Do You Own A pet store gecko??

[Blazebabe]

Hi had two normal male gecko's from a pet shop by where i lived quite a while back and they was about 2yrs old and they both thrived well and i had Blaze from a garden centre where it had a large pet store for animals and reptiles and so far she's been ok but i would never buy a young one from them because you do have more chance of loosing them more.

 

[SDCowboy]

Hi had two normal male gecko's from a pet shop by where i lived quite a while back and they was about 2yrs old and they both thrived well and i had Blaze from a garden centre where it had a large pet store for animals and reptiles and so far she's been ok but i would never buy a young one from them because you do have more chance of loosing them more.

Yeah I was just at petco this morning buying some cleaning spray and I checked out the leos. They got a new batch of babies in and there is just no way those little guys should be up for sale. They are so skinny and emaciated looking it was sad. They were also filthy.

 

[Blazebabe]

Yeah I was just at petco this morning buying some cleaning spray and I checked out the leos. They got a new batch of babies in and there is just no way those little guys should be up for sale. They are so skinny and emaciated looking it was sad. They were also filthy.

I went to the store i had Blaze from last week to get her crickets and they'd got a young one where blaze was when i brought her and like you said as skinny as anything you can't beat buying them when they're about 6mths and more matured plus you can see their development more and how they're looking.

The poor things look on their last legs before a start off in life, brilliant point on how they look:main_thumbsup:

 

[bananaphone]

Yeah some of them are just in scary condition. Like I said I had to take two back to petco before I finally got the chunky little girl I got now. Finally lucked out and she doesn't stop eating. She's like a vacuum. :main_laugh:

yeah. one of them that i rescued is eating like a champ and likes to be in her humid hide most of the time while the other one sorta just chills in the open and hasnt really touched her food yet. could be a bit stressed out still. ill be getting some little mealworms soon to see if she might just not be into dubia roaches, or to see if shes just stressed out still like i said. hope all goes well for her.

 

[roger]

Never buy from a pet store.When you buy ill leos from pets stores you are in fact supporting them in selling ill and sick leos..If you want to help eleminate the problem DONT buy leos from them especially sick ones.

 

[M_surinamensis]

Never buy from a pet store.

I don't think it is as simple as that.

I could agree with "Never buy from a bad pet store." It raises more questions about how one judges a store though, how a good one is distinguished from a bad one or at what point an average one crosses a line.

There are plenty of pet stores I'd happily spend money with and encourage others to do the same, secure in the knowledge that some of them are going to provide care, quality and expertise that exceeds most breeders. East Bay Vivarium, Exotic Pets in Las Vegas, Twin City Reptiles, ProExotics and many others. Hell, my local Petco has two post-graduate zoology students making minimum wage scooping fish, either of which I'd happily put up against 95% of the members of this message board when it comes to knowledge and ability.

Individual pet stores can be good or bad or anything in between. The decision to spend money with them should be similarly flexible. If it's a bad store, then denying them business is the right thing to do. If it's a good store, then there's no reason not to support them with your patronage.

Making it an absolute is fundamentally in conflict with the stated reason for doing it. "Don't give money to support negative practices." is not anywhere near the same idea as "Don't shop in pet stores." Judge them. Weigh them. Arrive at a unique decision, specific to each of them and abide by it as long as their continued practices support your conclusion. Blind criticism is no more worthwhile than blind support.

 

[bananaphone]

Never buy from a pet store.When you buy ill leos from pets stores you are in fact supporting them in selling ill and sick leos..If you want to help eleminate the problem DONT buy leos from them especially sick ones.

the way i see it is they are either going to get picked up by someone else who might not know proper care and would just go off whatever the store employee says, or they kill the gecko when it gets too big. and for $15 each it was impossible for me to say no

 

[Coby78]

the way i see it is they are either going to get picked up by someone else who might not know proper care and would just go off whatever the store employee says, or they kill the gecko when it gets too big. and for $15 each it was impossible for me to say no

It's like buying mill puppies from pet stores. The more business they don't get, the less money they get to continue supplying the store. If one day you were decided that keeping that emaciated gecko was the right thing in the long run, there could be many other people thinking the same thing.

