Stressed out ball python at PetCo

[BeelzeBall.]

I think secretly they do it on purpose so you'll feel bad for the animal and buy it.

[butterballpython]

I think secretly they do it on purpose so you'll feel bad for the animal and buy it.

^This.^

I bought a crestie in really rough shape from PetCo once just to get her out of there. She has a very obvious case of MBD, and was housed with two males. She was nearly grown and had been there since she was tiny. I also got her two eggs. One of them hatched, so I have her daughter, too. She ate supplemental calcium like it was gecko food for the first few weeks and sat under a UVB bulb (cresties normally do not take supplemental UVB), so she must have really needed it. Now that she's as well as she can be, she'll be re-homed in the near future.

Yes, I know the arguments against buying from a place like that. It was a weak moment, and I couldn't handle seeing her deteriorate.

[Tash]

I have been to really good Petcos and really bad Petcos. I think it all depends on the people working there. However in my experience people are not trained as well as they should be so unless the individual working there is passionate about educating themselves, they have no idea what they are doing, and have to go off the bad information from other uneducated people working there. I won't shop at Petco anymore for my own reasons, that I won't get into here. But I do feel like they should remain a supply store and stop selling animals. They make it too easy for impulse buyers to pick up these animals before doing any prior research and are often fed bad/wrong info. But I don't see them stopping in-store sales on small pets any time soon. I too have felt the urge to buy from them, reptiles that didn't look too well, but I can't justify supporting the neglect with my money only to have them continue doing it. Purchasing these animals we feel sorry for only gives them the incentive to bring more in, and the vicious cycle continues.

Too many pet store, pets, poorly housed and sickly looking for new homes on Craigslist.



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[MarkS]

While I'm sure there are some really bad pet stores out there, the vast majority of them do a pretty good job, it's just that the bad ones get all the press. Also, just because someone says that it's a bad pet store, that doesn't mean they actually are. There are plenty of internet experts out there who believe that just because someone keeps their animals differently then what their face book groups says that they should, that they are horrible people who shouldn't be allowed to have animals. This couldn't be further from the truth. These are actually fairly forgiving animals that can adapt to many different keeping styles and still thrive.

Frankly, most of us would probably not even be in the hobby if we hadn't seen a reptile in a pet store in the first place. I still remember buying my first corn snake in a pet store back in 1978 and discovering that WOW, these things were WAY easier to keep then the wild caught garter snakes that I had attempted to keep before. If it hadn't been for that, I probably would have given up on reptiles entirely.

[ayesha1102]

I bought my little pretzel(my normal ball python) from a pet shop here in England. I was really comfortable buying my snake from them as the pet shop was a family run business and they actually started out as snake breeders. They still keep in contact with me to see how the snake is going!

I find it so sad when I see mistread babies!