Pet Store and Pet Ownership Horrors

[Jomadre]

Speaking of cutting of things that shouldn't be cut off, I want to punch people right in the nuts who de-fang their tarantulas. Because of the nature of the spider's digestive system it can only eat liquid so when it catches it's prey it injects venom from it's fangs to liquify the insides and then it drinks them, with the fangs gone the animal physically cannot eat. If you can't accept that if you own tarantulas, sooner or later you will be bitten, perhaps a tarantula is not the right animal for you. Some pet stores do this to the tarantulas they sell and it just boggles the mind.

Don't they know that their fangs will be back after their next molt? And how would you go about doing that in the first place? A quick google search didn't find any procedure or anything about defanging tarantulas, only dumbasses that work in pet stores will tell people that and plebs believe them. I tell pet store employees to stop saying that when I am told that.

 

[Trapped_Fairy]

As a total dog person, I've gotta preach to you all the importance of getting your puppies fucking vaccinated by a vet. It's like the biggest puppy pet peeve I have for a very good reason.

My little one,Lily, a now six year old tricolor Chihuahua, came from a neglectful home. Her old owners got her for their three year old daughter (which is a terrible environment for Chihuahuas btw) and when she proved too energetic for their kid, they decided the best place for her was to fucking just live outside 24/7. She was so lonely and desperate for attention that she would break out of her yard and find the neighbors just to be noticed. That's how my mom's boss found out about her and asked the owners if they were looking for a home for her, which ended in my mom deciding to take her in the day we heard about her situation. At eight that same night, we met with the then owners at the local dollar general and they handed her off to us like she meant nothing to them, no goodbyes or we'll miss yous. I will never forget the way her nails dug into my sweater the first time I held her. She was terrified to let go. We bonded almost instantly and over the next few weeks between the interactions with our other dogs and all the spoiling she got, she was already an inseparable part of our family.

Though a little over a month after we got her, I noticed she was acting strange. She's normally a ball of energy who loves to play outside and get into everything, yet for some reason she was just moping around and sleeping literally all day. She looked like she felt miserable. My gut told me there was something seriously wrong here, so I had her taken to the vet that same day. I am so thankful I did. We managed to catch her parvo in an early enough stage that she still stood a chance. My family didn't have the kind of money to keep her at the vet, who at that point just recommended we put her down. That just wasn't an option for us. I pleaded with him for any other option and he gave us one hope. We were given antibiotics for her and strict instructions on care for the next week or so.

I spent the next few weeks sleeping in our basement with her, nursing her back to health. I was the only person who could even get her to take her medicine or drink, so I pretty much refused to leave her for very long. Thankfully, my baby girl recovered and is healthy as a horse today.

Later I'd asked her vet, which we'd changed after the other one suggested putting her down, how she'd gotten it since we were told she'd been vaccinated by her old owners. According to the vet, Lily was probably given improper vaccinations from a feedstore, which was a common practice in our rural area at the time.

Moral of the story: Get your dogs vaccinated by a vet for fucks sake.

 

[yummy hand sanitizer]

Really grinds my gears when people try to raise cats (or dogs, but especially cats) on a vegan diet.

Just... no. If you really need a pet that will fit in your vegan lifestyle, get a rabbit or something. Y'know, something that doesn't NEED meat to survive.

 

[MysticMisty]

This is something that I actually feel guilty about in retrospect because I was completely naive about pets that aren't cats or dogs at the time. This was the first time I ever knew someone whose pets weren't cats or dogs, let alone fairly exotic ones. By the time I realized what was going on I hadn't talked to this person in years and so I don't even know if he still lives in this city.

So, this guy, S. We shared a few classes our 8th grade year in middle school. He was kind of dumb and a bit of a dick to me at times with a huge ego, but I put up with him because I was relatively new to the area then and didn't have any friends at the time. Neither did S really for that matter, probably because he was an egotistical dick to people. I felt kind of sorry for him, which is probably why I put up with S for as long as I did (about a year and a half).

When I first met S he had five pets at the time, a cat I never saw, a golden retriever that I think was technically his parents, two lizards (not bearded dragons, but beyond that I don't know species they were) and a huge red parrot. It might have been a scarlet macaw, but I'm not sure.