When people boycott a pet store for the way they treat their animals, many are forced to either fix their ways or stop selling them, which is the best thing to do.

Of course I bought my Leila from a pet store, but it was a family one that breeds their own reptiles and fish, so none of the geckos were sick thankfully lol.

 

[M_surinamensis]

they kill the gecko when it gets too big.

Wait... what?

 

[OnlineGeckos]

I got my first 2 leos from Petco, they are both fine and happy now. I know pet stores aren't the best place to get these things, but sometimes people got to start somewhere. When I first started looking into getting a leopard gecko, I really had to read up on a lot of things. I went through some trial and error building a tank setup, and luckily my mistakes didn't cost any leo lives.

Pet stores' biggest problems with leos is that they sell them too early. Babies should really be cared for and well fed for awhile before they put them in a tank for sale. The display tanks are not good places for them to be cared for, as we've seen the tank setup is just bad. Too small, I'm sure they don't have temp gradient, and they're often on sand which is bad of course. They usually have too many of them in one small display tank.

But of all negatives, these pet stores do run adoption events, they do have services people need on a weekly/monthly basis, they have cheaper animals for people to buy to start off as a first time hobbyist, and of course they have easy walk-in live food you can go purchase anytime you need something. So you juggle the pros and cons, I do think they serve a purpose. I don't think it'll be beneficial for people to "boycott" them, I've seen too many pet stores go out of business in the past 10 years.

I do think they need to educate their employees more, and it does seem to be on a store to store basis where you find knowledgeable employees that care about live animals vs those that don't.

 

[bananaphone]

Wait... what?

what did you think they do with all the unsold reptiles?

 

[M_surinamensis]

what did you think they do with all the unsold reptiles?

No, no. I'm way more interested in how you think pet stores handle live stock. How old do you think leopard geckos are when they arrive? How long do you think pet stores keep them if they haven't sold? What do you think they do with them if the animals are unsold for that duration? Your answers should prove absolutely fascinating.

 

[diablofox420]

I currently own a High Yellow that I got from one of the Major Petstores.

I have currently owned him for 10 years and I have had no problems with his health at all. He has also been on calcisand the entire 10 years with no impaction at all. I have tried changing him over to other substrates but every time i try to he just sits in his hidey hole and wont eat. So like they say "if it ain't broke don't fix it.

 

[Tailless]

Get Ready to Get Offended!

I know that I'm going to offend someone with this...but here goes...:main_evilgrin:

My opinion is that in a perfect world, pet stores wouldn't sell live animals (except insect feeders). Leos would only be sold by private breeders...and preferably only locally... I cringe whenever I hear bad shipping stories! (Perhaps this is less of a worry than I think it is, but having had friends who worked at a major shipping company, I wouldn't want them handling my pet.)

One of my major concerns with pet stores selling reptiles (aside from the manner in which the animals are being cared for) is that it encourages people to see animals as objects (after all, I can just walk into a store and buy one, just like I would a doughnut or a new pair of jeans). I worry that animals in pet stores will be bought by people who aren't willing or able to invest time and money in caring for them.

However, I recognize that this isn't a perfect world, and I do think that there is room to distinguish good pet shops from bad. For better or worse, pet shops will probably continue selling reptiles for a long time to come.

I have thought a lot about this and I have come to the conclusion that there are two main things that we as leo enthusiasts can do: (1) advocate for better laws protecting pet shop animals, (2) work to educate people on care of leos. I think that sites like this one go a long way towards the latter. This is one of the positive things about the internet. Hopefully, new pet owners will have the sense to go online and do their research.

 

[M_surinamensis]

One of my major concerns with pet stores selling reptiles (aside from the manner in which the animals are being cared for) is that it encourages people to see animals as objects (after all, I can just walk into a store and buy one, just like I would a doughnut or a new pair of jeans). I worry that animals in pet stores will be bought by people who aren't willing or able to invest time and money in caring for them.

Wow.

I thought I was cynical about the intelligence of the general population, but this exceeds even my levels of distrust and negative assumption.

