The entire reason behind pet shops

[dargos mom]

Originally Posted by dargos mom

At the end of the day If you are going to buy an animal, then
surely you would have researched that animal first...cant blame
the pet shops for care/prices..if you know what you want, you
know what you are prepared to pay.. Its up to the consumer
to make decisions based on the facts that are in front of them.

Sorry may not have worded that as well as I could..yes I agree the Animals should be housed properly.. what I meant was If people did their research first, then they wouldnt buy from pet shops who either didnt care for the animals properly or who overcharged...at the end of the day its consumer power. If people didnt buy from these pet shops then they would go out of business.

If people didnt buy on the spur of the moment and thought things through then not only would the unscrupulous breeders and petshops go out of business, also their would be less need for rescues etc.

[purejurrasic]

Originally Posted by dargos mom

If people didnt buy on the spur of the moment and thought things through then not only would the unscrupulous breeders and petshops go out of business, also their would be less need for rescues etc.

Hear Hear !!

Cant argue with the above at all !!

[Snakes r grreat]

But would the hobby have got to where it is without petshops starting to sell reptiles in the first place?

Also, you probably wouldnt see half the suppliers of goods to go with reptiles if petshops didnt exsist? They wouldnt have a big enough market to sell to.

[spider_mad]

Even in the beginning the pet shops would have aquired reps from dealers and breeders back then. Bearing in mind couple of decades ago there was a lot more WC and CF species in pet shop. Still dont excuse pets shops not caring for the animals properly

[Snakes r grreat]

I didn't say it did.

[purejurrasic]

I would have thought that most reptiles suitable for keeping as pets are now cb in enough numbers to support the demand.

And yes, the hobby has evolved, to the extent that its really under the microscope now, and at risk of being halted !

I agree new animals should be researched, but as we all know, this is often not the case, and a petshop is often the first place someone looks.

As I said before, these are not comodities we are talking about, they are living creatures, and as such anyone selling them, or indeed buying, has if not a legal responsabilty (yet) but certainly a moral one to care properly for them

[YELLOWFISH]

As somebody from the outside looking in, may I throw my hat into the ring?

As a business and marketing graduate I like to think I know more than most about the realities of business life. Stores exist to make profit. There can be no argument on that one. It’s not the fact that profit is being made. It’s the way it’s being made that upsets people. Coming from an aquarium background I see a lot of similar issues. Believe me, I have been “escorted” from many pet shops after protesting about the condition of their wet stock and the advice their staff were giving out.

As I have little experience with specialist reptile shops (to me the reptile house used to be the scary place with the spiders before we got to the fish J ) I must ask these questions:

Does the exotic pet industry have a universally recognised code of ethics and qualification scheme? The fish industry has it in the form of OATA. And practical fishkeeping has a charter that stores can subscribe to. (This is mostly do do with Genetically modified and tattooed/dyed fish) These things, while far from mandatory, allow customers to buy with a certain degree of confidence regarding the well being and quality of the livestock.

Is there something we as the community can do to aid stores? A lot of the online stores I have visited in the UK do not have full care sheets and even then they are pretty basic. Would it be possible to compile something like a database of care sheets that are available to the pet trade free of charge? At least that way the “well intentioned but not that knowledgeable” shop assistant has something to reach for.

[lesvegas]

Thats a great idea and i touched on a similar idea in a thread earlier this week

Too many caresheets offer differing advice about things such as repti sand and the harm it may or may not cause certian animals

A database of quality acurate caresheets needs to happen in my opinion also

[Athravan]

The problem is .. what is accurate? Much of the information in reptile keeping is opinion.

Two people can have decades of experience in reptile keeping and one swears by sand and the other swears it's dangerous. I know big breeders of geckos who use sand and will argue blind that there is no danger for adults. I know many reputable breeders who advise strongly against it. I know gecko breeders who only feed their geckos mealworms, nothing else. I know many people who say crickets need to be the staple and vary the diet.

The way we keep our reptiles is greatly down to personal choice, opinion and experience. Two caresheets can be vastly different but still considered correct by two different experienced people so how do you choose definitively what you should say that is "correct" ?

(Outside of basics like enclosure size, temperature, humidity, etc. these should be fairly constants now due to the decades of research and observation of natural climates.)