Pet Store and Pet Ownership Horrors

[AnOminous]

I personally know people (especially in the hermit crab circle) who have written Petsmart and Petco's corporate offices several times and offered correct information and they always get a letter sent back saying "WE HAVE VETS LOOK AT ALL OUR ANIMALS" "OUR CARE IS TO THE HIGHEST STANDARDS"
It's corporate bullshit that they won't change and they put the short term profits above the long term well being of their livestock.

Never, ever give a penny to either of these shitty, animal-torturing, scumbag operations.

 

[Overcast]

My late dog Lola went through quite a bit in life before she passed away.

My older sister got her for us from a pet shop. The papers we got say she was a "purebred long haired chihuahua". But she clearly had some features from other dogs. That was the least of her issues though. She had pneumonia and at one point, my mom attempted to return her, but (thankfully) the shop wouldn't take her back. We had to take extensive care of her when we got her before she finally got better. It just shows how little care a lot of these pet shops gave their animals I suppose.

At one point, the tear duct in one of her eyes got damaged, and we spent months using eye drops and medication to keep it lubricated. We then went on a family trip to Cancun and hired a dogsitter to care for her and give her the treatment she needed.

We came back to find she wasn't doing her job, which resulted in Lola's tear duct become irreversibly damaged. So we had to get it removed.

In a way, this was a good thing, as Lola was no longer dealing with a rotting eye and after she recovered, she no longer needed to wear a cone to prevent her from scratching at it. But it kinda angered me to find that the person we hired to take care of her completely neglected to do so. To top things off, we found men's underwear on my parents' bed that didn't belong to my dad. >_>

 

[Unironic Subversiveness]

PetSmart is a pretty awful place. My mother adopted a cat from one of their rescue things and she is the most neurotic animal I've ever seen. And she's morbidly obese, like when they first got her you couldn't see all of her legs she was so big. She hid under the bed most of the time until she got used to my parents, then she had to get used to me, then my girlfriend when she moved in with my parents and each time it was a huge ordeal.

Now she sits on the love seat in my mom's office area and won't move unless if she needs to use the litter box or eat, and if you twitch or walk or breathe when she's not on the love seat she'll run back to that or under the bed if you really scared her. She's very sweet and we love her a great deal (she's even lost weight) but it's been difficult to fix her because of the conditions she was in.

And she runs whenever you raise your hand a certain way, like she's afraid you're going to beat her. :/

 

[Red]

PetSmart is a pretty awful place. My mother adopted a cat from one of their rescue things and she is the most neurotic animal I've ever seen. And she's morbidly obese, like when they first got her you couldn't see all of her legs she was so big. She hid under the bed most of the time until she got used to my parents, then she had to get used to me, then my girlfriend when she moved in with my parents and each time it was a huge ordeal.

Well, that's not necessarily PetSmart's fault. Their adoption programs for cats are actually quite nice, where they just display cats from local rescues so they get more exposure and are hopefully adopted. It was the rescue/previous owner's fault in this one.

PetSmart is still shitty though.

 

[Unironic Subversiveness]

Well, that's not necessarily PetSmart's fault. Their adoption programs for cats are actually quite nice, where they just display cats from local rescues so they get more exposure and are hopefully adopted. It was the rescue/previous owner's fault in this one.

PetSmart is still shitty though.

Well, even if they aren't really at fault, they also could check the local rescues and shelters because all the cats there from the same rescue seemed to be in about the same condition as her. So it's shitty business dealings as well. She was also in the store for about a month, if not longer, and that PetSmart is so shitty even by PetSmart standards so who knows what happened beyond dirty food, water and boxes and no stimulation.

 

[AnOminous]

And she runs whenever you raise your hand a certain way, like she's afraid you're going to beat her. :/

Sadly, when cats (or any animals) do that, usually it's because someone actually has.

 

[Trapped_Fairy]

My neighbor's kids are the absolute worst pet owners and I really wanna slap the shit outta their parents for letting them get away with all the shit they do to their animals. The worst part? Because their dad's a cop, nothing has been done by the proper authorities to help the poor babies.

