# I'm appauled!!



## Megzilla

I thought I'd tell you a bit about my day, and *how it's very important to get your animals from GOOD BREEDERS*.
This is a long one, but please read it, especially when I stop talking about the fish.

As some of you may know, I work at my local pet shop (not mentioning names). Now, on Fridays we get fish and our small furries (if we've ordered them). Our fish we only get when we're critically low, and the others, well we just get what we need.
First of all, I had to cover for a member of staff who was 2 and a half hours late for a 3 hour shift. I was going to come in and help anyway, while I waited for the fish delivery (I ordered a few fish from the list). The only reason why a second person has to come into the shop to work is to clean out the cages for the new animal arrivals. I did this all in an hour, where it takes the other member of staff 4 hours. The other girl couldn't believe it when I said I was done.

Second of all, the fish came in. 4 big cardboard boxes filled with big bags of fish; gold fish, tropicals, snails. First thing that irritated me-two of the Pictus catfish that I ordered were out of stock. Fair enough they didn't have any in, but I need some more for the two I've already got. Secondly, on the order list, it said 'Siamese flying fox-Medium' so I thought, fantastic, if they're big enough, I'll have those for my fish tank. 
Apparently, medium= under 1 cm.

To make this rant a tad shorter, two other of the fish I ordered didn't come in&#8230; the aquatic plants weren't put on the order, meaning that we now have 3 very disappointed customers!

Right, this the bit that made me cry the moment I got home. When the animals come in from the order, they come in makeshift boxes- washing up bowls with mesh on top, tatty plastic tubs, anything cheap and worn, they use it.

1) I said on the phone to the breeder 'I'll have 2-3 female gerbils only if they're NOT dove' This is because we already have 2 dove gerbils in the shop. Her husband, doing the delivery, came with a tiny box, with 2 not too healthy gerbils, one dove, the other black. I picked up the dove, and said that I asked for no doves. The black I picked up, and had quite a shock. I showed her to the breeder and gave him such a dirty look. Her right eye was clearly very infected, and was causing the fur around it to fall off. It was extremely inflamed, and I dread to think what they're going to do with her when she got back! (Probably breed with her). He just said 'Oh my, I'm very sorry!!' and carried onto the next animal. These animals looked very old, their coat was very greasy, and they looked frail.

2) I said on the phone to the breeder 'I'll have two female rats, only if they're not black hooded, we already have 2 in the shop and we need more variety'. What did they bring me?? Two black hooded rats, and two agouti hooded rats. And how old were they?? *3 WEEKS OLD!* The moment I saw them, I asked the man 'How old are these rats??' he told me their age, and I told him that they're not even fully weaned at that age. In reply, he said the following 'well at 4 weeks old they can impregnate the females, so we have to sell them at 3 weeks'. Did it ever occur to them to separate the males from the litter?? I handled them, and they were so wild, they could've literally be taken from an alley and labelled as a pet rat. No joke, I have never seen such aggressive babies as those. I just said to him that I am not willing to buy such young rats from him, they should be AT LEAST 4-5 weeks old when sold.

3) The mice he showed me were tiny, they couldn't have been older than 4 weeks. One of which bit me so many times when I did the tame/handling test.

He also gave us tiny Russian hamsters and Syrian hamsters, but at that point I had had enough, and I just walked away and let my colleague do the rest.

When he came to me to the till for payment, I asked him how his wife breeds them-does she do it selectively, or does she just put them together. He said she's never bothered with planning breeding or anything, and breeds with anything she has. INCLUDING the aggressive or sick stock we make them take back!

When I get customers interested in buying the animals, I always encourage them to find a good breeder to buy them off of. I was shocked at the day I've had, and to be honest, I've lost most of my remaining faith in humanity. Even my brother was shocked when I told him, and he doesn't really care about things like that.

Guys, I really can't stress enough how important it is to get your pets from a reputable breeder. Even if you feel sorry for the poor thing in the corner, you're just going to support breeders like this. This experience has been a real wakeup call for me about the pet trade. And being on the front line as such, you really do see the nitty gritty. I am now thinking of getting good quality animals and breeding them for the shop myself, anything to stop supporting this other breeder. She doesn't even know most colours or markings! I literally burst into tears when I got home, and I tend to fairly hard to move with things like that.

I hope this has helped.


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## moustress

Ugh. A pretty ugly sounding scene. You have my sympathy/admiration/empathy.

Who said something like."All that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."


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## Erica08

I wish more people in the pet trade did care about what they put out especially rodents/small animals as I would guess 90% of the time when they go for pets it's for children and I've seen first hand how heart broken kids can get when something bad happens to their new fury friend  . I just started working with a local pet store and now supply them with mice, rabbits and a few other species soon he breeds all the reptiles and keeps rather good records on the breeders of everything else.I'd love to run my own pet store and supply the animals myself at least then I'd know what kind of care they received and can be confident selling them.


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## Megzilla

Any time someone asks for a pet mouse, I show them what's available in the shop, then I talk to them and tell them that i'm a mouse breeder, and my stock is far healthier, and friendlier than the mice they have. I explain to them the mice I have available, and they usually come in the next day i'm working to pick up some of my mice. I'm still getting rid of the remainder of my pet stock, and I have a woman that's comming in today to buy some from me. Depending on how many she buys, I'll have no pet stock left that's available for sale  (happy days!)


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## Matt Haslam

when i used to work in a pet shop,ooo ages ago , we never sold rats or mice. This is because I used to supply customers direct if they wanted rats or mice. They bought all there equipment from the shop and so everyone was happy all round.

Shop didn't have to look after them or rely on poor breeders, the customer got good stock and the shop sold some gear!


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## WoodWitch

Awww, Megs 

I can definitely understand your frustration. Baaaaad breeder!!!
Good on you for challenging him. Did he get paid?