The dog and (I assume) cat were well cared for as far as I could tell, even if S always ignored both of them. The other three is a different story however. Although the lizard habitat had fairly clean glass as I remembered it, some sand, and a large hollowed out rock to hide in, it wasn't an especially big habitat (the rock took up most of the space). I actually commented when I first saw them/their habitat that it seemed quite small for two. S sniffed and told me I didn't know jack shit because it was twice as big as what was recommended. The lizards were 6-8 inches long from nose to tail while their habitat was 18 inches long and like I said, most of it was the rock. Their diet solely consisted of pinkies and S never handled them. But at least S kept them in his room.

The parrot, on the other hand, was isolated 24/7 out in the garage, in the dark. It's cage was roughly 3 x 3 x 5 and maybe had two or three perches and perhaps a toy or two. I only saw it once, when S took me there to brag he had a parrot...only to immediately talk about how the bird was mean as fuck and he hated it. It screeched all hours of the day and night, but they always ignored it except to shove water and food in the cage. S claimed they used to have a cockatiel as well, but it either died or escaped and then died nearby, I can't remember which.

Not long after I met S his older sister gave him a pet parakeet. She had actually gotten it as a pet for her (extremely bratty) three year old, who almost immediately became bored with it and his sister didn't want it if her kid didn't. S quickly got a second one to go with it, and just like the lizards and big parrot, promptly ignored them except to shove them food and water. S actually got pissed at me on more than one occasion because I wanted to handle and play with the birds.

S briefly had a betta. He only had it for about three months (if that) before it died and S admitted he didn't really care about it anyways.

S eventually got a snake, was 18 inches long in a two feet long habitat. Much like the lizards S never handled it. S decided to start breeding mice to cut down on costs, so he bought a shitload of mice to go with it. The snake was fed still-living mice, which S was quite eager to demonstrate all the time. He had something like 10 or 15 mice in one small cage, but I'm not too sure. He kept the mouse cage in a closet and I only ever got brief glimpses of it when he fed the snake.

I genuinely feel bad that I didn't know he was caring poorly for his pets at the time. I don't know what, if anything, I could have done though. It seemed like S got any pet he felt like given that parrots cost thousands of dollars and S was all too eager to show me the receipt for the lizards to brag about how they cost $50 each. Honestly, I think S only wanted these pets just so he flaunt his family's upper-middle class wealth.

 

[Bugaboo]

I'm thinking the lizards could have been young water dragons which look like this

I'm thinking that because it couldn't have been a leopard gecko because they are too small or God forbid they could have been baby iguanas.
Anyway, water dragons grow up to be too large to house in most commercial tanks so you basically have to custom build them a house but unlike iguanas they're not evil and don't get so big you have to dedicate a whole room of your house to them so they're far more ideal pets.
I'm very, very agaisnt the idea of a kid under 16-18 being the sole caretaker of a pet rather than like, a dog because you just walk it, feed it, love it and clean it's poop and it's pretty good. Animals like lizards, fish and birds really should have an adult be the primary caretaker and then as the child gets older transition them to be more involved with the tasks needed to care for the pet like, playing with a bird, cleaning up lizard dumps, feeding the fish and changing the water.

 

[MysticMisty]

I'm thinking the lizards could have been young water dragons which look like this

I'm thinking that because it couldn't have been a leopard gecko because they are too small or God forbid they could have been baby iguanas.
Anyway, water dragons grow up to be too large to house in most commercial tanks so you basically have to custom build them a house but unlike iguanas they're not evil and don't get so big you have to dedicate a whole room of your house to them so they're far more ideal pets.
I'm very, very agaisnt the idea of a kid under 16-18 being the sole caretaker of a pet rather than like, a dog because you just walk it, feed it, love it and clean it's poop and it's pretty good. Animals like lizards, fish and birds really should have an adult be the primary caretaker and then as the child gets older transition them to be more involved with the tasks needed to care for the pet like, playing with a bird, cleaning up lizard dumps, feeding the fish and changing the water.

It definitely wasn't that, unless their coloration varies. I distinctly remember they were brown.

Honestly I wouldn't even trust S with a dog. He wouldn't beat it (I hope) or forget to feed and water it, but he wouldn't pet or play with it ever either. He's definitely the type though to drop a few thousand dollars on the currently popular breed just to brag about it.

