What are pet stores telling people?

[Kaorte]

I'm really close to telling the manager I will do a free training class on reptiles for employees and maybe once every couple of months for the buyers.

Hey, why not. If you are willing to volunteer your time to help educate people then that is great.

We can only do so much to try and get the chain pet stores to change their ways.

[snakedork]

its kind of a double edged sword. Most people don't exactly want standard of care because it would set a standard of enclosure size. This could be a problem because everyone seems to have a difference of opinion on enclosure size. If you are talking a zoo size enclosure for a ball owning and breeding snakes would be unpractical or impossible for anyone who didn't have a building to do so. Some people say that you can put a snake in a tub and some people believe a hatchling ball python needs to be in a 55 gallon aquarium. And thats just ball pythons. Now you have boas, which have several different sub species all requiring slightly different care. This could go on and on and on. just for snakes. then you get into lizards. It much easier to say what a dog needs due to the fact all dogs need food water and shots. Same with cats.

[southb]

Thats right on the money, but the main thing is a ball python thats eating shouldn't need any extra calcium. I've never heard anyone say that bal pythons needed uv light until then either lol.

[JeffJ]

Thats right on the money, but the main thing is a ball python thats eating shouldn't need any extra calcium. I've never heard anyone say that bal pythons needed uv light until then either lol.

well that's because we are informed

1) Calcium nutrients comes from the bone they digest.

2) Nocturnal animals do not need any UV light. Only light they need is ambient day light so they have a day night cycle.

[angie7]

I use to work at PetsMart a few years ago as a manager and before that an employee for a few years so in total about 5 years. To be honest with you, there is no, ZERO, education on the animals. I mostly focused on the speciality dept. (fish, reptiles, etc.) and there were so many idiots that worked there. They had no clue about anything yet the store would hire them anyways I had to correct many mistakes but unfornuately it was after the animals death. I asked a lady at petsmart just a few weeks about about their baby bp's. She has no clue where they came from, if they were vet checked, if they had eaten I can only imagine what she said to the people that bought those poor babies They need to start educating these people with some type of class. It's the animals that truly suffer.

[PythonBreeder]

This is the reason as soon as I'm old enough I am going to get a job at petco. To educate people on reptiles...... the RIGHT way.

[joshn6805]

typical large chain pet stores, they care nothing about the profit off the animal. they sell most of the time unhealthy animals that are ridiculously overpriced. i try not to look at the snake section when i go in petsmart because i feel like i have to do something to help the poor little guy.

[Whitney]

I completely understand where you are coming from. Unfortunately wrong information is given out by pet store employees all of the time. Most pet stores don't require any testing of knowledge before sending thier employees out on the floor. The only thing we can really hope is that the person purchasing the animal does a bit of research before they purchase. My fiance and I have become friends with our local pet store employees and sometimes help them out with questions they have. It has helped both my fiance and I as well as the pet store. Sometimes we have to do a bit of research on the questions we don't know the answers to. Once we have an answer we share the information with the pet store. It's great.

[dizzy]

I'm really close to telling the manager I will do a free training class on reptiles for employees and maybe once every couple of months for the buyers.

If they would allow you to do that that would be fantastic. I would love to do that at my local petco.

[rabernet]

Petsmart and Petco HAVE to follow the corporate care sheets. They can't go outside the company "way". I dropped off quite a few BP.net caresheets at my Petsmart that many of the employees loved, but they said that they "disappeared" one day. I'm sure Management tossed them.

However, they do give my number out to people with questions about ball pythons and geckos. They even ask me to sex the ball pythons every time I'm in there. The employees KNOW at this particular location that the information is less than ideal, but their hands are tied. That doesn't stop them from asking me questions anyway (and paging me when I'm in the store shopping if they happen to have a customer interested in a ball python at the same time, or tracking me down and dragging the customer to me to answer all their questions! LOL).