will pay.

http://www.ssnakess.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=16315

Good Luck and Keep us updated!

[applescruff]

Cant someone report these stores to the humane society? Or do they not care?

[Siretsap]

Sure they can, but it ges at the end of a very long list. And as you prob know, the humane society aren't strict enough. The owners of the store will prob get a slap on the hand compared to what they should get.

[Smilts]

the humane society in my town is ran by family of our very pet store no luck there. What gets me is if the pet store took the time to clean up the store they would sale more. If customers walked in and were unherassed by kids running around with snakes and lizards, and all the cages and tanks were clean and organized. They could make killing with true herp enthuisiest. As it is though very few people who make a hobby or career of this will touch pet store stock. Its pathetic that if they spent afew dollars more cleaning the place and taking care of there animals they could make so much more money.

[Siretsap]

A lot of times, the petstore owners ask questions to the grossists, (the people who imports the lizards). And if you ever been in a place like that, then you realise that petstores are following after these guys. A lot of grossists are in there for the money and the place is really bad. I have been in 2 of them, and both were sadening for reptiles. I know of at least 1 very good one but never been in there but know people who worked there.
What we should all do, (even if it sounds corny) is make info/care sheets of each reptile species we see in our surrounding petstores. Then we could just give them the sheets and ask them if it's ok to stick the sheets on the vivariums where the reptiles are. I think it would help a few petstores, even if some will prob use our sheet to wipe the s*** off the aquariums.

[Bartman]

i went to a pet store near my house about a week ago and they have a full grown uromastyx, mali, in maybe a 15 gallon tank with no uv. and since i am a uro lover i went up to the cash area and asked them why they keep it in such a small tank and they said someone is getting it tomorrow its only temporary.........yesterady i went in and it was still there! i hate places like that.

[stkkts]

its disgusting! I just made a similar post about this. I went ahead and called the VP of the philadelphia herp society to get his advice. He suggested animal control and the PAACA (replaced aspca in philly) but I probably wouldnt have any luck. He has tried many times, but they do nothing. He thinks they are paid off.

I have come up with what I feel is a better solution. I have gone ahead and emailed some of the bigger suppliers of the pet stores foods and random other products. Maybe nothing will happen. Maybe the suppliers will ignore my emails. But if even one supplier of lizard food pulls their products from the store, because they dont want to be associated with such cruelty, I will feel like I accomplished something.

[monitor boy]

well there are many stores around like this but then there are stores that are nothing like that

i work at a store in vaughn and it has to be the best store for reptiles nothing is ever inportant all cbb and all in good health not brought on the floor till in good health and if gets sick on the floor it comes right off

and i will have to say one store i went to in toronto was disgusting i counted about 15 dead animals in an hour there was probably more

[lordkovacs]

wow, that's too bad. makes you want to buy them all and save them eh? jeez.

[Silklady]

It is important for people to know how to care for the reptiles when they buy them. If the people in that pet store can't treat them properly, just imagine those people who buy them because they are "cool" things to have. It is really so sad. Sir Joe Blow comes in and buys a red tail because it is cool and then sir joe blow can't keep it properly, Argh, this abuse is so frustrating. People need knowledge. I would smack the people that treated the herps like that.

[sapphire_moon]

As would I.......Just the other day when I was picking up fuzzies for Prana (baby bp) I overheard a couple talking about "how cute" the little (about 20 in) Burmese Python baby was! While I was over there they talked about the size of the enclosure they needed (they thought a 40 gal breeder or maybe a 75 gal tank would be enough) for the adult size. And what they thought it should be able to eat....I wanted to go slap them.......(this is not the same pet shop as I'm talking about. These people actually know what they are talking about, I got my first bp from these people) they knew nothing about this breed yet they were already planning it's future.

[jncoclub]

The exotic reptile store that I helped out at was messy, but always made sure the tanks and cages were in pristine order. They didn’t care if the birds knocked seed onto the floor or the lizards knocked substrate thru their cages, as long as the animals and the animals’ set ups were in order they were too busy to upkeep the floors/etc during the days. They had a back heated/humidified snake room and a room behind that was noted “employees only”, but we escorted customers back there all the time so they could have a say in what sized rat they wanted or if they personally wanted to pick out their frozen rats out of the bag (I know there are others out there who are very picky about the “perfect” rat/mouse size that they need- I am). The bag room was a stock room, and it was messy, but again, their #1 concern was the animals, not the dust in the corner of the floor. If they stopped every 5 seconds to pick up something an animal knocked out of their tank/cage, then they would have had more unsupervised/uninformed/unattended customers. I think they had their priorities straight. That was a bit of a ramble- sorry.

[Nic]

simple fix dont go their the smae thing hapend whith dogs the puppy mills. you have to get animals from breeders because in most cases they love ther animals and breding came after the pet stor loves money. edont give them money and they wont harm eny more animals

[lordkovacs]

jnco... i agree, being able to pick out your own frozen rats(or live for that matter) is a bonus. that petstore seems like they have the right idea.
MIKE

[sapphire_moon]

Exactly how I would run a petstore.....clean up could come after all the customers were gone or one a "closed to the public" day which would be a cleaning day........cages, and floors would be cleaned......

[CDN-Cresties]

Sadly this is a commen occurence, but there are stores that are responsible and we must tip our hats to those stores who keep care of thier animals. :thumbsup:

As for those stores that mistreat thier animals, i always to try to point things out to them. Sometimes it works and other times it doesnt.

-Steve-