I never made the claim that corn snakes will prepare you for having a Hognose, in fact nothing will! If reading and studying adequately prepared you for the experience of keeping a less than easy snake, then I have to ask why we insist on keeping animals in captivity and are not happy with just seeing them in the wild? The answer is that nothing beats the personal experience.

Along the same lines, choosing between starting off with a beginner snake or just relying on reading, I don't see how anyone could argue that starting off with a beginner snake is not worth the time. I don't know, perhaps I am the only one who holds the lives of animals in such high regard that I don't believe in taking unnecessary risks?

I would also like to point out that you cannot trust people to do all of the reading that is necessary to prepare them for keeping a Hognose. This has been very apparent to me over the last three or four years on this forum. Once they get the animal, most people will rarely take the time to look up any more information UNTIL there is a problem. Even then most people take the easy way out and just post the same questions over and over again on this forum instead of looking to the literature.

Those are the reasons why I recommend starting off with another snake, although this person in particular should be experienced enough to handle a Hognose.
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...the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it."
Aldo Leopold (1938)

"Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us."
Calvin and Hobbes (Scientific Progress Goes 'Boink', 1991)

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