 

[Ido]

It definitely wasn't that, unless their coloration varies. I distinctly remember they were brown.

Honestly I wouldn't even trust S with a dog. He wouldn't beat it (I hope) or forget to feed and water it, but he wouldn't pet or play with it ever either. He's definitely the type though to drop a few thousand dollars on the currently popular breed just to brag about it.

Here's a chart with some lizards, maybe you'll see the one S had?

Spoiler

 

[Pinkamena Diane Pie]

Well, I don't know this EXACTLY considering I was there for around 30 minutes only before I left, but when I first got my puppies,they lived in hell. I don't know the details exactly, but basically it was survival of the fittest at their home. The home was in a country setting, no asphalt leading there. We had to hunt to find it. Dogs were EVERYWHERE. A white German Shephard and a Mastiff came at our car. The owners stopped them and, quite literally dragged each dog out. Considering the fact that the collars, we discovered, were extremely tight (not enough to cut through skin, but choker level tight. My dad had to cut their collar off. Now, he claims it was because he couldn't take him off but I know better.

Then again, he just thinks that my dog yokes himself because he is a dumbass. (He will do that to himself because he is a dumbass)But at the time, it wasn't like that. The home had a whole bunch of junk. So much I saw a lab puppy climbing the mountain. When we got home it was hell. They weren't trained correctly, they were terrified of everything and anything (or at least, scared of getting yelled at) and they fought eachother. The inside dog was much calmer but scared. He would let me touch him if he ate, but he was a pushover and would getting attacked. He wasn't used to survival of the fittest. Meanwhile the outside dog was very territorial and just kept growling and snarling at the indoor one.

If you ignored all that, you couldn't ignore their health. They were flea ridden, had worms, malnutitioned (They gained weight when they came with me and my family. They are now a bit over weight), they were underweight and their coats dull. They were 6 months. They didn't have fluffy coats like they have today. In fact, my dad washed the flees (or a portion of them) and they began to shine again. They had no vaccines and no one to care for them before we got them because of what my dog has. My dog suffers from chronic lyme disease. He gets leg tremors, spasms, etc. His teeth grind together whenever he's in pain. He wouldn't be in pain if they gave him the lyme vaccine. (We gave it to him, but it was too late. We vaccinated him in January of 2014, just days after we got him.) It takes a tick 3 days for it to infect a dog. They just didn't wash him or help him.
TL DR: I witness my first puppy mill. Oh grand.

 

[HypeBeast]

This thread is depressing as fuck. ): I need to go hug my cat now.

 

[Red]

some sand,

IMMEDIATE NOPE
Never keep reptiles on sand. Seriously. It will impact them and kill them. I don't care who says that beardies and leos are from the desert-- they live on rocks and dried dirt. Living on sand will kill any herp that isn't designed specifically to live on it. As soon as I saw the word "sand" I knew this kid was killing his animals.

also pff, 50 dollar lizards? go to a real reptile expo and check out the half-million dollar ball python morphs. fucking pleb

 

[Magpie]

An asshole ex-friend of mine's mom was a bird hoarder. She had cockatiels, parakeets, lovebirds, budgies, and a massive cockatoo, and that's just what I saw at a first glance. They were all in tiny cages in a very small room, isolated from people in the house. None of it was clean so being in that house was hell on the lungs. They were poorly socialized, of course, and it was really just heartbreaking in general. I really regret not reporting her before I left the States, because those birds deserve so much better than a few minutes of human contact a day and being told to shut up when they make noise.

This woman also had a massively obese cat who must have weighed something like 30 pounds (unable to clean or really do anything for himself) with a nasty temper to boot. A vet offered to put him down at no cost because he was in that bad of shape. She felt putting a suffering animal with an abysmal quality of life down was "playing God." Her alternative? The bitch put him outside, in the dead of Florida summer, and ignored him when he came crying at the door to be let back in. No food or water out there either. I guarantee you he died within a week. I was pissed.

