Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I'm a 38 y/o male considering adopting a beardie. I stopped in at Petsmart today to see what they had compared to online retailers and was surprized to see dragons for sale. I WAS SHOCKED. I've never taken care of a beardie but have read two books plus everything I can find online and I KNEW these dragons were being abused. Those poor babies. They were dehydrated and covered in feces. They had greens but they were dried out and sticking to the bowl. They jumped up and scratched on the glass like a call for help. Im just sick.

I hear ya man, bums me out too.
I had a leopard gecko and made sure everything was PERFECT for the little guy. Got him from a petstore. I should have known. Like you, I have read and read and studied beardies and geckos etc yet I just dont know any breeders, I was gunshy to try ordering a pet by mail etc etc. I gave in and purchased a pet from the petstore and he died after a few months. He was loaded with parasites. I went to the vet for him spent tons of time and money and lost him anyway.

I have yet to find a good petstore yet for some odd reason I feel like when I see pets there I can somehow help them....

Gluck

well most privately owned pet stores know what they are doing. It's when the pet store gets too large and has to rely on non-willing teenagers to work for minimum wage.
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a free range dragon is a happy dragon

I work in specialty at my local petsmart, and we take great care of all of our animals, especially the reptiles. One day while I was working, this die hard PETA guy came into our store and asked to speak with my manager (the specialty manager), and all I thought was “Uh oh, here comes another PETA person asking us to release all of our animals”, but surprisingly, he out right complimented our store on the great care all of our animals were in. He said that he’s never seen such great care of animals by a petsmart or a petco. I’m pretty much the reptile guy at my store, and take extra special care of all of our scaly friends. I make sure to hydrate them when they come in from the supplier, I make sure that the turtles are getting frequent water changes, that everyone is being fed the right foods with the right amount of supplements (I only use repcal for our stores herps J ), etc. I know a lot of stores aren’t taking care of their animals, and yes it is disgusting, but the good guys are out there, doing as much as we can to improve the rep. pet store chains are getting.
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1.0.0 Bearded Dragons (Pagona Vetticeps)
1.1.5.2 Gold Dust Day Geckos (Phelsuma Laticauda Laticauda
1.0.0 Yellow Saharan Uromastyx (uromastyx geryi)
2.0.0 Bettas (Dark and Light Blue)
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www.funnymanreptiles.com

That is great to hear The same thing happened to the Petco that I am working at. We had a PETA lady come in "undercover" and she ended up pulling people aside and saying that she has never seen such good care taken to all the animals at a Petco. She said she found absolutely nothing wrong and all the animals were in exellent health and looked happy. I used to work for petsmart too, for 3 years (specialty department, reptile specialist) before i worked for petco, and ive worked there for about 2.5 years (as reptile, bird, and small animal specialist). It really does depend a lot on the employees at the stores. It helps to have a good vet too. Our exotics specialist vet (listed on AARV as well as bird and small animal vet lists) adores us, and he says he cant believe how fast we notice things on animals that need to go in. The petsmart out here, well, lets just say they feed their leopard geckos applesauce and the uromastyx crickets.

One thing that gets me about peta, is that they think an animal is better off dead then in captivity. If there weren't captive animals, there would be a lot more extinct animals then there are. Theres more beef I have with peta but i wont go on I care about the wellbeing of animals too much to want to be part of peta.
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~Melissa~
1.6.3 Leopard geckos
1.1 Bearded dragons
1.0 Hog Island Boa
0.1 Western hognose
0.1 Coastal carpet python
1.1 Crested Gecko
1.0 Savannah Monitor
0.0.1 Sulcata tortoise
1.0 Eastern Collared Lizard
1.1 Ferrets
0.1 Chinchilla
2.0 kitty cats
0.0.1 Firebelly newt that lives with a betta

What area was the PetSmart in? You can always mention conditions like that to the management. Most will quickly realize that it is not conducive to actually selling the animal when the display looks like that (yes, not the way it should be thought of, but they sometimes see everything in monitary values). My wife makes sure that the reptiles at the unnamed PetStore that she works at are well cared for but some of the other employees don't realize the proper care and miss the clearly obvious (to us) issues.
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Bryan, Atlanta GA

