Pet Store and Pet Ownership Horrors -

[Rabbit Bones]

Went to petco yesterday and there was a tortoise in the turtle display. I had to explain to them the difference between a tortoise and a turtle I almost bought the poor thing for fear of its life.

 

[Ido]

Sorry to necro the thread but shit fucking blew up. I have a headache and I'm very emotional but I need to just get it out.

I took ^him off my relatives hands. The poor baby has really bad metabolic bone disease, he just started being able to move maybe a millimeter every few hours (if that, but it's something) and the only way I can get him to eat is to shove a bit of food into his mouth as he twitches. I let him soak a bit in the morning and at night, and I've been trying my best to make sure he's as comfortable as possible. I've taken him to two pet stores and a vet to get their opinions on him (I trust all the people involved), it's unlikely he'll be able to walk normally but he's improving. He's been getting better and I'm proud of the little guy, he's such a little trooper... but the relative I took him from doesn't think he's that bad, that I'm doing anything special, that she can do it better than I can, and has even told me. Multiple. Fucking. Times.

I was gonna stop at that, I had it all typed up yesterday, I got scared off of posting but then shit hit the fan.

I'd almost lost him about five days in, I'm pretty sure the MBD and the stress of a new environment just got the best of him. I told her this, she said "Maybe it's because you took him out of my house", her house is disgusting, she has emphysema and can't even breathe in the damn thing because she never fucking cleans. She's said that she can do shit just as well as I can, when all she's done is pinch at his (by a vet's own admission) "atrophying" legs instead of working them and making him stand up on them, as well as hanging him by his front feet at the top of his cage.

She's been trying to tell me that he's been doing so well for her, he was standing and everything was fine, trying to rub it in my face that she can do what I've been doing, even though she's had him for 3 years, he's had to go in for two different rounds of calcium shots btw (and it was only after my insistence that she even took him to the vet).

My family is going through a war, everyone's fighting with each other over the stupidest of shit (this relative is in the middle of it, instigating it all) and today she texted me, called me insensitive for taking him "under the guise that she was gonna get him back" and it hurt her, he's been in her family for three years now. She claimed it not to be a money thing but when I got on the phone with her she threatened to sue me, I told her to go ahead. I told her I'd pay her for him, she said $800, I said what ever it took, she then refused. We struck up an agreement after we calmed down a bit (I was crying), I'd get to keep him for two weeks and we'd take him to the vet to let them decide.

A few hours later I decided I couldn't do, I was way too stressed, if he was just going to relapse it would be better to not have to suffer for much longer, so I called her up and told her to come get him. She brought her neighbor (who's father just passed away two days ago and shouldn't be dealing with this shit) and blamed me, "I was just starting to find a positive him being with you, but you couldn't even give me a day."

I feel like shit, but I'm done with her.

I still don't know if I'm getting him back but she is considering it and knows that the only way I'll take him is if she relinquishes him to me. I really don't want to go through that shit again. I do know that he is going to be getting calcium shots over the course of the next few weeks. She said the vet sounded positive, I'm still worried because I'm a worrywart but I'm just glad his vet is involved. Also, the two vets he's been to have said he still has a few years left in him, he hasn't given up yet.

I probably won't post about this again until it's decided if I get him back or not, or shit hits the fan again. Only time will tell.

Well, after months of not talking to her I finally swallowed my pride and asked her how he was doing and it turns out the poor little guy passed away from an infection a few weeks ago.

RIP little buddy, you will be missed.

 

[DespotCTM]

The worst kind of petowners are the ones that get a pet just to show it off to others (and then post the "omg i luv him so much happy birthday to my cute dog" on facebook)

Unfortunately that type of owner is my little sister who wanted a dog because she felt lonely being home alone (she still lives with my mother and I had moved out years ago because they're both insufferable bitches) and mother worked all day so a cute puppy would help her ease that "totes super loneliness" right?

Spoiler

Wrong, she still went to school and shit and somehow thought a shihtzu/maltese mix puppy would be a-okay being home alone.