My dog back home was also kind of a rescue in a way. Some shitty backyard breeder was churning out puppies for a quick buck. The mother was absolutely emaciated, and the ""breeder"" tried to pass it off as her being thin because of nursing the puppies. Total and utter bullshit - there is no excuse at all for an animal to be nothing but skin and bone. I could see the poor girl's ribs and hipbones from across the room. It was dark so I couldn't see the street name or house number, but good god if I did the ASPCA would have been up his ass in seconds.

If there is one thing I hate in this world more than anything it's people who mistreat animals, honestly.

 

[sm0t]

One of the main reasons why I quit my old job at Petco is because the amount of stupidity I dealt with on a near-daily basis probably would have eventually caused me to get physically violent.

A woman once asked me if we sold any "unsafe" cat collars. Yes those were her actual words. She was looking for one without the safety breakaway because she didn't want to have to keep replacing them. And of course the cat was an outdoor cat.

I really wish that the myths surrounding goldfish would just die already. I've lost count how many times I had to spell out in the simplest terms possible why you can't keep goldfish in a bowl (or a betta, or a pleco, or a single neon tetra at one point...), and people still don't wrap their head around it. Our doormat of a manager usually ended up ringing up the goldfish and bowl setup for the over-entitled dumbasses anyway, after gratuitous amounts of bitching and moaning from the customer about how they don't want to drop the money needed for the actual tank and filter setup that is needed for a goldfish to survive as well as go through the nitrogen cycle. Goldfish grow huge (8+ inches) despite the myth that they won't grow larger than their tank, and they produce a lot of waste. Hence why they often just end up getting flushed down the toilet a week later.

That same manager would also live feed any mice from our stock that are injured or tended to pick fights with its cagemates to the red tail boas and ball pythons we sold, despite the employee handbook clearly printing out that this is against company policy; she claimed to have gotten permission from our DM.

A woman asked me why her "turtle" (which was actually a tortoise judging by the what little of the enclosure she described) wasn't "walking around so much." I asked her the basics like what sort of lights she was using and what was she feeding. Her answer was "A lamp" for lighting, and "Lettuce, that's all" for food. When I asked what kind of lamp, she just said "Just a lamp." When I asked what kind of lettuce, she looks at me like I grew a second head. "The one you get from the store!" was her answer.

"But ma'am, the store has lots of kinds of lettuce," I said, seeking clarification.

"The one you get from the store!" she parroted.

I asked in a different way, "Is it round and light green?"

"Yes!"

Yes, she was feeding her tortoise nothing but iceberg lettuce (water in leaf form) and using what I guessed was a basic incandescent bulb, and had no idea why it wasn't "walking around so much."

 

[Jomadre]

Goldfish grow huge (8+ inches) despite the myth that they won't grow larger than their tank, and they produce a lot of waste. Hence why they often just end up getting flushed down the toilet a week later.

I have worked at jobs where I sold fish. I got yelled at by one of the managers by telling people "Well, technically fish stop growing based on the size of the tank because once they get too big for their tanks they die". Talked dozens of people out of buying fish. I feel like that was a good thing, my manager disagreed.

 

[CrispyBacon]

and pet store should refuse sale to anyone who doesn't have sufficient supplies or knowledge to care for animals.

Unfortunately, pet stores also tend not to have any idea what the best care is for an exotic animal, and house them improperly before providing inappropriate supplies and potentially harmful advice to new owners. It's a sad cycle for these animals.

 

[Elijah]

Unfortunately, pet stores also tend not to have any idea what the best care is for an exotic animal, and house them improperly before providing inappropriate supplies and potentially harmful advice to new owners. It's a sad cycle for these animals.

Then I believe pet stores need a major overhaul. Only people actually knowledgeable on the animals they carry can sell them, and they must be gotten from reputable breeders. Great care needs to be taken in ensuring every animal goes to a good, knowledgeable home, and not to a 5 year old having worn him mom down on buying a fish or a hamster that's going to be flushed down the toilet/neglected to death in a week. There seriously needs to be an animal offender's registry.

 

[Red]

Then I believe pet stores need a major overhaul. Only people actually knowledgeable on the animals they carry can sell them, and they must be gotten from reputable breeders. Great care needs to be taken in ensuring every animal goes to a good, knowledgeable home, and not to a 5 year old having worn him mom down on buying a fish or a hamster that's going to be flushed down the toilet/neglected to death in a week. There seriously needs to be an animal offender's registry.