1-0-0 Rescued Ball Python - Apep
0-1-0 Rescued Mountain Horned Dragon - Ki
0-0-1 Rescued Aggressive Bearded Dragon - Zeus
0-0-1 Rescued Non-Alpha Green Iguana - Bud
1-1-0 Rescued Rats... no wait... ROTTEN Little Cats - Ra, Bastet
0-0-1 Rescued Dieting Panda Hamster - Mr. Fluffy
0-1-0 Rescued Little Angelic Kitten - Isis
1-0-0 Horse... whoops... BIG Golden Retriever - Jake
0-1-0 Wife
2-0-0 Kids

the petco in my area takes real good care of there reptiles. better then some "smaller" petstores. there substright is always clean and there is alyways food in there and the temps are as close to good as a petstore can do. eevn the number of reptiles per cage is good. there is no more then 2 baby / juvi beardies per beardie cage, no more then "ADULTS 2 AFT or leo geckos per cage " but my petsmart in this area reptiles are all mix and improperly marked. all the cages are in some way indirecly cennected so all of them are way to humid and cant see inside to the repiltes. any it comes down to your own area petstore and who works there and there store managers. has nothing to littel to do with the chain. and for the recored i bought my gecko and beardie from petco and they are doing GREAT. growing and looking healthy and very nice tords me.
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1.0.1 Green Anole(tedo, bubbles)
1.0. Tremper Albino Leo gecko (Brut)
0.0.1 Bearded Dragon(AXE)
1.0.0 Small Dog( Cho lu la)

0.1.0 Girl Friend

why does everyone on these forums bash peta? i am an animal rights activist, i am a vegan(6 years) and i also have lots of herps. i understand that snakes need to eat and just because at a herp show there are thousands of animals in little deli cups it doesnt mean that they arent being taking care of. you guys are doing the same thing you do to petstores to peta. just because there are a few petstores...and a few little "over-enthusiastic" animal rights activists it does mean that all petstores are evil inconsiderate bastards whose only hope is to make a penny. yes, there are some that are like that but not all. it also goes to say that yes, many years ago there were alot of cases of peta members and other ARA's that did some stupid things, like releasing animals but we are very far past that age. we actually PLAN out our protests and carry them out in a LOGICAL manner. i.e. dont release a bunch of animals so they can go and die that night from the cold. it is just these all-inclusive adjectives that really bother/ offend people. wow i really went off on a tangent and i can imagine that half the KS forum hates me now but i hope that is not the case. i just felt that i had to stand up for myself.
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1.0.0 bearded dragon
1.1.0 green iguana
0.0.1 columbian tegu
0.1.0 knight anole(looking for male)
0.1.0 green anole
1.1.0 golden gecko
1.0.0 ball python
0.0.5 oriental firebellied toad
0.0.1 green treefrog
0.0.1 barking treefrog
0.0.1 cuban masked treefrog
0.0.1 gray treefrog
0.1.0 gulf hammock rat snake
0.1.0 eastern kingsnake
0.1.0 siberian husky

This is a forum that a lot of young readers come too. So just keep it PG rated and watch the language please. Thanks.

peace,
nate

ehhh...calm down there. Nobody was talking to you.

That was to Herpgirl...o well anyway. I cant stand it when someone comes in and acts like we were out bashing you and your organization and blah blah blah just because you had something bothering you and used this thread to somehow try to connect it and voice your opinion about something the rest of us could care less about.

You know what? I don't care WHAT business you run. The business will only be as good as all the employees. As an elementary principal, I always hear how crappy schools are today. All I know is that I'm busting my butt and so are my teachers. I'm proud of my little school. A pet store is only going to be as good as the people working in it. I try to find a place that KNOWS what to do with reptiles and I try to make sure I give them my business. I've also been known to "advise" folks when I'm in a bigger petstore getting crickets. As I watch someone wistfully eyeing the beardies or tortoises, I walk up to them and engage them in conversation. LOL I make sure I tell them some important things to keep in mind...like did you realize that sulcata will be as big as a room of your house? LOL
I may not belong to PETA, but I'm an animal activist in my own way. And I just bet we all are!

Maleea