Have you ever been to a pet store and you've noticed a sick or neglected reptile in one of the habitats?
You may want to buy that reptile to rescue it and get it out of that situation.
However, doing so may not be the best thing for the reptiles in the long run.
Today I'm going to be sharing with you how you should respond and what you should do
if you do see a sick reptile in a pet store.
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Common health issues you may see in reptiles at pet stores
include stuck shed when it comes to snakes and lizards.
It can get stuck on, like, geckos quite often if their humidity levels aren't right.
Or, you may see skinny or malnourished reptiles.
Either way, it's not a good thing to see that, especially on the sales floor.
So, if you notice an animal that is sick or neglected,
the first thing you should do is notify management.
Get--find management in the store and talk to them
and politely make them aware of the situation
and that the animal looks sick
or that it's unhealthy in general
and see what the management does.
See if they improve the conditions. Give the store about a week
to straighten things out and improve the enclosure.
And if things haven't improved after that week,
then the next thing you should do is contact the corporate office of the business, if they have one.
A lot of the big chain retail stores have a customer support line that you can call
and you can report concerns over animal health.
And that should be your next step.
Again, give them a week afterwards. Many retail stores will actually call you
if you talk to cooperate and report something wrong with their enclosures
and they will tell you what they are going to do to fix it.
Not all retail stores will do this,
it's really just the two big chain stores in the United States anyway
that will call you back if you contact corporate.
But, then again, give them a whole week to fix the enclosures and check back again.
If things still haven't improved in the animal's enclosure,
then, I would suggest taking it to the next level
and take a picture of the living conditions the animal is being kept in
and post it on social media
Get the word out there that that store is not properly taking care of their animals.
You can post your observations and concerns on
their Facebook page and you can actually tag the business as well
so that they see the post. You can post it on
Twitter on Instagram, any social media platform you can think of.
Basically just spread awareness and make the public
aware of what they're doing to their animals.
Another thing you can do is review the business on Google.
Look up their Google business listing and insert your review
and share your opinion and include pictures if at all possible.
The company will likely see this
because lots of companies will check regularly
their own Google reviews to see how things are looking.
And if they notice there's a lot of negative reviews that, uh,
involve animal care, they will likely improve their animal care
to not only improve their own self image but
therefore to improve business.
As tough as it may be, don't feel obligated to buy the animal and
rescue it and get it out of that situation because
that sadly only supports the business and encourages them to
purchase another animal to take its place and
therefore be subjected too the same mistreatment as the previous one.
But, if you don't purchase that animal and it just doesn't sell
because it's sick and so nobody wants to buy it
or if it passes away in the store's care
then the company is out the money that it cost to buy the animal
and care for it during the time they had it in the store
and they have less incentive to replace it then afterwards.
This is especially true with more expensive
species of reptiles.
Sadly the more
common species like ball pythons, bearded dragons, and leopard geckos
are so cheap at a wholesale price
that even if one or two passes away the company's
likely not to change their habits on
what animals they care for and how they take care of them
they're just gonna buy another one and replace it.
That's why it's -so important- to get the word out there of any
mistreatment that you see that hasn't been improved on
and post pictures on social media platforms.
Of course keep in mind that
not all pet stores are going to neglect their pets.
Not even the big chain pet stores are all going to, like,
neglect or mistreat their animals.
Uh, if you don't already know, I worked at PetSmart. I was at one of the big retail
pet stores for over nine years and I was in management there
I was in charge of the pet care department.
And I made sure my team took
excellent care of the reptiles, because of course they were my favorites.
So I made sure they were properly cared for
along with all the other animals in the department.
The tough part of a pet store employee is that there are certain
protocols you have to follow and if you do not follow them
you can get in trouble and possibly lose your job.
An example of this would be giving
ball pythons live rodents if they refuse frozen-thawed rodents.
The policy when i worked at PetSmart was that you could only
feed snakes frozen-thawed rodents and if they refused it
you could not try to feed them live.
That was just against policy. So what we did was
instead of letting the snake starve to death
cause it would refuse frozen-thawed we would
adopt it out to a customer that could take good care of it
and could offer it live rodents and thats kind of a good compromise.
Another one of the policies there is that if any animal
whether it be a reptile, small animal, bird, or other has any
physical deformities or any chronic health issues that
have been cleared by the vet as something thats just gonna
be with the animal, like a hamster with diabetes. It's not something you can cure
it's just something the animal's going to have for the rest of it's life.
In any of those sorts of instances the animal
gets adopted for free to a
customer that has the experience to properly take care of
that special needs animal. So where I worked at least, at my location,
uh, we made sure the animals had
really good care, but I can't say the same for
all locations out there and all pet stores of course.
It all depends on their pet care team and
their dedication to the animal's welfare. Another thing to keep in mind is that
there are multiple ways to properly take care of reptiles
and the animals at pet stores are in temporary
set ups. They're only there until they're sold and then
they are moved to a permanent enclosure at their new owners house.
Of course if the animal has stuck shed or it's severely dehydrated or it's malnourished
that's one thing. Obviously there's something wrong in the enclosure, something seriously wrong.
But, if say the store
houses a ball python in kind of a smaller enclosure,
that's not necessarily something that you need to report
to corporate, or spread on social media
because again, the animal is just in there temporarily until
its sold. So overall, the best thing thing to do
is to notify the proper people whether it be management,
corporate, or the public about
the care of the animals that the pet store is providing.
And that will likely be the most effective thing you can do
when it comes to the care of that animal and future animals.
And of course if you are bringing it to the public level
make sure you take pictures of it to make people aware
of what's really going on. Anyway, I hope today's video
kinda helped explain how you should
approach a mistreated animal
in a pet store, so that you can not only improve that animals care,
but you can also improve the care of all the other animals they have in the future.
As always, thank you for watching and thank you
to all of our Patreon supporters for backing this channel.
And we'll see you next time!
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