pet store loyalty

[angllady2]

On the subject of pet store employee ignorance, I heard a Petco employee once telling a prospective buyer that ferrets are vegetarians!

The sad truth is, 99.9% of petstore employees are ignorant of how to care for the majority of the animals they sell. Many are right out of high school, and these stores tell them little to nothing on proper care. Since almost all pet stores have a "sell,sell,sell" attitude, even those who run them don't know or care to know how to properly care for the animals. After all, if someone buys a pet, and heaven forbid KNOWS how to care for it, that animal will live for years, and how is the store supposed to make money that way??

But, if the store can sell them all kinds of expensive junk they don't need, and the animals still dies within a few months, the buyer will be back for another animal, as well as all the latest and most expensive stuff to "correct" the problems that killed the first, and so on and so on.

I made the mistake of buying a baby BP from a chain store. It was tiny and cute, and although it was being sold as a normal, pictures here lead me to believe it was actually a pastel. We got it home, and things seemed to be going well. Then I noticed it NEVER came out of the water bowl. And because I used that compressed coconut stuff, I never saw the mites in the water. It wasn't until they were so bad they got all over me when I picked it up that I knew something was wrong. Off to the same store I went, and came home with a little blue bottle of "mite killer" I sprayed the tank and the snake every three days, but the mites never went away completely. I was frustrated and upset, but didn't know what to do.

Then my husband and I had to leave for a week on a family emergency, and our animal sitter we told not to mess with the snakes for fear of something going wrong. When we got home, the poor thing was literally CRAWLING with mites, you couldn't even see the snake anymore. I sprayed and sprayed it and it's tank, but by the next morning it was gone. The mites had just eaten it alive. I was so upset, and felt so guilty. I went to the store and asked what the used for mites, and was shown the same stuff I had purchased. When I told them it didn't work, I was informed I had not used it right, because it killed the ones the store got in one treatment. I followed the directions on the bottle, so I am convinced they lied.

Of course, too little too late I found this place, and after a few weeks of study, I decided to try again. I got my first two from 8-ball, and have added six more since then. I've had no problems at all, I keep them in tubs so their habitat wasn't very expensive. I use Provent -a- Mite once a month as a safety measure, and all my babies are happy and healthy. I won't ever trust a chain petstore again.

Gale