She went to pick it up with me and I had told her it would be stressed from the travel and the new environment and to let him explore the home (and get used to her) in peace and not to invite people over to show him off to for at least the first few days. So of course she is like "yeah suuure I know" but is dumb enough to post on facebook the picture where you can see her friend's hand AND her 2/3 year old touching the dog.

She also lived with me for a month or 2 because mommy dearest told her to go the fuck back to school and not neglect her dog by going partying a lot and coming home in the buttcrack of the morning (6AM). I can count on one hand the times she was at home taking care of her dog and instead of disappearing all day to hang out with friends and on the other hand the times she took this puppy of 4/5 months with her to a BBQ all day in the sweltering-crack-of-Satan's heatwave where the poor thing would have no way to rest/food/water for up to hours.

Worst thing is that I spend more time with that little hairball that when he's scared he'll come to me to just hold him because she can't be bothered.

She also used to take away his water and food at around 20:00 because "he might drink and pee in the house" just wtf

TL;DR: sister got a puppy just to show it off to friends and proclaim on facebook totes of an animal lover she is praise me for being such a wonderful person

 

[AnOminous]

The worst kind of petowners are the ones that get a pet just to show it off to others (and then post the "omg i luv him so much happy birthday to my cute dog" on facebook)

That bitch Alison Rapp is one of those. So is John Flynt. You know, the kind who buy some fashionable breed, ignoring that they have known behavioral or health issues. So you end up with freaks like this putting a tiny dog on a choke collar because they're too sociopathically lacking in empathy even to train a damn dog.

 

[Bugaboo]

A co-worker told me she had an discussion/borderline arguement with a petsmart employee over the conditions the chameleons are kept in. The employee knew nothing about them and they were displaying signs of stress. After the discussion she had a bunch of shit in her cart and she nope'd the fuck out and left the cart with like 500 dollars of reptile supplies in it

 

[SpessCaptain]

Ah yes.. I think my friend is one of those. She had a pet bird for about 6 months before it passed away (no diagnosis) and talked about how she was training to have it make r2d2 sounds and other nerdy things. It was named Gandalf and she was trying to teach it to say "Fly you fools" for epic facebook stickers.

She would always repost the dead bird on facebook for sympathy and one day got a new bird, Baggins this time. Well suffice to say she posted her replacement for a couple of weeks and then softly dropped the bird off of her page. I think the bird died and shes refusing to acknowledge it because then she seems like a bad owner.

Now she's moved onto mammals, got a rabbit now.

 

[DespotCTM]

Ah yes.. I think my friend is one of those. She had a pet bird for about 6 months before it passed away (no diagnosis) and talked about how she was training to have it make r2d2 sounds and other nerdy things. It was named Gandalf and she was trying to teach it to say "Fly you fools" for epic facebook stickers.

She would always repost the dead bird on facebook for sympathy and one day got a new bird, Baggins this time. Well suffice to say she posted her replacement for a couple of weeks and then softly dropped the bird off of her page. I think the bird died and shes refusing to acknowledge it because then she seems like a bad owner.

Now she's moved onto mammals, got a rabbit now.

I have a feeling that those people post "happy birthday to my -insert family member who doesn't have social media- ily" on their facebook (but can't be arsed to call or visit said relative) are one and the same.

Aka attention whores for asspats

 

[ulsterscotsman]

I think declawing cats just cause people don't want to get scratched or have their furniture clawed up should be an illegal. I know 2 people who have declawed cats and I just don't understand. If you can't take the claws, why get the cat? Like I used to get pinched by hermit crabs (well, just 1 of them was the big offended) all the time and I just deal with it because that's what they do and it comes with the package.

Speaking of cutting of things that shouldn't be cut off, I want to punch people right in the nuts who de-fang their tarantulas. Because of the nature of the spider's digestive system it can only eat liquid so when it catches it's prey it injects venom from it's fangs to liquify the insides and then it drinks them, with the fangs gone the animal physically cannot eat. If you can't accept that if you own tarantulas, sooner or later you will be bitten, perhaps a tarantula is not the right animal for you. Some pet stores do this to the tarantulas they sell and it just boggles the mind.