In the eight or so years I've lived next door to them they've had four dogs, two of which died after years of being left in the backyard to rot once they were no longer puppies. I'd seen those brats kick at their older dogs through the fence whenever the dogs would bark back when they were alive. The kids were given another puppy about two years ago who would try and run away constantly because the boy (about 10) would beat her if she wouldn't go fetch the ball. Their newest dog is a tiny Chihuahua puppy who their girl (12) keeps yelling at because it doesn't want to be squeezed all the time and won't come when called.

Now I wouldn't be so livid over these kids because, hey, they're kids, but they decided to cross the line and have been caught picking on my dogs. I caught their son smacking my youngest dog, a real sweetheart, with his tennis racket! I yelled at him some and went to his parents because that shit is deplorable, and they just laughed saying that boys will be boys. My dog was so upset that she was afraid to even step outside for over a week.

And they also stole the eggs out of a bird's nest on my front porch. Damn rotten bastards.

 

[RV 229]

My neighbor's kids are the absolute worst pet owners and I really wanna slap the shit outta their parents for letting them get away with all the shit they do to their animals. The worst part? Because their dad's a cop, nothing has been done by the proper authorities to help the poor babies.

In the eight or so years I've lived next door to them they've had four dogs, two of which died after years of being left in the backyard to rot once they were no longer puppies. I'd seen those brats kick at their older dogs through the fence whenever the dogs would bark back when they were alive. The kids were given another puppy about two years ago who would try and run away constantly because the boy (about 10) would beat her if she wouldn't go fetch the ball. Their newest dog is a tiny Chihuahua puppy who their girl (12) keeps yelling at because it doesn't want to be squeezed all the time and won't come when called.

Now I wouldn't be so livid over these kids because, hey, they're kids, but they decided to cross the line and have been caught picking on my dogs. I caught their son smacking my youngest dog, a real sweetheart, with his tennis racket! I yelled at him some and went to his parents because that shit is deplorable, and they just laughed saying that boys will be boys. My dog was so upset that she was afraid to even step outside for over a week.

And they also stole the eggs out of a bird's nest on my front porch. Damn rotten bastards.

I would have taken his tennis racket and broken it over my knee.

 

[sm0t]

According to a dear friend of mine who has worked as a petcare manager for Petsmart, that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Rainbow Exotics is the company that both companies get their birds, reptiles and mammals from. Surprise, it's a mill. While they're required to give the age of their animals they're always lying; everything is usually labeled "6 weeks" despite this being obviously untrue. The veterinary clinic that assesses the animals is a subsidiary of Petsmart and they're a serious fucking joke. Same goes for Petco, I believe. They don't know how to care for exotics in the slightest. When a conure was shipped to them by Rainbow that barely had open eyes and probably belonged in an incubator, petcare had to consult a local parrot rescue for advice because the vets didn't do jack shit. Young babies, animals with broken legs, and animals with pneumonia are commonplace. And none of them are tame, either.
Also a kid dumped pool chlorine in the sump for all the aquatic animals and killed them all. And he got off with a warning. Did it again. Got off with a warning. He kept his job till he voluntarily quit.

Not sure if the Petco I worked at bought their animals from them or other (equally horrible) mills. I just remember my manager constantly bitching about how our company kept buying from "breeders in Argentina." Regardless, the reptiles and amphibians were almost never sufficiently heated in their packages, and since they come from South America they go a long time without eating. The leopard geckos are often skinny and already sick with cryptosporidiosis by the time they get to our store. And like you said, the vet that the store used didn't know jack shit about how to treat it, simply prescribing antibiotics that do nothing for a young gecko already in the late stages of crypto other than stress it out even more than it already was while the dumbass employee tries to syringe-feed the meds to them before dying. And of course the company wouldn't be arsed to pony up the money needed for actual treatment that could at least give the lizards a chance at recovery.

 

[MalWart]

We had gone out for dinner one night, and once we got home, one of our cats was running around the house like hell. We were absolutely unsure of what was going on. I eventually sensed a foul smell in the air. It turns out she had eaten a piece of ribbon, and her ass was paying the price.

