Experiences with Petco? Rescues?

[Jateui]

I don't want to start any fights or arguements, I was just curious about the conditions you've seen.

I've heard of a lot of 'rescues' from them. And both of my crested geckos were rescued from different petcos aswell.

The first one was actually very nice, they had fresh food and water and the employee helping me was able to give me a lot of information that so far I haven't been able to prove false.
The second one was unplanned. I simply went to a petco to find some crested gecko diet (the other one stopped selling it because not enough people buy it, even though they sell the geckos and give their geckos the food.) and I was horrified. The temperature was kept at a solid 90 degrees. The food was obviously very hard and moldy. It was a small enclosure with 3 males, and one of them was bullying the others around to get the crickets, which were very large. I picked the one I did because it looked the smallest, and least colorful. (The more colorful and interesting ones tend to be bought first anyway, but I didn't have enough money to buy them.)
I talked to them and told them that these conditions would kill the geckos over time. The manager I talked with seemed to care a bit, and told me that they had just put in new heat bulbs and didn't know they got that hot.

Sadly, I came back today and saw one of the cresteds from last time there. The other two weren't there, and I can only hope they were bought. It's food looked like a rock covered in mold. I felt so bad for it, but they refuse to lower the price, saying it's a "perfectly healthy gecko" but it was very thin, you could easily see the ribs. Chances are if I did manage to get enough money for a new enclosure AND the gecko, it may not even survive. My kritter keeper is bigger than the patheticly tiny thing they kept it in. I might have been able to take care of it if I had just managed to get the price down. (All I had was $40, and they wouldn't even go that low)


The gecko from the petco with the good enclosures: http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...geckoagain.png
(that picture was taken a few days after I brought him home)
The gecko from the petco with the bad conditions: http://i196.photobucket.com/albums/a...emalegecko.png
(I took that picture a few weeks after she came home, so that's not near what she looked like at the store.)
They're both doing great now. The female is hitting about 33 grams. I think she was maybe around 24 grams when I brought her here (but my scale that I had then was normally off by a few, so not sure.) and her calcium sacs seemed nonexistant. The male is a little smaller at about 27ish grams.



So I was wondering about any other stories out there. It seems there's been quite a few petco rescues lately. A lot of people say they managed to haggle the price down so they can save them, how did everybody manage this? No matter what I tried, they wouldn't lower the price.
And what's the smallest ones you've seen? I think I've heard of some stories of some of the super small ones showing up in petco.

[k9sarchick]

Here's a video of the Juvie I rescued this past Friday night from an Uncle Bill's Pet Store here in Indiana.

This Crested Gecko was in pityful conditions when I rescued him. 92 degrees in his enclosure and certainly starving to death. This Crested Geckos weighs 2.83 grams, and that's after two days of syringe feeding it.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...80184705&hl=en

[droogievesch]

There are mixed reviews on petcos here. Some have gotten wonderful animals and swear by them, and there are others (like myself) who wouldn't buy them even if I was paid to.
My reasons are that despite the possibility of them coming from a good distributer the company themselves don't take good care of them. If I "rescue" an animal from their store and pay them money to do it I'm only encouraging them to get more because obviously they sell. If you want to "rescue" a gecko from a bad situation then the best thing (in my mind) is to walk away from it in order to save the three other ones that would take its place.

If you saw an ad in the paper for puppies and you saw that they were kept in deplorable conditions would you pay hundreds of dollars to "save" one? Or would you walk away and give your money to a dog breeder who takes pride in what they produce and has the highest quality animals? I personally think that the latter is the way to go and has the best impact on the hobby.

This is not to say that ALL pet stores are bad. If they properly earn my business by having healthy, well cared for animals then I have no problem giving them my business. I have yet to find one of these stores first hand.

[k9sarchick]

My first 2 Crested Geckos came from a PetCo and they were at least provided a proper environment. They were eating baby food, but that's what the PetCo corporate Care Sheet instructed. Mine are now all on CGD.

As far as walking away from a sick Gecko at a pet store, I believe that is a personal choice. I couldn't leave that reptile in there with a clean conscience.
For me personally, I couldn't leave the Gecko in those conditions knowing full well it would die a very slow death. Knowing that I could give it proper care and hopefully a good life, I chose to do that.

Giving them my business in other ways won't happen. And I'm pursuing action against the pet store where I rescued the Crested Gecko from so hopefully they will not do this again in the future.

