Stupid BP Owner

[KingWheatley]

Why are you trying to introduce your snake to different animals?

Here we go again with the stress...

Everytime I read one of your threads, it seems like something is happening to Wheatley. Something that's not supposed to be happening. Maybe you should leave him alone for a bit.

I think maybe you need to re-read what I wrote carefully. I didn't know the dog was in the other room until I heard him.

[KingWheatley]

Which is why I was meaning to wait for any interaction, if ever, would be when the puppy was in a calmer and more predictable stage of life. Obviously this will not happen at all anymore. I didn't intend on introducing the dog to the snake then, and was a complete lapse of observation on my part, which almost turned into a quickly fatal encounter for Wheatley...

Ive seen snake owners trusting their cats around their snakes, and that is not something I would trust at all. Most cats get into unpredictable moods and seem to have psychotic moments out of no where....

^^^^^^^^^^

[Jeanne]

And you may want to be careful about letting a snake on the ground at all with possibility U may take your eye off for just a second...alot of cabinets have nooks n crannys snakes cn get into between then and along floors, that you will not easily get them out of..

Sent from my LG-V500 using Tapatalk

[KingWheatley]

And you may want to be careful about letting a snake on the ground at all with possibility U may take your eye off for just a second...alot of cabinets have nooks n crannys snakes cn get into between then and along floors, that you will not easily get them out of..

Sent from my LG-V500 using Tapatalk

Right. I had my eyes on him the whole time, which likely saved Wheatley the fate of being a chew toy...

had I not reacted as fast as I had, had I been any further away...

I shudder at the very thought...

[LightningPython]

I once showed my dog a bit of shed so he can sniff it and so I could see how he would react to it. He tried to eat it. Thats the last time he was going near anything that smelled of snake!

If I were you, I wouldn't get your Wheatley out for a couple of days. Just to let him relax a little. It wouldn't do anything to his temperament, if your afraid of him becoming aggressive, it would do him some good to have a bit of 'me time'

[PythonBabes]

Okay, so you didn't know the dog was in the house. I personally know how rambunctious and unpredictable puppies are I have 3 dogs, two off them are under the age of 2. That doesn't excuse the fact that your snake could have been seriously injured.
You need to make sure your snake is safe at all times. Whenever Karma is out, the door is shut sometimes locked, and all tight spaces are closed away and all other animals are on the other side of the door. Honestly, the bottom line is I don't think you're responsible enough for a snake. If you wanted a pet that you could hold and play with all the time and not get stressed and all that, maybe some type of rodent would have been better. Not that I would want any kind of animal going through what Wheatley is...

And on top of that, there are people here trying to help you and it seems like all you want to do is justify your actions and tell everyone what your opinion is. Oh well. I've seen it happen, owners think they're right all the time and then when the animal gets hurt they start trying to take advice when they should have been doing that in the first place.

[KingWheatley]

I once showed my dog a bit of shed so he can sniff it and so I could see how he would react to it. He tried to eat it. Thats the last time he was going near anything that smelled of snake!

If I were you, I wouldn't get your Wheatley out for a couple of days. Just to let him relax a little. It wouldn't do anything to his temperament, if your afraid of him becoming aggressive, it would do him some good to have a bit of 'me time'

Oh believe me. I'm also going to give him an extra day before I feed him. I don't know how true this is, but I've heard feeding time is a bit stressful for the snake as well...??? So I'm just going to clean his water bowl like i always do and leave him be for today.

[KingWheatley]

Okay, so you didn't know the dog was in the house. I personally know how rambunctious and unpredictable puppies are I have 3 dogs, two off them are under the age of 2. That doesn't excuse the fact that your snake could have been seriously injured.
You need to make sure your snake is safe at all times. Whenever Karma is out, the door is shut sometimes locked, and all tight spaces are closed away and all other animals are on the other side of the door. Honestly, the bottom line is I don't think you're responsible enough for a snake. If you wanted a pet that you could hold and play with all the time and not get stressed and all that, maybe some type of rodent would have been better. Not that I would want any kind of animal going through what Wheatley is...

And on top of that, there are people here trying to help you and it seems like all you want to do is justify your actions and tell everyone what your opinion is. Oh well. I've seen it happen, owners think they're right all the time and then when the animal gets hurt they start trying to take advice when they should have been doing that in the first place.

So... Let me get this straight.

You don't think I'm responsible enough to own a snake... Because an accident (and the first of such) nearly happened which I owned up for my own lapse of observation and assumption that my roommate does what he ALWAYS does (which is put the dog in the backyard when he leaves for work)....

Hm.... Something tells me you have your heart in the right place, but you are making some terrible quick assumptions about this. First off, Wheatley is healthy, "happy" in every other regard except for this event. I say happy in quotes, because happy for a snake is more like content, I suppose. He eats fine. Sheds fine. Poops fine. Isn't sick. Isn't overly tense. Doesn't cower away from me.

I have every right to my opinion as much as anyone else is. If someone wants to share theirs, they are more than welcome to. But that doesn't mean I have to roll over and accept their opinion. Same as yours. Works both ways, sweetheart.

And I justify that snakes have emotions and I do argue this quite fiercely, because it was misunderstood. Snakes have moods like any other animal. Thusly, emotion does have a play in a Snake's brain. Yes, it's not as complex as "love" and "hate," actual "happiness" and "sadness." And that was the beginning of the argument that has happened across my many threads. Much else has been said, where the particular users who have offered their opinion/information/advise that I have completely shut out because of their previous interaction with me.

[voodoolamb]

As the title suggests... This post is about a very stupid Ball python owner.

I am referring to myself, of course.

