Petco Animal Cruelty

[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.

[d_virginiana]

I don't expect them to be experts in animal care. I absolutely understand that the housing in the stores is NOT supposed to be permanent, and I don't have problems with say... a leopard gecko being in an overcrowded situation for a month or two. I'm only talking about the blatant problems I've seen; like, the ones that have the potential to be fatal really quickly. Like housing a pacman frog with another frog, putting animals on dangerous substrate (again, usually with frogs), and feeding unsuitable prey. All things that you can find on a simple caresheet or google search, and all able to cause death or permanent disability in a very short time. If you're telling me that it's not the job of a pet retailer to spend less than five minutes to print out a care sheet for the animals they carry and then follow it, then I'd say they have no business being a pet retailer.

They hire specific employees to care for the reptile section as well as the fish section. I wouldn't expect these people to be experts in caring for these animals, but I DO expect them to know the basics. If you're going to be caring for an animal for ANY length of time, you need to know enough about it to keep it alive.
I honestly don't feel like requiring the corporation to put out caresheets for the animals they carry to all the stores would be asking too much. It would take almost no time, since they don't really carry unusual animals, the basic info is readily available, and the supplies to do it properly are generally in the store.

I don't 'bash' Petco and Petsmart. I realize that they are businesses and that much of the care for the reptiles is passable for short-term housing. For example; I'm understanding of overcrowding, but less so of being put on a dangerous substrate when thirty seconds of research could tell you the correct one, and there is a bag of it on the shelf beside the animal. I'm sure they've improved a lot, but I don't feel like that's a reason to pretend like fatal care errors that could be fixed VERY easily are okay and shouldn't be criticized. I mean, I hardly freak out and boycott them every time I see something I don't like; I'm in there at least once a week.

I also still say they should stick to 'beginner' snakes and lizards as far as reptiles. For several reasons. They advertise several species of frog as 'beginner' animals. I would say that they are beginner frogs, but no frog is a good beginner animal when it comes to working with exotics. Also, animals that get very large as adults and need complex care to avoid permanent problems (like tortoises, monitors, and iguanas) should probably not be sold there. No one with enough experience to care for these animals and make that long of a commitment is going to be buying them from a chain store, and most of the really egregious care issues in-store that I've seen are for species like that.
I realize that's not going to change, because there are plenty of idiots who will go in and buy a sickly baby iguana from people who made it ill because they know about as much about it as the people buying it. Doesn't mean I'm going to boycott Petsmart, but it also doesn't mean I'm going to pretend like that's okay because they don't mistreat geckos and beardies as bad as they used to.

If you go through my collection, you could find things to nitpick, but you won't find my cannibalistic frog housed with a buddy, and you won't find my garters getting skinny while crickets are hopping around their tanks.

[kimbosaur]

They hire specific employees to care for the reptile section as well as the fish section. I wouldn't expect these people to be experts in caring for these animals, but I DO expect them to know the basics. If you're going to be caring for an animal for ANY length of time, you need to know enough about it to keep it alive.
I honestly don't feel like requiring the corporation to put out caresheets for the animals they carry to all the stores would be asking too much. It would take almost no time, since they don't really carry unusual animals, the basic info is readily available, and the supplies to do it properly are generally in the store.

It's not even just about keeping the animal alive. Even from the angle of the retail industry, salespople should be well informed on the product that they sell. You don't walk into a car dealership and hope the salesman knows a thing or two about the car he's about to sell you; you just expect it. Why should buying pets be any different. The worst part is, half the time people do expect petstore salespeople to be reliable sources of information so they easily accept their advice. This is especially the case with more exotic species. Where they would take their vet's advice for a dog or a cat, many go to a pet store for advice on their snake or fish. On the other end, those same salespeople pretend to be experts and provide false information without ever bothering to do their research. In my opinion, yes, printing out a basic caresheet would be a good start, but it should be part of their job description to go way beyond that.

[d_virginiana]

On the other end, those same salespeople pretend to be experts and provide false information without ever bothering to do their research.

EXACTLY! I've never gone into a chain petstore where that wasn't the case. When I got my frog, not only did the guy give me information that, had I not known better, would have killed her within a week (such as not having to moisturize the substrate or treat all the water you use), but he pretended that he knew pretty much everything about keeping them. She's not even the SPECIES they were selling her as! I mean, I knew that going in, but still. I figured he was talking out his rear because I've kept reptiles since I was ten. No way a first time reptile/amphibian owner would have caught on.
It wouldn't be nearly as bad if he'd just said he had no clue.

I would say that the burden of learning to care for the animal before you buy it is primarily on the owner, but the employees shouldn't be completely ignorant and shouldn't pretend they know what they're doing when they don't.

[kimbosaur]

And about the leapord gecko set-up...I think the main problem with providing mediocre habitats in the pet store just for the sake of saving space is that people will and do get the wrong idea. It's the same with those little betta cups. People see all these little betta fish floating in tiny cups and they think "hey, I'll bring that fish home and put him in a vase with a flower and he'll have way more space than he does now". Yes, betta fish can survive in tiny, unfiltered, unclean containers for quite a while, but what about their quality of life? You can keep a garter in a tiny critter keeper and I'm sure it'll survive...but that doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. The thing is, the pet stores rarely advise otherwise because for them, the care seems to stop at keeping the animal alive.

[Greg'sGarters]

I do expect them to have a general knowledge of the animals that they sell at least. When you go into a clothing store, and buy a new shirt. They are perfectly correct to assume that you know how to properly wear it. But when that product is a living animal that has certain care needs, they should be able to answer your questions. Richard, I don't expect them to be perfect. Maybe Petco could come up with a simple test that people have to pass in order to get a job there. Simple stuff like what temperature do you keep a leopard gecko at? Or What do you feed a Pacman Frog? Stuff like that.

[ConcinusMan]

Went into the petco by my place yesterday. Saw 7 baby corn snakes in a tank. Normal reds and some albinos. One normal had recently shed and was looking healthy. The other 6 were all undernourished and ALL suffering from retained shed. All had the "crinkly" look and labored breathing. I told them what the problem was and that a little help could save some if not all of them. They didn't care. Just "acceptable" losses to them I suppose.

[Radix97]

There are some extremely crule people out there. most of the pet stores including petco
and petsmart dont even do these things, im glad its not a PETA production and its someone
who actually cares about the animals recording this video