Man I can't tell you the number of times I've had my managers need to come over while I was working at a big box shop as the lead in the fish section. It was a mixed bag of them backing me up on my refusals to sell or just taking over to catch the fish that I refused to sell, but never calling me out on it.
I think the worst part was leaving knowing that all the new hires would never be trained well enough to do that sort of thing because of how the company changed gears with a buyout a few years ago. Somehow the employee training on small animals became even worse. =/
As a former vet tech.... a lot of the issue I would see is people not giving an animal its due worth. "It's just an outdoor cat" "It's just a lizard" "I can just go buy another hamster" "It's just a feeder goldfish".
There's thankfully more of a movement now where pets are becoming more like family and getting better quality of life. But for some families it's still something like a collectible or just something you're supposed to just have. Fish, rodents and the lower end reptiles have always suffered from the idea of being replaceable pets. I've heard just as much terrible care advice from big box shops as well as smaller mom and pop shops over the years. But dedicated shop owners or breeders have been making small changes over the years.
I do joke about how having my leopard geckos or ball pythons has been like potato chips. And it admittedly can be easy to get caught up in things. I hope not to end up having an issue where my collection suffers because of me. I've moved to keeping better feeding and weight logs now that I've moved into breeding a few and adding to my numbers. I keep my partner informed about potential choices of mine or just chatter about how an animal has been even though he can barely tell half of them apart. Little things so that I don't fall down that slope of owning without caring.
And as Mr. Misha mentioned there's the age to take into account. The number of people who don't realize how long a goldfish can actually live.... or a ball python. I still have my first ball python. Amusingly enough, someone actually thought I had a human child because of the way I was talking about him one day. "My 20 year old", "He's being fussy again but that's just how he gets sometimes." No... I was talking about my ball python. It's one of the things I do hope more people do take into account.
And while I do enjoy keeping and breeding, I do have to admit it has been frustrating with the number of people just jumping in and wanting to breed immediately. It's like the weird backyard dog or cat breeding trends, Someone sees how much one of the pricy breeds they want is...and decide to "make a few bucks". The number of people I'd see who would buy something like a bengal cat pair and then immediately complain about all of the natural things that breeding cats will do... or not realize how much vaccines and food and vet care or registering cost.
Now this thread has me thinking of that one meme... "Are we the baddies?" and hoping I'm not just trying to make excuses for myself, lol.
Reply With Quote