Questions are one thing... everyone asks questions and everyone makes mistakes. It happens, nothing to worry about. I'm certainly not above asking questions that I can't answer myself with a quick look around the wonderful lifesaver that is Google.

But what spurred this on are a couple threads from a different site I frequent (non-herp). People going on this place and asking for advice, but not taking it if it'll cost them too much money or if they think it's too much effort, and then their animals suffer.

Someone recently lost their beardie after only having him for a month, said his cage was "too cold" although apparently they had 5 heat lamps lined up on the top, bathed him daily, had him on sand, and had no idea that he needed to eat anything other than crickets. Oh, and no thermostat, dimmer, or thermometers as "oh I just feel the sand to see if it's hot enough". Now, this person had been asking for advice all month and it was pretty obvious that the little guy was failing fast... sluggish, laying upside down all the time, not eating, breathing heavy... and multiple times people who are more versed in lizards than I told her exactly what needed to be done and gave her plenty of caresheets to read through. She didn't give a reason for not following their directions other than "oh, well he seems fine today". Now she wants another beardie as she claims something obviously must have been wrong before she got him.

Another person has a ksb and a corn which are both kept on sand, no thermometers, no hydrometers, no thermostats, and neither has eaten in the past 5 months. KSB has poo that "looks like rotten eggs". I urged them to get thermometers with probes and put them on aspen as I didn't know the full story when they first asked for advice, they switched the substrate and bought one thermometer. Found out the ksb's aspen is reaching levels of 100+ but the corn's got only a level of 72, which makes me think the corn has absolutely no heating element at all considering that's my apartment's ambient. I've urged them to get a thermostat over the past 2 weeks and they've still got no idea what I'm talking about even though I've linked them several times to hydrofarm and hermstat.

And finally an acquaintance of mine has an rtb (which she claims is a hypo jungle monster tail that she got for $100) that sheds weekly, is about 9 months old, eats one adult mouse weekly, and only 230g, which she used to cohab with another rtb and some bps. She had at one point ~11 or more, I think once she claimed she had 15-20, and all of them except the above mentioned rtb are now somehow "gone". She's changed her story several times... her parents released them because they thought they were venomous, her parents rehomed them, her parents sold them while she was on vacation... Did I mention that she had no concept of locking clips ("oh they won't move from their nice warm tank"), thermostat, and absolutely refuses to take her snakes to the vet when they're showing signs of not being okay? Oh, and you can't give her advice on what to do with her snake because you're just being mean and purposely upsetting her for no reason.

Of course, this is the same forum that someone had an outside kitten that was fairly obviously dying due to having gotten into poison that they refused to take to the vet but instead let suffer overnight until they found it dead in the morning. I don't know if I should say "at least it's not restricted to herps" or if I should just be appalled by the lack of understanding on how to be a good pet owner.

All of these are things that are pretty easy to solve if someone just looks into the pet they're getting before they buy it. It just really frustrates me to see these animals very obviously not doing well and being limited on what I can say on a forum, so I'm not allowed to outright say that it's largely the owner's fault. Especially when several people tell them what to do to make the symptoms stop happening and they continue on without following any of the advice given anyway. Maybe it's just because I've been raised in a city of farmers where you don't really have a choice whether or not you research the livestock before you get it, you have to provide specialized equipment whether you like it or not, and so I've never been without the mentality that that sort of thinking applies to pets as well. Sad to see not everyone sees it that way.