 

[For The Internet]

Yeah, funnily enough, my kinda happier story involved me buying and raising some live pinkies from a douchey, fucked up co-worker so he wouldn't feed them to his tarantula. Raising orphaned pinkies is a really tough thing to do though (of the ten I bought, only four survived) and in all the youtube homework I did on it, I remember them explicitly saying not to put any sort of wirey type thing on the bottom of the habitat because as they got older, they'd develop bumblefoot.

That was a really nice thing to do. Feeder rats and mice have such short, miserable lives. Serious props to you, raising pinkies is incredibly hard. I raised a wild baby rat from about the age of 3 weeks (on chocolate flavoured puppy milk, of all things) and that was pretty easy, but I don't know if I could have helped him pull through as a baby and that was with a good 10 years of rat and mouse experience at the time.

And yes, wire floors absolutely give animals like rats, mice, piggies, chinchillas ect bumblefoot.


God am I glad my parents are animal lovers.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

We had gone out for dinner one night, and once we got home, one of our cats was running around the house like hell. We were absolutely unsure of what was going on. I eventually sensed a foul smell in the air. It turns out she had eaten a piece of ribbon, and her ass was paying the price.

My dumb fat tabby tried to eat string once. She was just playing with it at first, but then I heard her wheezing and had to pull out like, 4 inches of string from her throat! That's never been a problem for her in the past, so I was kind of worried.

 

[Lemon Vagina]

Adopted two rats from the adoption section in a large chain pet store that'll go unnamed. I asked to check them over and they seemed fine, but I didn't get much time. The employee was basically like yeah so are you gonna take them or not. She also told me they'd been treated for mycoplasmosis "just in case" and I (stupidly) believed her, since they looked fine.

I get them home and I already have two other rats, both adopted from the local SPCA shelter. After a couple of days I start to introduce them in order to form a mischief and all is going well... until I come back through and find three of them eating the fourth one, one of the rats I'd just brought home. Despite taking the other three to the vet they all gradually died of mycoplasmosis over the following two weeks.

Moral of the story is never trust big pet shops really.

 

[Unironic Subversiveness]

We had gone out for dinner one night, and once we got home, one of our cats was running around the house like hell. We were absolutely unsure of what was going on. I eventually sensed a foul smell in the air. It turns out she had eaten a piece of ribbon, and her ass was paying the price.

One of our cats loved to eat curly ribbon, so birthdays, Christmas and the like were always fun times to scoop the litter box. It got so bad my mom and I would meticulously clean the room we wrapped gifts in to make sure there wasn't any ribbon to eat. Another loved to eat the cellophane off of cigarette packs when my parents still smoked. Cellophane cat taught curly ribbon cat how to run away from us before we could actually stop them from eating the shit, too.

 

[Goofy Logic]

Mom was a little horrified to see one of our horses eating baling twine. After poking around the pen, we found a few that had passed through a horse - it takes on a frayed, scrunched up look to it. We are now way more careful about hanging onto the twine when we feed the horses.

 

[fishercat]

So when my mom was little, she had a pet rabbit. They had a big outside hutch where they put him on warm days so he'd get fresh air and more room to move around while not shitting all over the floor and eating the curtains. So, he got a small cut on his cheek that none of them noticed. They put him outside, and when they came back a few hours later to fetch him, the wound was writhing with maggots.

They took the rabbit to the vet, who then cleaned the wound out. The maggots had gotten all the way up to the poor bun's sinuses. He ended up being fine after all the maggots were cleared out, but he had a massive pit in his face for the rest of his life. My mom was a lot more careful after that.

 

[GRANDnumberofMULTIPLES]

One of our cats loved to eat curly ribbon, so birthdays, Christmas and the like were always fun times to scoop the litter box. It got so bad my mom and I would meticulously clean the room we wrapped gifts in to make sure there wasn't any ribbon to eat. Another loved to eat the cellophane off of cigarette packs when my parents still smoked. Cellophane cat taught curly ribbon cat how to run away from us before we could actually stop them from eating the shit, too.

