Who's responsible?

I voted that the customer ultimatly is the most responsible party. However I feel all of the people involved play a part in the aminals care. Before I found the forums I thought that the people that worked at petstores had a working knowledge of the care and supplies needed to maintain the animals they sold.

I personally would purchase or check out books about what ever animal I ultimatly brought home

I agree with PP, I think its not only the customer, I feel everyone is at fault. If the corporate office would educate the individual stores, who educated the individual employees these animals would be in better shape by the time it actually gets into the customers hands, however, whos expecting an often 17yr old to study and learn all there is to know about each and every animal the store has.. come on, scorpians, spiders, snakes (all different species), beardeds, geckos, frogs, fish (both salt and fresh).. thats alot to expect from anyone, and to make the mix worse what if that associate only likes cats and thats why they work at a pet store, that makes it even worse..

Ultimatly it is then up to the customer to be properly educated on the animal they have chosen. Honestly alot of people dont really get what they are getting into until they are in it either and that falls back onto the customer... Its all in the way you look at it really.

In my opinion it is the customer; even though I know from having tables at reptile shows that many times a purchase of a normal ball python is an impulse buy. I try to discourage the buy, provide care sheets if the person in uninformed and strongly encourage him/her to go on-line to do reseach before (yes I provide the link to this great forum :D) . I've lost many sales this way . . . .

I do agree that corporate/management has responsiblity to properly train their emloyees, but the lack of sales staff training is not unique to the reptile industry- the results are just more devistating.

This is a toughie. At first, I want to say that the buyer should've researched things beforehand. But personally, when I was much younger, I had a pet iguana. I was told by the store that heat rocks were fine to use.. I used one and my iggy ended up burning onto it and dying. As I was told incorrect info (this was back around 1991..) from both books and the store, I don't feel like this was my fault.
Now, with the internet and more widespread knowledge, stores should not be giving erraneous, harmful info. I would take it on a case-by-case basis when forming my opinion on who's at fault with an animal dying from improper care. If someone comes onto this site or another good site, and refuses to follow correct advice, and the snake suffers.. that is the owner's fault 100%.

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Originally Posted by Ginevive

This is a toughie. At first, I want to say that the buyer should've researched things beforehand. But personally, when I was much younger, I had a pet iguana. I was told by the store that heat rocks were fine to use.. I used one and my iggy ended up burning onto it and dying. As I was told incorrect info (this was back around 1991..) from both books and the store, I don't feel like this was my fault.
Now, with the internet and more widespread knowledge, stores should not be giving erraneous, harmful info. I would take it on a case-by-case basis when forming my opinion on who's at fault with an animal dying from improper care. If someone comes onto this site or another good site, and refuses to follow correct advice, and the snake suffers.. that is the owner's fault 100%.

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Jen--My first reptile was an Iguana, too. I was 13 when I bought him: also with a heat rock. I suspect that my iguana died of some sort of vitamin deficiency (I even brought him to the vet and they gave him vitamin E shots, but it didn't help). That was 10 years ago, and whenever I think about that iguana, I just wince to think about how uninformed I was. The pet stores and the iguana book I bought didn't really give me much information. My mother, who really didn't want me to have a reptile in the first place, felt I was responsible enough to care for it myself. I wasn't.

Iguanas are an even tougher case than something like a BP. They require a lot of specialized care conditions (UV lighting, high humidity, hot and cool spots in the cage, a variety of fruit and vegetables, enough vitamins) and they grow to be large and sometimes aggressive lizards. I don't think the pet stores emphasize this enough when someone like I was, a 13-year-old kid, comes in to buy a cute little green lizard.

I think that when it comes to younger kids purchasing reptiles (or -any- pet), that pet stores should demand parental involvement and provide adequate and up-to-date information. When one gets into his/her late teens and beyond, I think that responsibility for research into proper care falls to the customer. The internet and access to it, in addition to many websites with information are far more prevalent now than they were 10 years ago. There's no reason for someone capable of doing research about a pet to be uninformed these days.

Hello everyone,

I voted that the customer was most responsible for the animal's demise.

I'd like to say a few things since we are breeders/retailers. We not only have a moderate to large collection of captive bred and breeding reptiles but we also have a retail store that is open 6 days a week. This store currently (and for the past 8 years) has catered only to the reptile customer.

Celia and myself help nearly every customer in the door and we have since we opened, which is VERY time consuming among all of our other responsibilities to our business. We also issue a basic care sheet with every live (non-feeder) animal purchase. We still have customers who take a perfectly healthy animal home and kill it with improper care and ignorance. This makes us very unhappy as we take a lot of time to help the customer and insure that all of our saleable inventory is healthy. What does one do in this situation? Unfortunately, more times than not, a customer blames the health problem on the store they purchased it from instead of their ignorance of what a live animal's life requires.

In times like these I am viewed as this evil store owner because I think that some people can only learn a lesson with negative reinforcement. If there is an "impulse buyer" in my store I usually refuse to sell them the animal that day. It is sad that as a business owner my ethics make me more of a dictator but that is the way I think it has to be. Here is a story...