Maybe you can answer a question for me... if people are too stupid to tell the difference between a leopard gecko, a jelly doughnut and a pair of jeans, thinking they are all identical because they can all be purchased by exchanging currency for them in a store... why do I never see anyone eating clothing or wearing fried pastries? You're proposing a fundamental inability to comprehend the difference between consumer goods based on the identical method of obtaining them, so how do all these stupid people manage to dress and feed themselves? Why aren't they treating their jelly doughnuts and their jeans as being identical items, the way you claim they treat geckos purchased from pet stores?

Come to think of it, why would buying from a breeder be any different in that regard than buying from any other source? These idiot consumers, too dumb to distinguish between things they spend money on, would still be exchanging cash for a product when buying from a breeder. Money in, products out, eat a gecko, put a pair of jeans in a rack system, smear doughnuts all over their legs and lower torso before leaving the house.

 

[Tailless]

Money in, products out, eat a gecko, put a pair of jeans in a rack system, smear doughnuts all over their legs and lower torso before leaving the house.

Well... both geckos and jelly doughnuts can be brightly-colored, and I like both...sometimes I have trouble distinguishing them...yummm gecko...
(actually my gecko's soft belly reminds me of a soft flour tortilla...yum...)

Seriously, though, I know I'm cynical and perhaps my comments are a bit extreme. However, I do think there's something right about what I wrote. The claim *was not* that people cannot distinguish geckos from doughnuts, but that they will assign *similar value* to them. For example, I might value my computer and car equally, but that doesn't mean that I confuse the two (or that I will try to use my computer as a car).

I'd wager that people who seek out breeders are, on average, better informed about what they are getting into. When I talk about ignorant people walking into pet stores and buying geckos I don't mean that *everyone* who buys a pet store gecko is ignorant. In fact, if you're reading this forum that probably means that you are *not* one of the ignorant populace.

I do think that your average person is ignorant. When I think about pets that both me and my friends had as kids, I realize that we probably weren't equipped to care for them.

PS--I laughed out loud at your post (in a good way), M_surinamensis, so I appreciate it even if I disagree.

 

[M_surinamensis]

The claim *was not* that people cannot distinguish geckos from doughnuts, but that they will assign *similar value* to them.

There are different ways of measuring value. There's financial value, there's personal value, there's philosophical value that is granted to sentient organisms.

The disposable pet mentality that you were discussing is a concern, there are people in the world who fail to see animals as having any intrinsic philosophical value and who don't apply a personal value to them, viewing them strictly by their cost in currency.

I disagree that pet stores, as a generalization, foster that kind of mentality though. They aren't really that much more convenient than seeking out another kind of supplier. They certainly aren't inexpensive. This thread (and the pet industry as a whole) is loaded with discussion and debate about the quality of care and information they provide, but they certainly are not commonly encouraging customers to regard their pets as without value. I'd argue that the approach and attitude that is so alien to those of us here ("It's just a lizard, buy a new one.") is largely something intrinsic to the people expressing it. Some disconnect, either a result of a predisposition against empathy or something environmental as they learned what the world around them was, is present in those sorts of people who can't see the individual worth of another living thing.

Blaming it on pet stores is too simplistic, with very little factual backing for the conclusion. It's the pet industry equivalent of claiming that video games cause school shootings, fast food restaurants are responsible for obesity, playing Dungeons and Dragons leads to participation in satanic rituals and the television show Will and Grace turned children homosexual. People are, in some respects, impressionable but the manifestation of major behaviors (like not recognizing sentience*) has its roots with far more complexity than leopard geckos being twenty dollars this week with a PALS card.

*leos aren't that intelligent and are barely self aware, but they are sentient. It's a small but tremendously important distinction.

