Reptile & Amphibian Forums

hi all, i don't come here very often since my gecko died 2 years ago, but i thought i would throw this out there. i was on a bit of a campaign against petco for a while and i still think they're horrible. but i went to this semi-new petstore today called Pet Extreme and it totally freaked me out.
in one gigantic cage they had a bunch of iguanas, chinese water dragons, chameleons, and tokay geckos with a dead dragon in the back corner. that bugged me a bit, mixing species like that, but then i went to the smaller cages... in one small cage they had 3 normal juvi leos, 1 sub juvi albino leo, anoles, house geckos, long tailed lizards and 2 other geckos which i couldnt identify offhand. they weren't eyelid geckos and were larger than the leos. 2 of the leos also had recently broken tails. the leos had been there for a while and looked a little underfed and stressed out with no moist hide. hardly any hide at all really.
anyway, this kind of thing really bugs me. these are large, well financed pet stores and they cant take the time or effort to do something simple like proper housing correctly.
anyway, i'm conside4ring going to the sacramento reptile show, anyone else?
pics of a bad petco

Ugh.. I'm sick and tired of seeing/hearing these Pet store horror stories.. I just wish that they would hire people who are dedicated and passionate about their job.. Fortunately the PetCo here takes good care of their animals and the majority of the people who work there know what their talking about. The whole problem lies within the staff, because like you said they have they money to provide what the animals need.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm actually in Texas so I won't be at the Sacramento Reptile Expo, lol. Take care.

-Britney

That's illegal, its animal cruelty.

If you feel strongly about it, and i bet you do judging by your webpage. I would contact your local animal cruelty office
in Bc, canada its called SPCA i dunno what it'd be there.

But even if they can't do anything, its a start
and my hat goes off to you for caring

One way to make them listen is to go after their customers. Hand out printed-out forms with the pictures you took describing the abuse near their store, or post them to poles around their location. Put them on cars parked in their parking lot. As someone already pointed out, you should call your local humaine society. And definately go tell everyone who works at that store you're going to do all this (even if your not), and find and tell the manager that you have a website documenting their inccorect treatment of the reptiles. They don't want a bad rep. Who's going to buy animals from a store when they're unhealthy/abused? Horrible.
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Here is a sad pic of a adult blizzard that I took with my camera phone. It is kinda fuzzy but you can tell how bad it was. We usually go to a different petco and they have great reptiles and people who know how to care for them. I just hate it when I see stuff like this. I told the manager and he said they would take a look. I really hope they will but I won't go back to that Petco.

thanks all for replying/reading. there are a few good petco's out there, the problem is when you go to any petco, that just supports the bad ones too.
i came up with an idea a while back called herp watchers. i made up a checklist that anyone could print out and take to their local petco or petsmart. you fill it out, have an employee sign it and mail it to their main office. if enough people around the country started doing it they might almost take notice. but i was too involved with other things at the time to really work on it. if anyone here wants to give that a try, i would participate.

eric

Omg.. That picture makes me want to cry..... That poor thing..

I cant stand that. His tail's all small and he has little not normalbumps! I cant help feeling sorry for the little guy. Hope hes okay.

I'm also quite familiar with the lack of proper husbandry evident in the Modesto Petco. I think the main problem with this particular branch is that they hire almost anybody who submits a job application. As a result, a lot of the kids who work at this Petco have very little (if any) experience with "exotic" animals and/or don't really care about their wellfare.

On a different note, I'll most likely be attending the Sacramento expo.

I HATE Petco! When I got my first leo every employee gave me different answers on how to care for it. I went today and there were 3 leos..none seemed to be in good shape. It looked like 2 had lost their tails and they'd grown back and one was missing its front left leg. There arent really any hiding places..they have one but its so you can see them inside and I'm sure there isnt enough heat. It makes me angry.