Why Don't People Know How To Do Research? *bit of a rant*

It's sad how commonplace neglect due to ignorance or laziness is. I've been living in a home for a while where a room mate (Let's call him H) has been responsible for taking care of a couple animals, almost ALL of which have died from lack of care. He bought himself a tegu at a reptile show we all went to, and seemed genuinely excited about having the pet (and very much liked the idea of a dog tame adult, as much as I told him that it took LOTS of time). H spent the first couple of weeks trying to feed him daily, change his water and tank, and do some gentle handling. I had given H guidelines from general research on his setup, but gave him resources to figure it out on his own. Slowly and sadly I watched the enthusiasm die out, and eventually he ended up with a bone dry tank with a skeletal looking dried up dead lizard in it. Even sadder has been watching how he handled taking care of his parent's dogs. As a room mate and a person living in the house it's been MADDENING simply because he doesn't let them outside, feed them regularly, and as their health has declined they never once saw a vet. They should've been put down weeks ago, very old and their quality of life was just nauseating. One died last night from some sort of respiratory distress it seemed (lots of foam and bile came out of him when my boyfriend and I removed his body from the house, I'm no expert so it's just my best guess). The last one of the two is at the house now barking non stop and has no use of his back legs, not to mention he's down to skin and bones. I don't think he'll last much longer without the other one, they were together for 12 years.

The responsibility of a living thing really seems to escape a lot of people. They may "love" their animals, up until the work outweighs the return or it isn't fun anymore for them. Or the animal dies and they get to go out and get a brand new one to entertain themselves with for a couple weeks (It is -so hard- not to call it out on the forum sometimes). It's the most frustrating thing in the world, but generally you're only in a position to keep throwing information at them over and over and over again and just hope that something (anything!) will make it through.

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Originally Posted by Jazi

When faced with that dilemma, I have found a good solution is to look at all the places you've researched and make sure they've all been professionally written and see what gets repeated most often. I know I saw swings of 85-95F for the hot spot and 60-90 for the cool when I was looking into temperatures, but the majority of sites said 88-90, no warmer than 95, and that's what I stuck with. If there are just wildly different answers, I'll find someone who seems knowledgeable (like for instance, a very widely renowned breeder such as BHB, LLL, etc) and ask them if my proposed set-up is okay. I might even take a peek around a forum to see what people who commonly keep these pets have to say about this or that and take their advice with a grain of salt :gj:

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Bawha. How is someone supposed to know who is a "widely renowned breeder" if they're new to something? And honestly? Experience has taught me that just because someone is widely known, doesn't mean they do what is good for their animals.

My sister was given a corn snake that she doesn't feed as often as she should.. She's more into her fish. The snake was given to her by a friend who left to the army. She gets super defensive when I tell her she needs to feed him.. I told her to do research on corn snakes or rehome him... She said she'll just ask me but I don't know much about corn snakes... She's just being lazy.. Any suggestions on convincing her to rehome him?? Keep in mind she gets very defensive... Telling her she needs to find a home where someone will love him makes her feel like she doesn't care about him..

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Originally Posted by CherryPython

Some people are honestly beyond help. They ask for advice:
- they take the advice the wrong way
- you're telling them they're a bad owner
- they only want the sympathetic "oh I'm sure you're doing everything right, don't worry" answer

The list goes on. I really don't know why people bother to take into their hands a life they know sweet F.A about, and then aren't willing to make the effort to rectify things when it goes wrong due to their stupidity and they won't accept help purely because they get their knickers in a twist as soon as someone insinuates it could be their fault.

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Urrrrgh this. It's dogs, but on the same forum I was recently ripped to shreds for even daring to ask if someone's breeding dogs had been health tested or titled. Apparently that's implying that they're a backyard breeder (which they are) which implies that they shouldn't have bred their dogs (which they shouldn't have) which implies that they're bad owners and that's just mean and harsh and spam!!!!11!! =_= Oh, and it's heartless and cold to not allow animals with genetic defects to breed, so all of you with snakes that have some fairly heavy deformities and neurological issues that you're not breeding, you're apparently being cruel to this person. Ugh, it's like they're not even listening to themselves.

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I lookk towards small monitors like Ackie or Timor... But with my limited space cagin will be imposible... But sometimes desire to have amimal (Especially when You looking on that little bugger on reptile show) is VERY VERY tempting....

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I want a peach throat monitor so bad that I can hardly imagine getting another lizard... but with a tiny 1br that barely fits me, the cat, and the snake and a college schedule and budget for the next 3-4 years... that's not going to happen. Add my inexperience with lizards and well... I want to make sure that whatever animals I get don't end up like that girl's beardie.

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Bawha. How is someone supposed to know who is a "widely renowned breeder" if they're new to something? And honestly? Experience has taught me that just because someone is widely known, doesn't mean they do what is good for their animals.

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Well, after doing the first step and looking around various sites and sources and gleaning information from there, if you don't know what the bigger names are by then, you haven't looked hard enough. TSK, Constrictors Unlimited, Kingsnake, and here all came up within the first page or two of Google.

And oh I know... that's when you fall back on your common sense and gut instinct as well as following my rule of doing what gets repeated most often. Again, example is more into dogs and I might be shooting myself in the foot here with other dog-people on this site, but there's a big name ex-breeder, now dog trainer that I absolutely hate with a burning fiery passion because he's an advocate of literally hanging your dog 4ft off the ground by a choke collar until it passes out if it's handler aggressive. Obviously common sense and gut instinct would tell most people to stay as far away from this guy as possible, but he's actually got a huge business with his training techniques and was at least at one point considered the go-to guy for protection training. If it doesn't look or sound right, it probably isn't.

Some of my favorite phrases come to mind for this thread.

You can't fix stupid.

Common sense isn't very common any more.

Never get into an argument with a stupid person, they will drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.

Stupid people shouldn't breed. Or own pets.


You know, there has been a lot of hype in recent years about Zombies, undead people who crave the brains of the living ? A lot of people seems to think a zombie apocalypse is actually possible. Me ?? I think it already happened. How else to you explain the hordes of brainless idiots running around everywhere ?

Gale