I also have so, so many stories about extreme hermit crab neglect and abuse, people tend not to care about their welfare because "they're just bugs"
Some of you may know that before THE INCIDENT, I used to rescue hermit crabs and had a large tank they all lived in. Anyway the people I got them from every single time are like "the kids got bored come take them" put in the conditons of my tank, at least one crab was always out and about which is a testimate to the care they were given in my tank since hermies are generally nocturnal. Anyway, crabs need humidity to physcially breathe, in conditons with humdity lower than 70% they aren't as active, under 60% will cause irreversible gill damage and they will actually start to slowly suffocate to death (the proper conditons are 80%) and of course all of these tanks the crabs came in were bone dry with less than an inch of substrate and always pellet food (which is actually toxic to them) so no shit the kids got bored because the crabs were in the corner slowly dying. Also whenever I took in crabs they always gave me "supplies" and it was all useless shit like "hermit crab salt" (the only salt water mix suitable for hermit crabs is marine grade stuff like instant ocean because it successfully recreates the trace minerals needed for their continued health) "hermit crab food" (read: toxic shit) and sponges which only harbor bacteria and smell funny are are usless unless you want to break them into small pieces and feed to the crabs.
Also if you keep a crab in a wire cage on gravel I will come to your house and give you dirty looks from across the street and steal your crab when you're not looking because no sensible human can look at that and say "yes, a living creature would be happy in there"

Can never understand how it's legal to sell those Crab torture devices aka "starter kits".

 

[Drawdurd]

I've never worked there but once upon a time I was looking into getting a reptile so I thought I'd hit up a local shop. The following are a series of reviews and personal encounters that accurately describe what hell had run loose there. I'd post pictures of his store but he prohibits any being taken (I wonder why).

Spoiler: Enter the madness

"Horrible treatment of animals they had a full-grown beard a dragon and a Tupperware container so small that animal literally could not move."
"Most of the cages were covered in dried feces which had been there so long it was white and caked. Most of the animals had bone dry water dishes. Some had moldy bedding. There was a rotten mouse in one of the snake cages. A lot of the animals were too large for their enclosures. "
"I've been to the location in columbus several times. It's disgusting. The animals are kept horribly, most are skinny and half the animals there are illegal including the alligators that free roam the store and big constrictors that he doesn't have permits for."

He was attacked by one of his pythons and thankfully, we got a photo of the conditions he keeps it in, notice the bloodstains in the cage. I've also attached an image of a "Healthy" snake he sold to someone. Spoilering both of them cause the content can be unnerving.

Spoiler: Cage Pictures

Spoiler: "Healthy" snake

 

[ChristmasDuck]

I guess they're not great stories, but some of my family have some 'interesting' attitudes towards animals.

My uncle had a bigass German Shepherd, it was his third one (he has another now). The entire household used traditional methods to train the dog - that is to say, beating it for various things and mostly keeping it outside. It was a vicious motherfucker that did NOT get along with any neighborhood dogs (surprise, surprise), so they mostly kept it muzzled. Anyway, one of their neighbors had a pet wolf (or half wolf?). I don't know what the neighbor did to him, but this creature was deranged. He was wandering out on his own at one point, no owner in sight. He jumped my uncle's dog. They started really tearing into each other until my aunt threw cold water at them and my uncle kept the wolf at bay with a pitchfork until the neighbor arrived. The neighbor was pissed at my uncle for his 'crazy dog', acting as though hers was some perfect angel, totally ignoring that he was just randomly out of the yard and attacked unprovoked. From what I know, my aunt and uncle are raising the new dog in the same way - when me and my dad arrived at their house some years ago, their dog bolted towards the fence, almost jumping over it, snarling, barking, pretty much foaming at the mouth until she was yelled at.

Another aunt of mine owns (or maybe owned - I was much younger) a Rough Collie. Beautiful dog, coat kept in immaculate condition. However, nobody in the household seemed to really care about his whereabouts - they'd sometimes leave the back gate open, he'd just wander off onto nearby streets/roads. This was treated as perfectly normal. They also didn't bother training him - he'd often jump up on people, try to snatch food from the table and ignored any commands. However, the biggest problem was with barking. He'd just bark non stop. When they hosted a family reunion, she'd just lock him in the basement for the whole duration. Apparently that was also normal.