I recently sold a hatchling Corn Snake to a lady and her child. They were in a real hurry and didn't seem to listen to anything we had to say. I sold them the Corn Snake and (mostly because they had other snakes at home so I figured they had at least SOME care knowledge) NOTHING ELSE and also gave them a care sheet. The next day I get a call from the child saying that his new snake was dead. When I asked what type of substrate he had this tiny hatchling snake on he replied "CEDAR SHAVINGS". In my past experience cedar takes a while to harm a large snake but not a tiny hatchling and especially not with a brand new bag of cedar. I told him this then he hung up. I waited 5 seconds and his mother called. She was extremely upset about the situation. At that point I made a choice... I'd rather teach this irresponsible person a lesson than have a repeat customer, that is how important the animal's well being is to us. So I told her that I gave her a care sheet on which it states to not use cedar shavings as they can be toxic. She was shocked that I wasn't going to replace the snake and threatened to call the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and report our horrible business practices. I then told her that when it comes to an animals health and well being, the customer is not always right! I assured her that the BBB report would make no difference and that the snake would not have died if she had taken some time to educate herself with the material that we provided her. She was furious and assured me that I would NEVER get her business again and I told her that I appreciated that.:colbert:

See I was the devil to that lady, in that instance, but do you think they are still keeping their pets on cedar?

I think that there are a lot of hobbyists and breeders who really bad mouth retailers without realizing that retailers are responsible for most new hobbyists entering the business. Someone on the first page of this thread said that they saw their first Ball Python in a PetCo but didn't purchase it. Instead they went home and did their research and now have a decent collection of ball pythons with commercial caging and racks. We have to give credit to the retailers who hook us all on this expensive, addictive and sometimes lucrative hobby!

Hope this wasn't too long...

Absolutely excellent post Sean!

I'll stand by what I said earlier in this thread. It's the customer's/purchaser's ulimate responsibility. It's easier to blame the store or the person who sold you the snake, etc. It's far harder to face the fact that you purchased a living creature that you did not learn about first, you did not set it up properly or do the things to ensure it's wellbeing. Part of that might well be deciding who you will buy a snake from in the first place whether that is a good breeder or a good store with responsible staff.

I think the purchasing decisions you make are only a small part of what your learning curve should be before you taken on the responsiblity of a snake or any living creature that's dependent on you.

The customer should educate themselves before getting any animal. That is something I seriously believe, it's getting to the point where it's always someone elses responsibility to make sure that the consumer is ready for something.

I miss good old common sense :(

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Originally Posted by Laooda

"and with all good intentions listens to an employee and takes all they say to heart..."

I think you misunderstood me... I wasn't implying that a new owner had any indifference or malice towards their new purchase.

I think that ideally, an educated staff coupled with a customer that is willing to self educate is the best scenario. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

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Hey, sorry, that post wasn't directed at you, Laooda. I actually thought you were making a good point by saying that most people on here are animal people and that it's good to also see this from other perspectives, and I wanted to expand on that.

I suppose that working with non-animal people on a daily basis, I start to sympathize with them. But maybe they just need to start thinking outside the box.

Sean, that was a well told anecdote that happens way too often. The parent-buying-for-child story is probably THE biggest cause of improper animal care that I see. The kid begs and pleads with his parents that he will never be happy again unless he has a [insert animal type here]. The parent doesn't really care about the animal, but wants to indulge or satisfy the kid. Unfortunately, most young kids aren't used to having responsibilities and/or are unable to care for animals themselves.

But here's the thing: the kids who receive these animals will also be learning about them, and learning to respect herps - which is definitely a good thing. So where do you draw the line? :confused:

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Originally Posted by icygirl

Sean, that was a well told anecdote that happens way too often. The parent-buying-for-child story is probably THE biggest cause of improper animal care that I see. The kid begs and pleads with his parents that he will never be happy again unless he has a [insert animal type here]. The parent doesn't really care about the animal, but wants to indulge or satisfy the kid. Unfortunately, most young kids aren't used to having responsibilities and/or are unable to care for animals themselves.

But here's the thing: the kids who receive these animals will also be learning about them, and learning to respect herps - which is definitely a good thing. So where do you draw the line? :confused:

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Well I've got 4 kids so I've been down the "mommy PLEASEEEEEEEEE" route loads of times. Granted I'm definitely an "animal person" but the line in our home is pretty firm. If Mike or I are not willing to back one of the kids up fully on the care of the animal they want, and they aren't willing to do the learning first about that animal, then they cannot have it - no matter how much fuss they put up.

Our kids have snakes all around them but when Luke and Beth both asked for their own "personal" snakes we still made them go through the following -

- research online on the species of snake and it's care
- keeping their school grades to a pre-determined level to show a responsible attitude
- contribution of half of the cost of their snake
- assistance with the rat colony care
- direct care of their snake and it's enclosure
- a sit down talk about the future and an agreement about their snake if they could not care for them at some point (they are teens and need to think about college and so forth and what that means for their snakes)

Even Michael at 6 is expected to help care for Buddy his snake and help with the rat colony that feeds Buddy. As he matures he'll be expected to do more and more of that care by himself.

It's all fine and well to think that animals help teach our kids, but that line should be drawn when the animal is suffering for that life lesson.

Another example - Luke is 16, he'd like a big spider. I am sadly and stupidly terrified of large spiders. Since I cannot back Luke up and help care for this type of pet, he knows he cannot have one until he has his own home someday. Did he like this decision? Nope not one bit, but he understands the rule about animals deserving care even if their owner is not home so he's accepted that on this, he must wait.