Petition for Petco - PLEASE SIGN!

The problem with Petco isn't even the way they care for their dragons (though it is generally pretty terrible) but where the dragons come from and where they end up. Because Petco employees are not required to know anything about their care except to read the Petco care sheet and repeat it to potential buyers, those "introduced" to bearded dragons end up buying sick animals from a store that doesn't tell them how to take care of them.

Petco dragons are either wild caught or are coming from huge, massive breeding facilities where the breeders are bred to death and the babies are sold for profit. Any breeder selling to Petco does not care where the babies end up.

I am rescuing a dragon this weekend from someone who got it over 8 months ago and is keeping the poor thing in a FIVE gallon tank with coconut bark as a substrate. Guess who told them that was adequate housing? Our friendly folks at Petco.

It's all fine and good to see cute little dragons in the pet store, but the reality is that the vast majority of people who buy them do not do years of research as most of us did before buying a baby. They go in, see something cute, and buy it along with anything the employees recommend. I have had so many people come to our store/rescue after buying a lizard to say "my gecko isn't shedding properly" or "my bearded dragon isn't growing" and are just shocked by the poor level of care they have unknowingly given their pets. I hear the same question over and over: "Why didn't the woman who sold him to me know any of this?"

Because she wasn't trained to, and she doesn't care!

So the fact that the babies are housed on sand for a few weeks before they are sold is not a huge deal, but the lifetime of unintended cruelty and neglect they suffer as a result is inexcusable.

I also wanted to add that there are already a huge number of great breeders, and WAY more bearded dragons in rescues and looking for homes than you would think. Petco is the main supplier of rescue dragons, and we don't need them to sell them! Breeders do a great job of providing healthy animals to people who have done their research.

I wish you all the luck in the world with this

My largest complaint about Pet Stores in general (and I have seen it with some of the small time breeders too) is that the babies that are being offered for sale look barely older than a few weeks old at most

While a lot of breeders will not ship until they are a certain size/age-there are those(obviously the Pet Store suppliers being one of them) that just don't seem to care and these animal are treated more like dry goods than living creatures

Sandy

Good point. Our pet store will not sell a baby younger than 8 weeks old, or any that haven't had their first shed and aren't completely healthy (both those from local reputable breeders and rescues).

I really dont want to come off as defending Petco but I dont think that they are going out and catching dragons in the wild. And yes many people dont do their research and buy a sickly animal and it ends up dieing on them but I think that there are alot of people like myself that first saw a dragon at a pet store, did their research and now are educating others of proper care. Also, I still believe that it all goes back to the breeder, you said that petco is the biggest reason for rescue dragons, what about all these breeders that sell them fresh out of the egg. I recently went to a show and personally think the the jail they live in at petco may be better then the slums these breeders put these babies in. Charlie

I was never defending bad breeders. There are PLENTY of those as well! I was defending my friends that breed and anyone who breeds responsibility with the knowledge that they are animals before they are money.

There isn't so much anymore a huge market of wild caught dragons, but where do you think pet bearded dragons came from in the first place? The vast majority of turtles/tortoises and many other types of reptiles (those you see in pet stores, at least) are still being taken from the wild. It's much cheaper to just pick them up and sell them than it is to have the facilities for breeding and raising herps.

It is great that you do your research, and it is great that there are people who do. However, our rescue gets calls every single day from families whose kids just had to have that bearded dragon in petco so they just buy it. Ten gallon tank, heat rock, bag of sand. That's all they need, right? So when they end up with a sickly dragon that hasn't grown in six months, they come to us. The reality is that the vast majority of bearded dragon owners have no idea how to properly care for them.

http://www.animalsvoice.com/PAGES/wr...ile_trade.html

By the way, I don't agree with any of the stuff at the end about salmonella and that no one should be able to have a reptile. However, the statistics at the top are pretty accurate and I just wanted to demonstrate how many animals come from the wild.

I talked to the manager of my local Petco last week about the subpar reptile care. She was very helpfull. She did however blame alot of the problems on one employee (they always use that excuse lol) and assured me that he had been fired and replaced with four new girls. She also told me that they have a team of vets who instruct them on their setup's. She said they have to setup their animals the way the vets tell them too.
I'm sure that there are some decent Petco's out there. The manager told me that all Petco's are required to keep their setups identical. I guess the vets they use are spewing out old and outdated info.

I finally got around to reading the link that was posted by Dragongirl6

It was an interesting read and I found both truth's and what I hope to be misconceptions in it

I am wondering about the ratio of wild caught to CBB reptiles these days?

It does not state when the article was written but it used the dates for 1989 to 1997 for stats

I believe that it was safe to say that then there were many more WC reptiles sold as pets but with the hobby taking off as it did especially in the last 10 years-there are many more breeders that are working with CBB and their offspring

It would be very disturbing to me to find that the majority of importers do treat WC stock as was described in this article-with no regard as to their value as living things and only looking at the money that they can obtain from sales of them

This article is quoting statistics from over 10 years ago and I am curious as to how these stats have changed since then

As for Salmonella-I am just not buying those stats

I don't recall when the legislation was passed for the limit of size for sales of turtles specifically for the risk of salmonella but NO young child should have unsupervised access to any reptilian pet and hand washing should be the number one rule that is taught by the parents when young children help with their parents reptiles or keep their own

I am not going to go into the "we get more cases of smaonella from uncooked chicken" etc here but the last that i read-this still proved to be true

Most reptile breeders that I read posts from on the forums show a remarkable intelligence and common sense when their children interact and help with the reptiles being kept by them

The old saying comes to mind here-"it only takes one bad apple to spoil the bunch" and bad publicity certainly does not help out our hobby in any way

I shudder to think of the idea of a federal law regulating the reptile industry

It is true that for the most part the majority of Pet Stores are extremely far off the mark with information about the correct care and the equipment/things needed to ensure that the particular reptile purchased from there has a happy healthy and long lifespan with their new owners

This is something that CAN be improved-why would this (and other) petition(s) even be in existence if we were not trying to change things for the better for our beloved reptiles?

Legislation banning the sale of the animals is not the answer as Black Market pets are going to be even more irresistible to certain individuals that want to keep the animals as a bragging point rather than for the love for the animal

I do feel that Iguanas should not be for sale to the general public but I would rather see extensive education geared toward their care offered pre-sale rather than the ban of the animal in the industry because of the black market allure
Beside which I really don't see the possibility of an overall ban on the sale of Iguanas anytime in the near futire

I think that education rather than legislation is the answer here

just my -.02
Sandy

No. While it is true that many reptile species are still collected from the wild, that is no longer true of beardies. Even in Australia where beardies originate, it is illegal to collect them from the wild and has been for a few years unless you have an education or rehab license. In fact, in Australia, you have to get a license just to have a reptile as a pet. You have to pass an application process that asks you to show what you know about husbandry. All beardies sold as pets these days are cb. I suspect that will eventually happen here, as it is already happening to some degree in Florida, and happening in some states where certain reptiles originate.

This petition addresses the age of the babies being sold, but it mostly addresses the care that they recieve AT Peco stores. Petco employees and managers are told how to set them up and cannot change their husbandry practices without corporate permission. So yeah, I wish that breeders would stop selling to petco, but it really is PETCO that is doing the harm! I also run a rescue and council people on husbandry, and most often the problem start with BAD advice, usually from Petco.