Not long before I was born, my mom bought a Dachshund on impulse, got bored of him, palmed him off onto my dad, who didn't want a dog. However, he also hates the idea of animals suffering and my mom wouldn't let him sell it, so he took good care of it. When I was born, he deemed a dog 'too dirty', so gave it to my grandparents. My grandma loved it TOO much. Before it died, it was obese, covered in weird growths and had spinal problems. My mom also pulled this shit two more times - she randomly came home one day with budgies she had no clue how to care for, tried to put responsibility on 7 year old me... it ended with my dad, who soon after sold them. Years later, after their divorce, she impulse bought the cutest black Shar-Pei pup... while working in a hospital lab full time. She neglected it to all hell before her husband convinced her to sell it.

On the lighter side of things, there was a cat of another uncle that remained kitten-like in very old age. He was kinda ugly - messy fur (it seemed to just go that way, he was brushed often), bug eyes, nasty brown stuff where his teeth used to be, couldn't put his tongue back into his mouth so it looked kinda like dried out ham. This 15 year old cat would always just bounce around the apartment, hunt for his own tail, was utterly fascinated by the cuckoo clock and chased my laser pointer around for about half an hour before getting distracted by something else. Died a year later. I miss that cat.

 

[Purple People Eater]

-I'll never forget one year at summer camp it was raining and I tagged along with a group of kids in the woods to go look for frogs. It was fun for a while, we had only caught one or two but we were just holding and looking at them, pretending we knew what species they were to try and impress one another. Then one boy demands to see the frog I'm holding. I give it to him and he says "Watch this!" and, I shit you not, slams the frog onto the riverbank. Onto a rock. Needless to say it died instantly, broke open, and made the most sickening sound I've ever heard. Even ten years later it still disturbs me to think about.

-An aunt of mine used to own two big border collies, and it always made me so sad to see how she was keeping them. They were rescues already (they'd been locked in a dark basement for most of their lives with little food or water) but my aunt was kind of old and just not capable of properly caring for her dogs. She overfed them until they were obese, and she never trimmed their fur; it was always grimy and made them look even bigger. They had a big yard to run around in but they were lethargic from being buried under all that fur as well as being overweight.

-I grew up with a close family member who has autism, and he had an assistance dog. A sweet little spaniel who loved people. His parents bought the dog from a reputable breeder and sent him away to be trained; the dog's job was essentially to calm the boy down whenever he got overstimulated and had a meltdown. Usually meltdowns were prompted by thunderstorms, so whenever the weather got ominous they would send the dog over to the boy and he would sit in his lap. No big deal, right? Well this kid was mercilessly rough with his dog. He was on the higher-functioning end of the spectrum, and totally capable of being gentle with other living things, especially when told by his parents. His parents never set boundaries like that though, and the dog went through all kinds of torture. The boy would hold the dog on his lap and laugh when he struggled and yelped trying to get away, flip him on his back and hold all of his legs in one hand like he was being hog-tied, slap him on the top of his head because "that's the softest part of his fur", pull the skin on his face back so he "looks chinese", all sorts of horrible shit that this sweet puppy did not deserve. I reached out to his parents about the way the dog was being treated and they insisted the dog was just doing his job and he had been trained to put up with it. I'm sure he has a higher tolerance for shenanigans, but there's a point where it's just unacceptable. To top it all off none of them kept up with the assistance dog training, so now he's just a traumatized housepet who wants affection but is incredibly hand-shy.

-Most of my childhood and teenage years were spent competitively riding horses, and I've seen far too many little girls and families way in over their heads who've leased ponies and have no idea how to take care of them. Ponies with overgrown coats caked with shit in the summer being put into the ring, little kids yanking them around the showgrounds, or parents making their kids show horses that are clearly to big or hot-tempered for them to handle, endangering the safety of everyone else showing alongside them. Plus crazy trainers chewing out their riders for placing less than first and beating horses to get them to stop spooking (spoiler: that doesn't work). This sport is largely female-dominated, and it's as much of a catty mess as a dance competition. God forbid you try to help someone with their horse, lest you be accused of sabotage.