I don't know of a single pet store that gets their animals from a decent breeder. I've bought all my exotics directly from breeders and I won't ever change that. A best friend of mine worked at PetSmart as a petcare manager for many years and she has horror stories about the states of the animals that come in. And while PetSmart employees are technically allowed to refuse sales, they'll get chewed out by management and/or fired for it if they do it.
PetSmart and PetCo both use the same supplier: Rainbow Exotics, which is known for being a horrible animal mill. But there really aren't laws in place for animals that aren't dogs or cats. I've seen snakes that have horrible burns, open wounds from live rats, stuck shed and severe dehydration that are on the verge of death and there's literally nothing you can do. The laws protecting conventional pets are loose enough as is, exotics have almost nothing.

 

[For The Internet]

My Corella came from a bird hoarder. He was her favourite but he was treated in a way that's terrible for birds. There were 40-50 birds in the woman's small house and I was one of the volunteers helping to relocate the birds. One of my friends (who is a breeder) was taking in some of the birds and one of them was my little guy, who was 6 and on his 3rd home at the time.

He was kept in a dark room where the windows were covered up by hoard stuff so he couldn't look out or get fresh air or sunlight. He was allowed out of the cage, but from what I can tell he was allowed to do incredibly inappropriate things. She would let him eat on the dinner table right from her plate. While it's a good idea to bring out your birds so they can eat at the same time you do, you need to feed them appropriate food and have them on a perch or in a cage so they can't come to the table. Judging by the way Stan flips out at the scent of canned spaghetti, I'm certain it was a big part of his diet. He also used to ask me all the time if he could have some ice cream, or he'd ask me for a cigarette. She was a heavy smoker, which is a death sentence for birds.

He had fatty liver disease when I got him and he was morbidly obese. He had to take meds for over a year to get everything under control.

He also had a lot of behavior problems, because his owner would let him masturbate on her hand and so he saw hands as both rivals and potential mates and acted accordingly. To this day he'll attack hands if you're not paying close enough attention because he's angry and frustrated that he can't use them for relief any more.

He's a great bird, he has a massive personality and he talks and sings and dances and just soaks up love and attention like a sponge. I actually wound up keeping him because I offered to have him stay with me for a few days while my friend made room for him, and when I handed him over to my friend he wouldn't eat or drink and would just sit huddled at the bottom of the cage. I don't know why he bonded to me so strongly, but I wound up really having no choice but to take him since he would only eat and drink if he was with me.

 

[Android raptor]

Being a reptile/exotics person I've encountered my fait share of horrors (because it seems they're particularly at risk for maltreatment).

Other than the usual pet store bullshit, I know many rescued animals, including a boa who was burned so badly by hot rocks he still has issues (just had another surgery a couple months ago actually), a ball python who survived a hoarding situation and has some scarring from being given live feeders (he also is afraid of anything that resembles a live rodent), a beardie who had goddamn cigarettes put out on her, and more.

I actually reported a local pet store and took pics of some of the terrible conditions a couple months ago. I'm not sure what happened about the report, though I've heard the store is on its way out so it sounds like they've got some heat on them. I also know an ex-Petland employee who basically said all the horror stories about petland are true (and employees even have to sign a waver that they won't tell the truth to others lest they be fired).

One issue that really rustles my jimmies is venomoid snakes. Basically, venomous snakes with their fangs/venom glands/etc removed. Not only can that shit grow back, its also a horrendously invasive procedure that's often done in unsanitary conditions without proper anesthesia. I'be heard most venomoid snakes die within a year, many due to stress alone.

I think the most disturbing venomoid horrors I've heard about were green mambas who where forced to bit down on cloth that was then ripped out in a crude defanging attempt. They had horrendous injuries like broken jaws and what not, and were in so much pain they required a ridiculous amount of pain medicine to get them to settle down. I don't know how many, if any eventually recovered. I also saw a pic someone took at a show of this beautiful white cobra just thrown in the trash, apparently a venomoid snake who died from stress.

And while its not really a pet thing, there's also rattlesnake roundups, which are mind boggling levels of horrible.

