Reptile & Amphibian Forums

i live in turkey.. and they dont care much about iguanas, or any animal for that matter.. over here.
the other day i was in the pet shop and they had a very sickly iguana for sale. it was skinny as anything, you could see all her bones, she had no muscle on her legs at all, and im sure she had mouth rot. the salesman told me it was from a fight she had had before, but i dont believe that.
hes got it on sale for 700 dollars.. and if i had that kind of money i would buy her and nurse her back to health.. but i dont have that kind of money.
i know 100% that the iguana is goin to die in there.
he also told me hes feeding her on cheese and lettuce. i told him basically everything hes doing is wrong, but he didnt listen.
is there anything i can do about this? i really want to help it but i dont think theres anything i can do without buying it.
this might be a pointless question but thought i would ask anyway.

There's problem nothing you could do. Even if you bought it, the pet store guy would be thrilled at the sale and try to get another one. I hate to sound so pessimistic...sorry.

i agree, as sad as it seems, to "rescue" this poor thing would just encourage more suffering, unless the law can help you there isnt much you can do but to stop the cycle, wish more would stop it...is there a way you can protest the shop? i dont know the culture there, if you can id sit out front and tell the truth abot how the animals are being treated, that giving the owner $ is hurting animals, not helping them...i wish i had the nerve to do that here to some shops in the US, cant imagine facing it in another country...best of luck, maybe take the poor thing some good greens to help it feel better??
-----
hanging out under heat lights burns up my brain cells!!

well my mum told me if it was in england we could contact the PDSA and they would probably give me the iguana if they knew i could take good care of it, but as far as i know there isnt anything like that here =S
as i said they really dont care much for animals here, so if i did sit outside the shop and told everybody about it i dont know if it would make much difference, tbh id probably just get in trouble if the shop decided to call the police etc.
i want to set up some sort of rescue centre but not sure exactly how to go about it .. ?

oh and yeh i think i will take it down some healthy foods.
when i was in there i held the poor thing.. and just fell in love with it
the bloke told me, be careful shes really agressive.
she wasnt agressive at all! .. just scared of him probably. when he got her out he dragged her out by her tail.. so i can see why she would be agressive towards him.
anyway i will take her down some good food.. wont make any difference in the long run but i will do what i can

im having a hard of enough time setting up a rescue here, just do what you can and understand in your heart that your doing all you can, good luck with all you do, you sound like your heart is in the right place...
-----
hanging out under heat lights burns up my brain cells!!

You could take food and take Spike and show him what they're supposed to look like, but, since he doesn't care, it would probably irritate him. Appeal to his $$$ sense? "Someone would pay $700 for an Iguana that looks like this." (Pointing to Spike).

i took her down some food today (:
shes got a big lump on the side of her mouth, which i thought was mouth rot but since reading up on it again dont think this is it =S
i got some pics i will post them later when i upload them