 

[bananaphone]

No, no. I'm way more interested in how you think pet stores handle live stock. How old do you think leopard geckos are when they arrive? How long do you think pet stores keep them if they haven't sold? What do you think they do with them if the animals are unsold for that duration? Your answers should prove absolutely fascinating.

lol at your attempt of trying to be an arrogant assface.

the ones ive seen at my local petco have ranged from no more then a couple weeks old(if even that) to a month or twoish+. they keep them as long as they need to. if they look fine as long as they are there until they sell. ive seen bearded dragons that were ~4 months old and others that are less then a month so its obvious that as long as they stay in good shape they stay there. but if they end up with two feet missing, part of their tail gone and not opening their eyes and not moving and they get a new batch what do YOU think they do with them? and your last question doesnt make sense, what do i think they do with them if they are unsold for what duration? for the time they are there? kept with minimal care obviously. god damn you are thick headed. you probably drive a big ass SUV and drive 60 in the fast lane amirite?

 

[M_surinamensis]

the ones ive seen at my local petco have ranged from no more then a couple weeks old(if even that) to a month or twoish+. they keep them as long as they need to. if they look fine as long as they are there until they sell. ive seen bearded dragons that were ~4 months old and others that are less then a month so its obvious that as long as they stay in good shape they stay there. but if they end up with two feet missing, part of their tail gone and not opening their eyes and not moving and they get a new batch what do YOU think they do with them?

If someone recognizes that something is wrong; quarantine, a veterinary visit and following whatever treatment, rehabilitation or euthanasia is subsequently prescribed, in accordance with corporate policies. If nobody recognizes that something is wrong, then they'll continue keeping it in the same manner as before. Usually placing new arrivals with a noticeable size difference in a new enclosure, although that "usually" part ties back in to employee awareness and experience.

What they do not do is-

they kill the gecko when it gets too big.

And it's just asinine rumor mongering to state that they do. You're wrong. Blatantly, factually, objectionably wrong.

You also might want to look up the word "libel" since it applies to your statements. You have written an outright lie about a corporation with the intent to cause harm to their reputation. The only reason you're getting away with it is because you did it in a place they're disinclined to look and because you're frankly too small and insignificant for them to bother taking action against you.

Petco and Petsmart keep track of animals, as each company keeps track of all its stock. Both of them have losses, from in-store deaths, medical problems, escapes, thefts and customer returns inside their guarantee periods of less than 5%. The majority of which are aquarium fish and feeder animals. Individual stores may exceed that, individual shipments may end up being high percentage short term losses... but company-wide, less than five percent. Which means that those individual stores which may be having a period of high loss are averaged out against stores which are below that point.

Five percent loss is a lot better than the numbers seen by many importers. It's not too far away from what is seen by many breeders (those large enough to be statistically significant anyway), though some exceptional individuals may be able to boast something substantially lower as a result of genuine expertise and an awful lot of hard work.

Bananaphone's statements are exactly what I refer to when I say that pet store bashing has become a fad. Unsubstantiated libel or short sighted anecdotes, regurgitated by people who are almost completely oblivious on the subject as justification for jumping on the bandwagon and bashing a massive, diverse aspect of the industry. It's a circle jerk of ignorance, rumor mongering and at times outright stupidity.

There are legitimate criticisms that can be levied against some of the common practices in the retail pet industry. There are more criticisms that can be levied against specific negative practices seen in a specific store at a specific time. Educated, knowledgeable individuals are able to make the distinctions and to couch their statements in a way that is unambiguous. "I don't like the stocking densities and short or nonexistent quarantine periods many pet stores employ, I feel like they are an avoidable risk." or "My local fin fur and feather is terrible because..." identifies specific details applicable to that store. There is often room for improvement, which is something worth discussing in a rational manner, among individuals who are actually competent enough to understand meaning and scope.

It's a far different kind of discussion than the ones that include people like Bananaphone, it includes fewer lies, fewer points of egregious misinterpretation and fewer statements pulled directly out of the rectum.

they kill the gecko when it gets too big.

... is just an idiotic thing to say. Just facepalm inducing, headdesk kind of wrong.

What bugs me the most about it is that this poor clown probably didn't arrive at that conclusion on his own. Someone who probably should have known better probably made the mistake of saying something that he misinterpreted or parroted back. Regurgitation without comprehension or context is what keeps this kind of nonsensical crap alive as rumor.

 

[bananaphone]

im not going to read all that. you obviously have not gotten laid in wayy to long of a time and have some serious issues if you are going to respond with that much. and im HONESTLY not going to read any of it.