EDIT: there's also the people out there who are essentially ball python millers, who breed snakes even if they're unhealthy or deformed because they just care about making as many snakes as possible. And people who starve large constrictors in an attempt the make them smaller (which works because the snakes are malnourished). Also heard about a guy who brought a pygmy rattlesnake to an event who was striking the glass (something that they can get seriously injured or killed from, and also a blatant sign the snake is stressed and afraid and needs some quite time) that he did nothing about, even being entertained by it and showing it off to the crowd.

God, I know way to many horror stories

 

[Tokitae]

I'm a huge cat person and have owned them all my life, and so friends and family often come to me with questions about their cat's behaviour. Most notably, I have a friend whose cat was a rescue (she used to be used for animal testing) and has what can only be described as some sort of eating disorder. The second you put her food down, she eats all of it as quickly as she can. Rather than, I don't know, feeding her in smaller amounts so she spreads out her meals a little, my friend's family just feeds her more because "she's hungry". They do this even when the poor cat eats so fast that she has to throw up right afterwards because her stomach is full.
As you can imagine she's had a lot of health issues through the years (which the family seems so surprised about!). At one point I discovered their vet apparently had never advised them to change her eating habits and just kept talking about different prescription foods to try (so they could overfeed her with those too). I told my friend she should consider seeing another vet. She did, and he recommended the obvious; less food per day, no treats or human food, etc.
This was going pretty well for a while until I find out that apparently, friend's mum just can't resist giving the cat more food when she begs and dad is starting to cave as well. My friend wants to help but has trouble contradicting her parents (she's autistic, to some degree, and still lives at home). I ended up being so frustrated that I bluntly told her what I know the vet has already told her; that the cat will die if she doesn't feed her properly, and she needs to put her foot down with her parents if she wants her to be healthy.
It's really frustrating to me how some people just don't seem to understand that most domestic animals don't really have impulse control when it comes to food. They don't perceive time like we do, so if you put down food they don't know if it's going to be there for the next week or the next few seconds. In the wild most of them don't really have any way to store their food or "save it for later"; they just eat when food is there. But if you create habits for them, like feeding a cat two brimming bowls a day of biscuits plus wet food, treats and table scraps, then hell yeah that cat is going to complain when you start cutting back. It's learned that it "needs" that much food a day because that's how much you used to feed it. That doesn't mean it's really hungry. It's just confused because your dumb ass wasn't taking care of it properly.
I used to try and help these people with their cat, but god, I just can't deal with it sometimes. The same family won't even buy the cat a scratching post for indoors because it "looks ugly" but then complains when she scratches their leather couches. I mostly learned from this that you can't help people who don't want to be helped. No matter how much advice I give them, they always end up coming back to me saying, "well, I did the exact opposite of what you said, and it didn't work! Obviously you must have been wrong!" Ugh. :/

 

[Zazie]

A family we know recently got a dog (a standard poodle, IIRC). They named it after my brother who passed away recently, since their son was a good friend of his (which is fine, and yes -- it relates to the story).

Apparently the dog isn't trained at all. It doesn't know commands and they let it walk all over the furniture, despite it being pretty big already. My mum's visited them and the dog a few times, and she says they talk to it in the same voices they use to talk to other humans in. The dog might be smart, but they're not that smart. I always thought that you're meant to talk to most animals in a higher-pitched voice so that they know they're being talked to -- even if they're intelligent animals. I mean, if a dog's got a shoe in its mouth it's not going to understand you if you say "drop" in a normal voice if it hasn't had any training...

They tried taking the dog to puppy training but apparently it was "too hard" or some bullshit. Wow, having an animal and raising it from a baby requires effort! Who would've thought? (Not them, clearly.)

Spoiler: Slightly off-topic I guess?

Normally I wouldn't care, but they went out of their way to name the dog after my brother. I want to tell them to at least try to put some effort in, but I know I'd get too worked up about it. I've been so annoyed by it that I had a dream I was insulting them. If only...

I haven't gone to visit them myself since a) I don't really like the family much and b) I'm not good with dogs. Maybe once they actually start giving a shit about the dog I'll reconsider.

I know this isn't as bad as some of the other stuff in this thread, but I'm worried it is going to turn into neglect. To me, at least, not training an animal properly is a form of neglect, or something along those lines anyway.