Did you talk to your boss about it and ask him to consider a new breeding supplier (you)?

I'm certain we've all seen/had a similar experience with a pet shop at some point (although there's gotta be some good ones out there).

I once took some excess mice to a pet shop and they took them out of the box I brought them in and just plonked them in a cage for sale. No questions, no test handling, no checking to see if I'd sexed them correctly........they just didn't care. Obviously I gave them good stock but _they_ didn't know that!

I don't do that anymore.


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## ian

I used to supply a local pet shop when I had surplus mice, they only took does and only took groups of 10 or more. I always tried to give them a range of colours and would of course never send anything unhealthy (or unattractive!). I can make far more money from selling my surplus privately but I had seen the state of the mice they stocked and thought I would offer an alternative. They were always very appreciative anbd commented on how my mice were much better quality. They have my contact details and I can more than provide the quantity of mice they require. However they haven't contacted me for over a year and continue to use their old supplier. I've seen heavily pregnant and elderly mice in there as well as mice with snuffles and all of them are visibly crawling in mites. Once I even had to alert staff to the fact that a mouse had decided to die in full view in the middle of the tank and was eeking out its final breaths infront of customers.

Sometimes the pet shops are as repsonsible as these terrible suppliers, it doesnt even make business sense to stock bad animals. I'm guessing pet shops make a lot of their money from the over priced cages and toys they stock, surely exhibiting really attractive and healthy animals for sale would increase revenue in this sense. I can't imagine the shops make a huge amount of money from the actual sale of the animals.


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## shadowmouse

You should have seen the guinea pigs I saw in our local petco last week.  They were TINY. I've never seen guinea pigs that small. They couldn't have been big enough to leave the mother. I talked to the worker there and she agreed. They were far too young! It's so sad.

I'm sorry you had to experience what you did.


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## countrygall721

I agree, going to a good breeder is the best choice for getting mice. I hate seeing how the petshops hold there animals


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## zany_toon

*hugs* Poor you and what an awful day you had!!! I always try to be very careful where I get my animals (even my fish!) I've been getting my mice from the same fish shop for 21 years now and the owner never sells a fish that's unwell. I've bought fish elsewhere a handful of times and it's always ended up with my colony being wiped out due to whitespot or losing my best from finrot. As for the mice I have bought from petshops on three occasions (actually twice, the third time was a week ago and my mum got me mice as part of my Christmas ) The mice I bought from the pet shop in Grantown-on-Spey have been great, the shop employees knew what they were doing, the mice were really well handled and bred by one of the employees (and three of the four original pet shop mice are still here at the age of 18 months ) My early Christmas mice have been well handled and are healthy although one little girl has been badly bullied and the employee couldn't say how they got the mice (local breeder, rodent farm, supplier etc) so I have an iddy bitty mouse with an eye infection, a third of a tail and a back covered in scratches. There aren't enough places that truly care about the animals that they get in to sell. I was in a local pet shop getting food for the mice last week and overheard the employee discussing a new syrian hamster with a customer - who was buying said hamster for her screaming 3 year old. Apparently the customer wanted a pet that would die quickly to which the employee responded "hamsters are ideal then. Kids get bored so quickly of animals - like rabbits can live up to 8 years and kids are bored by then and no one wants anything to do with it - so hamsters are ideal. Ours usually only last a year or two max which is ideal and if the kid is still interested you can get another one. That's what a lot of our customers do." :wallbash A complete contrast to the other two I've had dealings with.


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## Megzilla

thanks for your support guys, without understanding people like you who will listen (read) these rants, I don't know how I would keep my sanity :lol:

My friend works at maidenhead aquatics, and he sorts me out for the healthiest stock he can get  Through the shop's fish order, I bought a _Polypterus senegalus_, and _Apteronotus albifrons_. Both look healthy, and haven't been showing signs of sickness.

Today I brought in the remainder of my female pet types into the shop because someone wanted to buy some. She came in, I showed them to her, and she picked out a PEW. I showed her the mice in the shop, to compare the difference in quality. After that she then said 'yep i'll get that white one then', to which I asked her what other ones she wanted. She said she only wanted one, and I refused her sale, telling her that the absolute minimum I would sell is two females together, if I know that they'll get lots of attention (you can tell the customers who acctually will care for the rest of the pet's lives), or if they already have mice. She then went all like 'owww.. noo... i'm not sure now... So you won't let me have a single one??' After much talking to, she phoned up and said the following 'I'm going to have to pass on the mice, If I knew that they had to be kept in GROUPS then I wouldn't have come in. Sorry to bother you, but I don't want a zoo. I'll just get my grandson a hamster or something.' I told her that they should be kept in small groups when I first spoke to her over the phone.

Plus, since when did 3 mice become a zoo?? :lol: :lol:


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## Raindropmousery

That is a really sad story. There is a pet shop near me that always has ill fish, mice that are to young very ill and often dead in the cage and once i went in there and they had a baby rat that they were selling off as a mouse it looked about 2 weeks old and the size of a mouse he had only just opened his eyes was very weak, dehydrated, very cold and was in need of his mummy i couldnt leave him to die so i bought him and handreared him and he survived, he was a little brown husky rat as a baby and as he got older he lost his hair and now he is a naked rat. He is such a sweetie i think he thinks he is human he doesnt understand when u show him another rat, but he loves having cuddels with me whilst grooming my face very cute. It is so sad he had been taken away from his mum and im so glad i found him otherwise he would be dead.


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## Raindropmousery

i hate that lol 3 a zoo thats crazy i hate it when some one wants to keep a female mouse on its own it is so sad i know some times males have to be kept on there own which is sad but if kept together they rip each other to pieces but some time males live happly together which is so nice.


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