Petco Animal Cruelty

[ConcinusMan]

I don't know. But this happened to me once. Got one of my poms back from a groomer and noticed dried blood around here ear. Upon closer inspection, I found a serious gash on her ear. It was fresh enough that the vet was able to stitch it closed. The groomer in that case, also did not say anything about it. They paid several hundred dollars in vet bills and offered me 12 free groomings since I have 4 dogs. Needless to say, I never went back and took them up on it. When they need grooming I take her to a private individual now. She is licensed/insured to run the grooming business out of her home. She is so good with the dogs and does an excellent job for less too. The other places I've taken them run more like a production line and the groomers don't really seem to care much.

[ProXimuS]

They never told you?! At least you noticed it the same day...Maybe we're different than most places or something. If we have an injury, whether it be in grooming, kennel or daycare, we call the owners immediately, and most of the time, cover the vet costs.

[Greg'sGarters]

Yes, I know. It's nearly identical to the gecko tank at the petco across the street from me. So what?

There should be no more than 4 leopard geckos per 10 gallons. They have 7. I don't have a problem with cage size just overcrowded leopard geckos. I used to breed them and plan to start up again next season.

[ConcinusMan]

Yeah, well it doesn't seem to matter what size they put them in, they always end up clustered together anyway.

[d_virginiana]

Ugh. Went in my local Petco yesterday, and every single goldfish and koi in the store had ick. Every goldie tank in the store has had ick in it for at least a week or two, and they JUST put up a sign saying that they weren't currently for sale. (I guess that's because even an idiot knows a fish with no fins is sick)
I can understand temporarily overcrowding species that can handle it, but they should really be more conscientious of the fish. That sort of stress just kills them.

There should be no more than 4 leopard geckos per 10 gallons. They have 7. I don't have a problem with cage size just overcrowded leopard geckos. I used to breed them and plan to start up again next season.

Speaking of how they house geckos; what is the deal with sand? I've never kept them so idk, but I've always heard that sand was a no-no unless you feed them in a separate container or tong-feed or something.
Just wondering what the protocol on that was out of curiosity.

[Greg'sGarters]

Speaking of how they house geckos; what is the deal with sand? I've never kept them so idk, but I've always heard that sand was a no-no unless you feed them in a separate container or tong-feed or something.
Just wondering what the protocol on that was out of curiosity.

I advise against sand. It's always safer not to use sand but you can't exactly find paper towels or newspaper in Pakistan (not natural looking). Have you ever been to the beach, in the ocean, and when you get out and walk on the beach, the sand clumps on your feet? That's what can happen in a leopard gecko's intestines if the gecko ingests too much sand. If it's for a private collection which you don't plan to show off, you should use paper towels. If you want to show it off, use calcium sand. It looks like real sand but it will break down in a leopard gecko's intestines, as not to cause compaction. It looks just like the real deal. Whether you use real sand (not recommended), calcium sand (recommended), or paper towels (highly recommended), you should feed them mealworms in a certain type of dish called a mealworm dish. This will help keep their eating a little neater, and GREATLY reduce the risk of them ingesting any substrate.

[d_virginiana]

Yeah I figured the sand wasn't a great idea. They used actual sand at the Petsmart where I used to live, and I'd see geckos dead/dying in there fairly often. Always assumed that's what it was from. It could've been calcium sand, but I never saw that they carried it.

[ConcinusMan]

That's exactly what they use at the gecko enclosure at my local store. It is the calcium sand and it looks exactly like what's in the video. I'm not so sure there's a reason to freak out about the sand. Before I even knew about such issues, I used to raise/breed sceloporus ssp. and I used decorative sand which is supposed to be for flower pots, landscaping, etc. I simply washed it in buckets of water to remove the dust, and dried it. Yes, the lizards would purposely eat it, presumably for the minerals. They would also just poop it right out. Some of their "turds" were mostly sand. Didn't seem to hurt them one bit and they lived as long as I would expect for healthy sceloporus and had many offspring.

I've known a few people that kept leopard geckos and they kept them on sand too. I'm not aware that they every had any problems associated with the sand. Are we sure that the issue with impaction isn't due to a diet consisting of too many hard exoskeletons? Meal worms, for example, are very tough, and mostly fat. If you're going to use them, do so in moderation along with plenty of soft-bodied insects. The sand just might be getting blamed because it builds up behind such an impaction caused by hard exoskeletons.

[d_virginiana]

It could have been either; like I said, I know absolutely nothing about leopard geckos.
I just generally figure chain petstore employees know nothing about the animals they carry. There's one fish 'specialist' at my local petsmart that's really good, but generally they're incompetent. I kind of wish they would stick to snakes and lizards; they're kind of hard to kill compared to other reptiles. Talking to other pacman frog owners, I see a LOT of people who get frogs from petstores that come with fatal or near-fatal impaction or metabolic issues from the petstore care.

[ConcinusMan]

It could have been either; like I said, I know absolutely nothing about leopard geckos.
I just generally figure chain petstore employees know nothing about the animals they carry. There's one fish 'specialist' at my local petsmart that's really good, but generally they're incompetent.

If I were to "generalize" as you have stated, I would tend to say that you are correct. Petco employees are not zoologists and they certainly are generally not even intermediate in their knowledge of herpetoculture. They are retail "associates". You really shouldn't expect them to know any more about the animals they sell, than a person selling clothing knows about how and where that clothing was made. You really shouldn't expect them to know very much. A person working at a gas station sells gasoline ("Petrol" for you guys across the pond). I wouldn't expect them to know exactly where it came from, or how it was made. I only expect them to sell it to me if I should desire to have it. If I have questions, and they have real answers, that is just a bonus but it is not a given.

Petco is not a zoo. It's not even a place where animals are bred, produced, or studied. Their business model does not depend on the quality of their knowledge of the animals. They are not experts in herpetoculture and they don't claim to be. It is a retail establishment which happens to have live animals for sale. That's it. We should not expect them to be anything more than that. This business requires animals to be housed there temporarily. We should not expect the housing and conditions to be ideal. We should only expect a reasonable level of care and we should expect that animals are not severely neglected and dying under the care of the retail establishment. Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of petco as a corporation but they have taken many steps to improve what happens in their stores, and many meaningful actions to make "animals come first".

It's not perfect. We can sit here and nitpick about their husbandry at individual stores, but to me that's like condemning the entire snake hobby because a few people continue to mistreat or neglect their animals. I'd be willing to bet that there are far more private herp keepers out there doing far more heinous things to their animals and the only difference is that we don't see it all like we see it when we walk into petco stores. Private collectors don't have upwards of hundreds of people walking in and seeing the way they keep their herps.

Look, I "hate" petco as much as the next "petco basher" but lets get real. They're not all that bad when you take into consideraton all stores. Many reforms have been made at corporate level to change things. In any huge corporation, there's going to be at least a few incidents where management of individual stores, fails to meet the corporate standards.

I just feel like this latest video about the gecko's is flat out nitpicking. That isn't **** compared to what used to go on in almost all of their stores. I feel like videos like that are just people who heard about all the problems from years past and are now putting extreme scrutiny on the stores anywhere they can find something to pick at.

Seriously... like I said, you can look at almost anyone's collection and husbandry and find something to pick at. But if you saw petco stores in the 1990's like I did, you would be writing to the upper management and praising them for the vast improvements they have made since then.