Have to vent about the local pet store.... UGH

[EternallyCynical]

I can't stop being upset about this. I have two small pet shops right near me, one that sells just supplies and one that sells supplies and small animals/birds/fish and sometimes adopt out cats for the local shelter. Well today I needed cat food real bad but the smaller supply-only shop was out of the kind I needed so I had to go to the other one and they had a VERY sweet little chinchilla in there but man oh man did I get upset over the poor thing's conditions.

It was a fairly small (obviously pretty young) pink white chin being kept in the bottom half of a FN. There were two ferrets living in the unit right above it and a cage full of rabbits RIGHT next to its. The pans in the cage were bare plastic, I saw no kind of bedding, so it was either peeing on the bare plastic or in its bath house. There was a wheel in there but it was an awful plastic one and it wouldn't surprise me if the chin was really younger than it should have been for a wheel. There was a bare wire ramp in the cage, and two hammocks made of unsafe materials. The dust bath was sitting in there with it, and was presumeably left in there all the time. The chin's food was FULL of seeds and dried fruit and crap and I didn't see ANY hay in there for it, and it had a great big bowl full of water just waiting to have an accident happen. There was NOTHING for the poor thing to chew on except for its many plastic cage furnishings and one lonesome wooden shelf that was pretty mangled. I wanted to just buy the thing and bring it home so I could care for it properly but obviously that was out of the question, I don't have the space or resources for another chin, but MAN did that make me mad. Most of the small animals aren't kept in horrible conditions there but the rabbits and chinchillas there always make me upset. I don't know where on earth they get their animals but I'm sure its not from any responsible breeder and I'm sure the people who buy them aren't given good advice when it comes to care... :hair:

I really wanted to rip someone a new one over the chinchilla's conditions but I know the employees probably don't know better or aren't able to do anything about it and my terrible social anxiety makes confronting people difficult even when I'm super angry. I wonder if I should write a letter to the company or something. I doubt it would do much good but I really hate not being able to do much of anything. UGH! Its NOT OKAY!

Anyone else get horribly frustrated seeing chinchillas trapped in pet shops?

 

[Godofgods]

its horrible. I cant stand stores like that. I try to avoid going in at all costs when i can. I don't that doesn't change whats happening but it might at least keep me from going crazy much sooner.

What pisses me off more is that they wont change. If they don't know much about the pet then that is one thing. But when you point it out and they don't give a ****, that just makes me want to strangle them.

 

[riotheoleo]

My local pet shops are AWFUL. Pets At Home. Oh god.
I bought two fish from there a while ago as my first ever pet. One died of an infection within a WEEK and another died 2 weeks later. I got some fish from a fair nearby and they both outlived them. I went in to look at hamsters and they had a tiny cage with about 8 syrians stuffed in. They could barely move. The fish tank was full of dead fish and there was also a dead gerbil in the gerbil cage. I hate it. I refuse to buy pets from there.