At least where I live, these types of pet stores are undergoing HUGE persecution on the sale of puppymill puppies, and several stores have already been shut down. Adding to the complaints about their reptile care is just another way to get rid of these stores altogether.

[Black_Fire_Warrior]

At the Petco near me, there's one crested (the only one they have) that I've been watching for awhile and am considering 'rescuing'. They have him eating mealworms, (though they have added some sort of diet, might be CGD, I'm not sure) and one time I saw the pupated mealworm-beetles crawling around his tank.

I understand the veiw of supporting the dealers, and having them get more animals because the one they had sold. I wouldn't want to support the people who treat these creatures so poorly.
On the other hand, I can't stand to see this poor gecko, who seems to get skinnier and skinnier every time I see him, slowy die. I just feel so bad for him.

It also seems that this particular Petco is cutting down on the types of animals it carries (they don't have rats, rabbits, or marine fish anymore) so partially I hope that the one crested they have is their last, and that I would be giving this one a good home that he probably would never get otherwise.

just my .02

~rachel

[genevieve]

I just want to reiterate- if you pay for an animal, it is NOT A RESCUE. You are supporting the cause.

Period, end of story.

Genevieve

[that_girl]

I've been to numerous Petcos...and am happy to say that I've never seen one that is unclean or the animals look unhealthy, however, I am well aware that the crappy ones do exist.

We've gotten a few of our cresties from Petcos, and they are all healthy animals. They were all provided with some type of CGD, and either crickets or mealworms. I've never seen a sick crestie at a Petco.

Kyle and I have spent a fair amount of time educating the employees at the Petcos where we've made our purchases. Some of the employees were terribly ignorant on proper crestie care. I think instead of buying the sick animals, we all should try and educate people wherever we go.

[SarahW]

I have purchased four geckos from a store located in my hometown. One of those geckos, Lebkuchen, was 16 grams when he was bought and was in very good condition and his living conditions were nominal save for the fact that he was housed with two other geckos his same size.

My most recent petco pickups were very small hatchlings. My pinstripe "Wingding" was a little over 2 grams when he came to me, and he is missing four toes. He was given to me for 25 dollars, and was bought along with a cagemate, "Solar", the orange bicolor, who was 4 grams at the time. I was able to convince them to give me the pinstripe for a smaller price due to his missing toes, and that I was going to buy another gecko with him. Solar was 35 dollars because I was buying the "damaged" gecko with her. Several of the geckos in the enclosure had various problems; kinked tails, warped mouths, missing toes, dropped tails- but I think the reason was largely due to the fact that they were so incredibly small, and the employees didn't have instructions to give them the proper moisture they needed to have good sheds and proper hydration. I would put the gecko breeder that shipped the PetCo those animals at fault for the miserable condition they were in- animals that small shouldn't be sent to a petco, IMHO.

Mars Lunar Lander is another petco gecko of mine, he was happy and healthy and just too pretty to pass up, so I snatched him as an impulse buy.

My petco takes pretty good care of their reptiles. All the cages are always clean and at the proper temperatures and humidity. The cresties are fed CGD and it's always clean and never molded or gross. In the case of the little ones, it was hard to say really what occurred there.

[drakos]

Some stores are very good. There is one big pet store I like, the staff there are usually put in departments where they are interested in the animals and have had experience with them. They are also good about letting you know if that is not there department and are filling in. Unfortunately not all stores are so well managed. Does not matter what store I frequent, if the customer care is not there then I boycott the store. period. I also frequent more than 1 store for my pets. Some stores I get crickets and food but would never buy an animal from there. Other stores I only buy animals but would not buy supplies. I also comparison shop for best price for supplies. I found one small pet store where the owner is a reptile nut, but I don't think he will be able to keep his store open much longer : ( I purchased most of my reptiles from him and he makes sure you know something about the reptiles you are buying.

[geck123]

i read replies telling people they are only supporting a bad store by buying sick animals-and i agree with them in theory,but i'm guilty of doing it in the past.these are huge chains worth billions of dollars. losing a 50.00 sale from you isn't that big a deal to them,exspecialy when someone else with less knowledge will eventually buy it if it doesn't die,and then become a tax write-off. i can't,personaly, see an animal suffer and walk away from it in good conscience. instead i usually buy it and add to it's quality of life,instead of letting them take away from it.but please call their corporate office and let them know what's going on at that store! no manager wants a bad report coming from corporate! any associate will give you the number. just my opinion