Well Lizz, you'll be happy to know that when we get chins in I sex them right away (if I'm there that specific day) so I know they're going in same sex pairs. I even told the small animal manager (the one that brings in the small animals) that you CANNOT put a new chin in with another chin that's been there a while, as they may fight.

I've even had customers come in looking for me to tell the gender of their chins. We had one woman bring in a beige and grey male and thought one was a female until I showed her the spacing! She was surprised to say the least.

From a swap meet? Is it legal to have animal there?

I agree with all of you! Peoople need to do research before they buy pets they know nothing about! I wish I would have known about htis forum 3 yearsago when I bought my cockateil! Keep up the good work!

I know I have looked at the Bearded Dragon caresheets at our PetCo here and its a sad sad thing.
They recommend the death sands, water bowls (which I'll admit is a matter of preference to some degree) and no mention of impaction or prey size. Just to list the top three things which jump to mind as problems with their care sheets.
I've seen more than one teen boy pick out a caresheet when I've been there getting supplies and written down addresses to some of the better caresheets I've found on the net for Dragons at the bottom of the page. I dont know if they visited them, or even if they ended up with a Dragon, but at least I tried.
(Only three petstores in my town, one I wont patronize because they sell puppymill puppies and their reptile room stinks up the -entire- store, so you know those poor things arent getting proper care and the other one is just so full of wrong information that I am sick of going there. They actually tried to -chastise- me for using silkworms instead of their crickets...which infected our Dragon with coccidia!)
I've even gone as far as to print off care sheets for our vet (herp lover, not a herp specialist, but there isnt one in my -entire- state) to help with the other Dragons in this town that I just know are suffering because of misinformation on these poor creatures.

And Rav is right, most of the lizards sold now are captive bred, and its leading to health problems with them from small breeding stock, inbreeding and poor husbandry conditions.
~grumbles and stops ranting now~

Even though my username is HamterDudette, I still happen to know a lot about reptiles, and the last visit I had to Petco had me furious!

Okay, so in the reptile section of the store, there was a teeny tiny little, probably smaller than 5 gallon tank with at least 10 baby leopard geckos in it! What got me mad was the fact that there was an empty tank next to it, and they didn't even think of just taking out the divider and letting the babies have a bigger tank. (In case you don't know what I'm talking about, the reptile and amphibian section and the aquatic section have tanks built into a large structure or the wall, and each tank is divided by a glass divider.) The substrate in the tank was sand, there couldn't have been enough room in there for a temperature gradient, and there was no moist hide. There were dead crickets floating in the waterdish, and I saw several of the leos had already dropped their tails at such a young age. The tails I did see were so thin, too! I saw on the tank floor many, many bits of dry, shedded skin, and even body parts, probably amputated when shedding. I saw one poor individual limping around in the waterdish, and his shedded skin was still clinging to his body! Only parts of it were shredded away. Gosh, I was so mad. And I knew I couldn't complain to any employees because I'm a very petite girl, and I confess that my face is rather chubby and childish...I'm sure any employee I attempted to talk to would just reply something along the lines of, "Okay, okay, that's fine, little girl. Now run off and look at the hamsters or something."

Well in sorts i understand i worked for the small petstore in town things make me just as mad going to petsamrt, but hey gotta have reptiles to sell them they never have anything but fish. but my neighbor gave me there chinese water dragon they had for 2 yrs , lil did i know i ended up spending 75 in him to get rid of mouth rot. they kept him with no humidity for 2 yrs. he is now healthy and fat.

It does help when the stores have the caresheets for animals. But even then, the stores aren't always that great. My friend went into one of them (Petco or Petsmart, can't remember which one), bought a chinchilla, and asked one of the employees how to care for it. In a nutshell, they told her to put it in like a 5 gallon tank and feed it. No mention of dust baths, no mention that even at that age it was waaaay too bid for the 5 gallon (mine are in a three story wire cage, no 5 gallons over here) and no mention that they needed chinchilla food. I even seem to recall them saying that she could just feed it rabbit pellets. The employee clearly didn't know what she was talking about, but (I agree with the one other post) just said something so that she would sound smart. If I hadn't known this girl, that chin woulda been cared for pretty poorly. Not because my friend didnt' want to take care of it, but because she would have listened to the employee who she THOUGHT knew how to take care of the chin. That also makes me wonder how well the pets IN the petstore are being taken care of.

my petco caresheets are stupid, wrong, and for the most part useless. the petco here seems to only have sick rats. and no animals are divided by sex. they also leave dead bodies in cages a long time. seems ike the hampsters kill and eat each other.

petsmart is a far drive from me now, but i used to go there weekly. its GREAT. everyone knows a bunch about the pets they sell, they have good caresheets, and only carry females. there reptiles look great also. i have never been dissipointed there.

when they carried males before switching over to females the staff knew the individual personality of the rats to help me make the right choice. i have nothing but praise for them.

My petco is great, they have, for the most part, accurate care sheets, all the animals are healthy, the males and females are seperated,they don't sell feeders, and they have what they call "specialists" but I believe are actually people reasonably knowledged and experienced, in seperate animal fields, birds, reptiles, small animals.

I heart run on sentences.

well i think if your gonna purchase a pet? you should do alot of research yourself. go prepared with your knowledge.

Which is how I know for the most part, they're acurate.

every animal ive ever gotten from petco has died..
petsmart all the way. i live near one and the people there do know what theyre talking about when it comes to the animals they sell. and i asked them about my iguana and they even knew a little about iguanas. though i know its not like that in every petsmart

im actually against petsmart when i went in there to get crickets and worms for my beardie the guy working there said i should of been feeding it baby mice........ sometimes u get amazing people at petshops that know there stuff and then you get the ones that know nothing. but like you said not every petsmart is great

This is an old thread, but whatever...


I hate Petco, and our Petsmart is actually pretty good, but I still wouldn't buy animals from them. Sometimes a buy feeders from the Pet Supplies Plus here (they are really good, and I like the people there too) but I usually buy from Leaping Lizards, because they have the cheapest and healthiest feeders. Plus, that's where I adopted Dudley from.

I noticed the date too, but I also have something to say. It saddens me how many times I read in pet forums "well the pet store employee told me this so it has to be right".

My answer is inevitably that pet store employees are rarely experts in anything, but many people are adamant that since the person who gave them the information works in a pet store (selling sick diseased mill animals no doubt, another topic) they must know all.

People actually ask pet store employees veterinary advice, and these unknowledgeable irresponsible employees will spout off whatever, and it's the animals who suffer.

So all WE can do is continue to educate on these forums, urge people to do more research on reputable websites, urge people to take their pets to the vet, and hope we get through. Even if we help open the eyes of only one, it's better than none.

And yes, by all means, if you see an oppourtunity to educate someone while shopping in a pet store or pet food aisle, do it! (but in a nice way, not an in your face know it all way, of course! )

PS I sometimes print cat nutrition info and casually leave it lying on the cat food shelves in the grocery store You know, next to the meow mix or kitten chow or <shudder> Dads. <weg>