 

[MalWart]

We briefly owned a dog (her name was Fergie) back in the spring of 2010. The organization in which we adopted from insisted that she was a Pointer/Labrador mix. She had been making some noise one night, so my mother came to see what was going on. Fergie came up to her and nearly bit into her neck, which could've killed her if she dug in deep.

After that incident, we returned her. We came to the conclusion that she had traces of pit bull in her (she even had a few physical traits that hinted towards it) and that the adoption organization pawned her off as the aforementioned Pointer/Labrador mix just so potential adopters wouldn't be put off by the stigma attached with pit bulls.

 

[Kylie Raina]

Pet stores are downright HORRIBLE at giving animal-related advice. If you ask them something that should be common sense about an animal, they still manage to get it wrong. As a result, people are buying shitty plastic prisons for their hamsters, putting bettas in bowls with no filter, and sticking rabbits in cages. I’m glad that Petsmart and Petco stopped selling rabbits bc if they didnt, i couldnt imagine what deplorable conditions ppl would be putting them in. I’ve also noticed that pet stores don’t sell any hamster cages that are actually adequate for hamsters. Its disturbing and it shows that pet stores’ real motives are profit and not the well being of animals. The best thing you can really do is educate the consumers bc unfortunately, big box pet stores wont budge.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

-Most of my childhood and teenage years were spent competitively riding horses, and I've seen far too many little girls and families way in over their heads who've leased ponies and have no idea how to take care of them. Ponies with overgrown coats caked with shit in the summer being put into the ring, little kids yanking them around the showgrounds, or parents making their kids show horses that are clearly to big or hot-tempered for them to handle, endangering the safety of everyone else showing alongside them. Plus crazy trainers chewing out their riders for placing less than first and beating horses to get them to stop spooking (spoiler: that doesn't work). This sport is largely female-dominated, and it's as much of a catty mess as a dance competition. God forbid you try to help someone with their horse, lest you be accused of sabotage.

Dumbass horse people are just the worst. I used to ride when I was younger and I have like, a million stories of spoilt little brat kids who think a pony is a fucking fashion accessory. I always used to hate kids who think that a riding crop is used to punish an animal for refusing a fence or that the action of 'kicking' a horse (For the uninitiated IE: Gently tapping your heels on it's flank as a single to go faster, more a squeeze than an impact really) means extending your legs side-wards and slamming them into the horses kidneys as hard as you can. Luckily in the UK most of that is confined to the Pony Club set which I flat refused to join because I didn't want to prance around with a load of stuck up suburbanites wearing hacking jackets and blue and purple ties.

 

[Cat Menagerie]

Pet stores are downright HORRIBLE at giving animal-related advice. If you ask them something that should be common sense about an animal, they still manage to get it wrong. As a result, people are buying shitty plastic prisons for their hamsters, putting bettas in bowls with no filter, and sticking rabbits in cages. I’m glad that Petsmart and Petco stopped selling rabbits bc if they didnt, i couldnt imagine what deplorable conditions ppl would be putting them in. I’ve also noticed that pet stores don’t sell any hamster cages that are actually adequate for hamsters. Its disturbing and it shows that pet stores’ real motives are profit and not the well being of animals. The best thing you can really do is educate the consumers bc unfortunately, big box pet stores wont budge.

The plastic habitats, CritterTrail and the like, really piss me off. They're not optimal for any rodent of any kind. Gerbils and hamsters are fossorial animals with an evolutionary need to burrow. They need to be in tanks. Mice can go in tanks, too, and rats need large sturdy cages. Other than hamsters, they're all also highly social animals and need to be sold in same sex pairs to truly be happy and thrive.

I won't even get into stupid horse owners. They're everywhere here I tell you what. People seem to think they need horses without clue one as to what goes into their care.

 

[snuffleupagus]

So there was a no kill shelter in a podunk town near mine that was raided by the ASPCA after over a decade of neglectful animal care.