My mom, who I helped get in the habit of flushing or burying her dental floss, once tossed a piece on top of the trash in her bathroom. Not even five seconds later did Bella, our fat-ass Russian Blue who was placed for adoption twice and thus has abandonment issues, slurp it down like spaghetti. My mom was terrified that it was gonna fuck up her insides or possibly kill her.

Nope. A day later she caught Bella chasing her butt only to find that she was chasing the dental floss coming out of her little kitty butthole. She had to chase down this cat who was having an absolute fucking blast being an infinite toy, an orouboros of fur and dental floss, and gently yank the dental floss out. It was a good reminder for her that small animals are like fucking toddlers.

I think my parents' dog had some kind of brain tumor. I was always a little cautious around her because my mom managed to undo all the training she had and then in the last few years of her life was incontinent, shit everywhere, and would not let me get near her. For anything. Even with food. I felt terrible because this dog was really really fucking suffering and my mom was blinded by love. The dog jumped on me when I was napping on the couch in high school and damn near bit through my lip and then when I was coming home from work I would literally have to sneak into the house so she wouldn't chase me down. There were a LOT of fights over this. Memorably the "You are so goddamn lucky I did not call animal control on this dog."
The time came and she finally realized how quickly the dog had declined (even to the point where the dog wasn't always recognizing her or my dad) and had her euthanized. I really really wrestled with taking her myself. I don't think I would have ever been forgiven though, and I also don't think I could have wrangled her into my car short of borrowing a Redman suit from the police department.

 

[melty]

Wasn't sure what thread to post this in
So there's a girl in the lolita fashion community that's a lolcow, and efame hungry so is very well known in the community. She recently went on a trip overseas to Japan where she bought a bunch of souvenirs including a fucking kitten. She posts a picture of the sign showing how much the kitten costs ($970 USD) and expensive lolita brand accessories and also poses the kitten in front of bags from expensive lolita stores just so everyone know she spent a ton of money on the trip.

Spoiler: Pics of kitten

Pretty much everyone that follows her is incredibly outraged and I'm learning more about cats and air travel and pet shops in japan then I ever really wanted to. First of all its a persian, and apparently a lot of airlines ban persians and other short nosed breeds because they have breathing problems that high up. A lot of airlines also ban kittens under 8 weeks, but it's not known how old this kitty is. And that is ANY flight, this is a 12 hour flight minimum (pretty sure it's longer) so this is going to be horrible for this cat and there is a very real chance it could be fatal.
Secondly, apparently pet shops in japan are horrible and get all their animals from mills and dispose of them if they don't sell for awhile and the conditions are terrible. So she spent almost $1000 supporting that lovely industry. All for a cat she could have easily bought in the US.
What was the point? Its speculated she just wanted a super special souvenir, and thought that buying a cat in Japan would seem cool. Otherwise, there's absolutely no fucking point.
On top of all this, she's gallivanting around Tokyo all day and leaving her brand new young kitten to stay in a hotel room by itself I guess??
Not at all thought out and a lot of people are pissed.

Update: Because of all the mean people bullying her by telling her that her kitten might, you know, die if she doesn't do something, she's now flouncing from the community and deleted the anti-bullying group she made.

 

[Surtur]

When I get home from work I will render unto you all the tale of the guinea pig and the fish tank

 

[Magpie]

I came across a "fish tank" in Poundland that was advertised as a "large" tank. When I got home and measured the capacity of it, it was no more than two liters at the very brim of this plastic abomination. Thankfully there was only one, and I bought it for the sake of holding bits of plants that I prune out when I maintain my tank, temporarily sticking fish in (talking no more than 5 minutes here) when doing a big water change or moving stuff around, holding cleaning supplies, etc. In doing so I also denied anyone else getting it, because holy fuck is it ever abysmal.

It made me very sad, and it pains me to think that people will happily stick a goldfish or more in there. There are no animals that could have a healthy life in tank like that.