Wheatley, my late June/Early august hatchling I bought from petsmart, is, at this point, quite used to being handled frequently, and has gotten into a normal routine.

Why handle such a young snake frequently???

All things good on that end, I decided I'd introduce a new element into the equation. Getting him used to the surroundings outside his tank. He knows my room well enough, but nothing else.

Why? The area out side of your room is inhabited by a dog. Dogs are predators. Little bitty snakes don't like predators so taking him out where there is predator smell just doesn't seem like a good idea in the first place.

So while I was waiting on my spaghetti to boil, I put him on the floor to explore a little bit, unaware of what is about to happen...

So you had him out while cooking? So you couldn't give him your undivided attention.

And you just put him down, in an unsecured room.

Wheatley is an adorable, well-behaved, calm little Ball python. He is always on constant supervision when he's up and about, and doesn't venture very far from me.

What I didn't take into mind was my roommate's VERY hyper golden retriever puppy... Who I didn't know was actually inside, and not outside as he normally is. This puppy is almost full grown, but he's still tearing up everything he can get his jaws on. As soon as I hear the sound of mad puppy claws dashing against the hardwood floor on the other side of the wall was as soon as I tried to launch forward and grab Wheatley.

Shouldn't you have, ya know, checked where the 70 ish lb wolf descendant was before allowing your juvenile snake to free roam in the dogs area of the house?

In slow-motion detail, this is exactly what happened:

Dog claw sounds > Wheatley immediately rears and coils into a spring > Me going to grab Wheatley > Dog's face is close to Wheatley//Wheatley does a strike and misses because he's not close enough > Dog is dumb and doesn't notice it still coming forward > I panic, still in the process of quickly trying to grab Wheatley and turn that motion into a backhand, trying to get him away from Wheatley, who is being HIGHLY aggressive.

While that stopped the dog for that moment, it did NOT stop Wheatley, who evidently thinks he's a big and tough bad boy, and started to come after the dog with another strike. I picked him up. He was wide-bodied and very tense, so I tried to let him calm down on his own by standing up with him high enough away from the dog.

The dog, by the way, was completely unaffected by me smacking him, and started to jump up on me, scratching at me with his claws. Still convinced that Wheatley was a toy. From my hand Wheatley did another strike, this time he almost launched himself out of my hand.

Little dude meant business and wasn't going to calm down on his own, so I broke his line of sight with my hand and gently forced him to ball himself up. A trick another YouTuber used (HLC Pythons, I think) I thought was kind of cruel, because it takes the fight or flight response and turns fight into flight. Not knowing any other trick for breaking a python's focus from the offending party, I resorted to an action that in my eyes was not only stupid, but really ices the cake of this whole event of terrifying and possibly traumatizing my baby ball python.

Forcing the snake to ball up is the least offensive of this whole adventure.

After that, he remained in a ball for a few minutes before responding to me. I put him around my neck, thinking the heat and "shelter" of my hair would calm him down. He stretched out and kept his eye on the dog from my shoulder, and the dog listened to my "sit" and "stay" commands while I finished making my pasta.

This here completely ticks me off and is animal cruelty IMHO. You sat there with the snake around your neck, the snake terrifying dog still present in the immediate area, while you finished making your pasta!?!?

I don't even have the words... ugh. How about returning your snake to the security of his enclosure and getting him away from the dog?

Your hair a shelter? Seriously? Have you any idea of a ball python's natural behavior? In no way could a pony tail be a shelter for a bp...

Pretty sure your BP's corticosterone levels shot through the roof here. Mine practically are just reading this.

I went straight upstairs and checked Wheatley all over. Looking for any signs of him being hurt. He seemed fine so I sprayed his enclosure down and put him in my lap while i ate, waiting for the tank'a warm spot to warm back up from being sprayed and for the humidity to return to the comfortable level. Wheatley ended up falling asleep on my lap until a I picked him up. He wasn't tense anymore, and seemed to be back to the usual BP behavior, so I figured the event wasn't at all associated with myself or his home.

I would bet my kidney that the temperature and humidity level of a recently sprayed down tank is far more suitable an environment than your lap.

I had intended upon socializing him to the puppy once the puppy had reached a stage where he wasn't so excitable, but now that seems impossible.

That the idea of socializing your snake to the dog at all even crossed your mind...

It certainly isn't necessary to socialize a ball python, but I thought it would encourage my roommate that snakes aren't evil if the ball python got along with everyone and not just me. As of right now my roommate thinks I'm a freak who can talk to snakes because I was able to tell when Wheatley wasn't ok to touch. (A snake's body language is easy to read... I don't actually talk to snakes.... In that sense, I mean. I do talk to Wheatley, but it's useless babble since snakes are evidently deaf....)

Yeah. So smacking the roommate's dog over an incident with the snake isn't going to win him over to the snake fan club. If it were my dog we would having major words.

I don't understand most of this. It just doesn't make a lot of sense. I don't think you understand snakes as well as you think you do.

Snakes aren't social cuddle buddy pets. Your posts keep coming off as that you are making a lot of choices that are in your interest, things for your enjoyment of your pet, rather than what is in his best interest.

It really seems as if you are on a path of 'loving Wheatley to death'.

[LightningPython]

Oh believe me. I'm also going to give him an extra day before I feed him. I don't know how true this is, but I've heard feeding time is a bit stressful for the snake as well...??? So I'm just going to clean his water bowl like i always do and leave him be for today.

As far as I know, feeding time isn't stressful. Do you feed him in the viv or take him out? I would just give him his food in the viv to give him as little stress as possible.
Remember to leave him for a week after feeding