Spoiler: Foster Fuck Up

They were kind of the big name in the region, as they were no kill, but most people would whisper about the conditions. I’d donated money and animal supplies to them over the years and even adopted a cat from them. I signed up to be a cat foster which involved picking up a cat and that was it. No promised vet voucher, no guidance, no listing of the cat in various platforms, they just handed her over to me (not spayed as I found out when she immediately went into heat) and never contacted me again or returned my calls.

I wound up getting her vetted and spayed and eventually screened potential owners who responded to an ad I paid to place in the paper (dating myself here). Turns out she ended up being some fancy breed of unique cat and I was rushed with potential owners but using interview tips I gleaned off the internet, I was able to weed out all but the best. She was a gorgeous cat and awesome but I already had four cats and adding a fifth made litter duty go from slightly daunting to a nightmare.

So I kind of had a hate on for that shelter that dumped an animal on me ever since then. I stopped donating to them and instead gave to our local kill shelter (and have adopted a dog and cat from the county shelter since).

Spoiler: Long - Our Abused Lab

About two weeks before the no kill shelter was raided, they hosted an adoption event at the local Petsmart. I hated those events because the animals were in such bad shape and I wanted to take them all. It was heartbreaking. We’d had a pretty rough weekend already and had suffered a loss in the family so that really made us super vulnerable. We had to walk past rusty metal cages and crumbly kennels full of sad dogs and cats to get to the dog food aisle but managed to evade the soulful eyes of suffering animals and make our selection.

We decided to skirt the perimeter of the store that was not hosting the event (cats and small animals/fish area) in the hopes of avoiding another sad gauntlet of needy animals. There, in an isolated corner, was a black lab cowering and balled up as small as it could make itself in a metal kennel. No volunteers were nearby and he’d soiled himself and the area with foul diarrhea.

Note, in that moment, as a family we were as fragile as they came. My youngest burst into tears, my husband went storming off to find someone, and I tried to engage and comfort the dog. He refused to look at me and just started shaking like a leaf.

We couldn’t leave him there. The husband finally stormed back over with a teenaged volunteer who was apologetic and got him to come out of the kennel. We asked if we could properly meet him in a quiet place so she took us to the storage space in the back of the store. He kind of listlessly greeted us but quickly warmed to my pets. Within seconds he was pressed to my leg, quaking in fear and clinging to me (yeah I got diarrhea all over my pants). I sent the husband to get our other dog and bring her up to meet him.

They didn’t hate each other so we signed the paperwork for him then and there. We received paperwork for another dog (yellow lab, 8 years old) and they “cut us a deal” because he’d been at the shelter for at least two years according to the lady who took our payment. She was genuinely happy we were adopting him because this was his last adoption event and they were giving up on him (he would live out his life at the shelter as a lost case).

We loaded our terrified and filthy dog into the car and took him straight to the tub. One tense water heater’s worth of water later, the water was running brown off of him instead of black and we’d finally managed to clean the impacted mud and feces from the webbing between his pads and toes. He stayed curled into a ball with this dead look in his eyes for days before he finally started to relax and warm up to us.

At his vet visit we learned he was 37 lbs and about two years old (not the 8 we’d been told) and emaciated to the point that he will forever be stunted. He was in such poor condition he had no muscles and we had to carry him up and down the stairs into the yard until he got some meat on his bones and built up some muscles. Also, while labs are prone to dandruff his skin was flaking off in sheets. It looked like it was snowing wherever he laid down.

It took six months to get him to a satisfactory weight according to our vet and a ton of various supplements for his health and his skin in addition to antibiotics to treat his infected feet. Turns out it’s not good for dogs to live in muddy feces and have it impacted in their paws.

He’s 50 lbs now but very small for a lab and still bony, but he has good muscle tone and loves to run in the yard.

He didn’t know what a dog bed was when we got him and he’s terrified of everything. His life is one that is full of great peril and it is so heartbreaking to see a scared and traumatized lab. Labs are supposed to be bumbling meatheads, not neurotically fearful beasts.

Oh and he’s scared of water, a lab that’s scared of water. That shelter fucking broke him.

Here’s his second or third day with us



And now after years of love

When the shelter was raided it made national headlines because the conditions were so appalling. It was heartbreaking to see the conditions our dog had been kept in his whole life and helped to piece together the story behind why our dog was so broken inside. The fuckers running the joint ended up losing the shelter and all of the animals were confiscated, but they didn’t get any punishment from the courts. It still makes me angry even though it happened years ago.

 

[Ava_Merlot]

@snuffleupagus oh my goodness this makes me wanna cry and hug my puppy. Hes a flat back lab with some Newfoundland in him and hes had some rough time before my MIL got him. He grew up in a metal cage so hes a little nervous but hes so friendly and loving!

 

[PorcupineTree]

I know a guy who punched his pitbull puppy for throwing up.

 

[Rudol von Stroheim]

Matted dogs are the worst thing to deal with in my line of work cause there's only so much you can say 'it's okay, sometimes it's hard to brush the dog..'
I've seen matts so tight that when we've shaved it off, it's come off the dog as a blanket. We've found shit and even a slug once on a dogs matting. Many many male dogs so matted on their genitals that they're skin is totally screwed from urine burn. A girl I used to work with dealt with a dog so matted that while shaving it off, it's foot came off. The paw had dislocated ages before and the matting had pulled it so tight that it'd severed the foot while simultaneously courterising it. The owners didn't even care.
There are only so many times I can hear 'he's a bit matted... But don't shave him!' or 'it's winter, he' ll get cold!' or - my favourite -' don't you think it's cruel shaving a dog off. At least when it's matted, it's warm.'
I don't get why people don't think of their own hair being matted and then apply the same mind to their dog. Like, matted fur on a dog is the same as having chewing gum stuck in every strand of your hair. It's painful.

 

[DopeaddictKitten]

Sad story about mice, kinda long so I put it in the spoiler

EDIT Omg and now I'm seeing I just necro'd a two year dead thread, I am an idiot, sorry everyone

Spoiler

I have a pet fancy mouse second hand from an idiot and we've been looking to get her a sister because they get depressed when they're alone, right? But I'm looking for a younger female so the one I've been keeping (Poppy) can be the dominant one and stay comfy in her cage cause it's always just been her all of her life until now that I have her and plan on being here company. But on top of that my boyfriend doesn't want one with red eyes which makes our search a bit harder cause most stores just have the plain white fancy mice with red eyes. So we've been checking in every few days with the main stores around us and started checking out family owned and other stores as well cause I wanna get her a lil sister ASAP.
Well the other day we get in this store and start looking and they have a perfect little brown girl looking much younger than Poppy. I was like, nice this is perfect! Finally!
But as I look in the cage, I notice there's 4 females including the one I like and also, for some reason a male??? I point it out to the owner/worker and he laughs it off. First he says he has a hard time sexing them (how?) and then goes on to say I'd be lucky to bring her home cause if she's pregnant I'd have more mice?? But I'm not trying to breed or raise babies, I try to explain this to him and ask if he has any other cages, hoping I can find a cage of just females.
I don't think he understood what my issue was though, but seeing I wanted to buy a mouse for sure, he got weirdly desperate and was like, 'Wait, don't go! I uhhh, we got more mice. I usually don't bring people back here but I can tell you really want a mouse so, come here.." he brings us into a back room with a tanks of rodents leading me to this shitty maybe 20gal wide glass tank on the floor, straight up FULL of mice. Like, can barely see the bedding full. And surprise surprise, mixed sexes, AGAIN!
So I'm sure they just let them breed like crazy, inbreed just as much, breed too young, fight each other, kill each other, eat each other's young, basically anything that can go wrong, probably was happening in that tank.
It was absolutely sickening. I know some people think mice are just gross little rodents meant for feeding snakes, or whatever, but it just made me so upset.
I still tried to explain again that I wouldn't buy a mouse that was potentially pregnant and the dude just like, couldn't get it through his skull for some reason? And because he couldn't even follow that line of thought, as much as I wanted to explain the issues of having such an extremely over crowded tank, I was already about to cry and felt it'd be pointless. We left and I cried in the car like a baby, lol.
Maybe I'm making a bigger deal out of it than most would, but it left a bad taste in my mouth and I still worry about those poor little mice, not to mention all the other animals there that may be living in poor conditions as well. Sigh.