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So sad :( I really hate it when people don't take the time to really figure out what they're getting into.
A pet is not something you can take or leave. Pets require attention, patience, money, and above all, time. I can't stand it when people think adding a pet to their household is just like getting a cute fluffy toy that won't require any work.
Especially for exotic pets, I really, REALLY wish there were screening processes you had to go through before you're allowed an animal. At least with shelters they do their best to make sure the animal is going to a good home. But anybody can walk into a pet store and decide they want a snake or a parrot, and walk out with it ten minutes later, completely clueless about how it's going to change their life.
The novelty wears off, the person regrets their decision, and if they do go to the trouble of trying to properly rehome the pet, they often wait until the animal is already suffering from neglect and sometimes severe emotional issues before they get around to finding a new owner for it. And as far as I'm concerned, there's a special place in hell for people who don't even go that far, and who just abandon their pet on the side of the road when it starts to become a nuisance.
The worst part is that these animals will never understand why all this hurt is happening to them.
@kala_way: When they are in the wild, they are in a climate that is fairly perfect for them. Most issues with shedding are caused by lack of proper humidity. It's hard (but not impossible) to regulate the humidity the way it would be in the wild.
@linguo42: Exactly. It drives me insane. She was so resigned earlier to her fate, but she didn't realize we were trying to help her, not hurt her. It's heart breaking.
One of the things I love about the pet store we go to, is that they will NOT sell to anyone they think is unfit. They won't even show animals to them. We actually got the gecko for free because they knew we could take care of her. I wish more places cared enough about the welfare of the animal to be so discerning.
@Rachael432: I see, that's really interesting. See, I don't even know what one of these things looks like much less have one for a pet and I'm interested in things like that. I can't even fathom being an owner of a cool animal like that and getting no information about it.
If you want a pet with no responsibility get one of these
Sadly, I think it's the prevalence of exotic (and unknowingly difficult to care for) animals at pet stores. People with too much money and little sense see the "cute lizard" and buy it, an aquarium, some fake plants, then call it done. I wish they wouldn't sell any animals in pet stores at all :(
Have you tried soaking her in like 1/4 cm of luke warm water... it always worked with my one leopard gecko who just had such a hard time shedding..
@TopazWedding: We have been soaking her daily. The build up of retained shed was already so bad that we aren't able to get it off without taking off bits of her toes. The tops of her toes are either brown or black and completely dead and everything below the actual leg is a weird pink and purple color. She is naturally yellow with brown spots.
@GoldfishPie: The thing is, leopard geckos aren't difficult to care for at all. It's just a matter of paying attention to them.
@linguo42: I couldn't have said this better myself.
@Rachael432: Sorry about your poor gecko, but so happy to hear you have him now and can give him a good life. What pet store do you go to? I use to live in Chicago and spent a lot of time in many of the pet stores.
I'm soooo attached to my animals I can't imagine how people could mistreat their pets.
@flutterbi: Animal Island, it's actually in Midlothian, but we have also frequented Animal Krackers, and the various Petcos and Petsmarts.
:-( I used to work with a rescue reptile center and it's depressing. People buy them as conversation pieces. We had an iguana with holes chewed into his stomach because the owner was only feeding him mealworms. Google "what can iguanas eat" and you'll figure it out! They even have an Iguanas for Dummies! It's excellent!
Pets are a touchy subject but it seriously pisses me off when people want animals they have no clue how to care for, or no money or time to spend on them. Do yourself a favor and get a stuffed animal if you're not willing to extend any kind of effort beyond "Awww, cute animal, let's buy it." Research their needs, make sure you have time to spend with them, and have an emergency fund in place before you commit!
@KatyElle: Yeah, how hard is it to Google the information? It drives me insane the way people will purchase a reptile because they think they all have the same dietary and environmental requirements, when it is FAR from the case. Granted, we can feed all of our reptiles meal worms, but do we spice up their diet as often as possible? Yes. Crickets, greens, whatever it takes.
They have feelings, they get hurt, they aren't heartless, unfeeling creatures.
I own a pet care company and I have seen a lot of things that make me shake my head. There is so much information available to people with the internet...I don't have time for excuses. It's really frustrating.
My biggest pet peeve is people not putting elderly and sore animals on pain control.
When I was in 10th grade, I rescued a leopard gecko from a friends' idiot boyfriend. The poor thing had the same issue yours has, as well as a severe calcium deficiency because he had never given it any sort of calcium. He lost a bunch of toes, and his legs were deformed badly from the lack of calcium, but he finally started to come around. Sadly, I had to hand feed him because he would only eat mealworms, but couldn't catch them because of his legs. I kept him through high school, but couldn't take him to college, so I found a guy who loved reptiles and took in rescues. I was lucky there was someone so knowledgable to take him in.
But people are impulsive, and very few seem to realize the sort of time required for something like a reptile (or really any pet, especially exotics). My parents owned a very large iguana for close to 12 years, and she required more work than the dogs half of the time. Not to mention winterizing her was a headache. It's sad that it's so easy for someone to just go pick one up a a pet store without any thought at all.
Just upsets me so much.
We are currently in the process of moving our cat from the US to the UK because there's no way we'd leave him behind.
I'm surprised how so many people I tell don't understand why anyone would spend the time and money doing that. It is very expensive (ridiculous if you ask me) but when we moved there was never a doubt in our minds that our cat would come with us.
We adopted him when he was 5 months old, he's lived at the ASPCA almost his whole life. He was dropped at the shelter with his litter at 4 weeks old.
Irresponsible pet owners make my blood boil.
It is great what you are doing for this animal and I hope she recovers as well as is possible. She's in good hands now for sure.
As a shelter volunteer and "mom" of two rescued cats, I'll jump on the "don't even get me started" train.
Puppy mills, pet stores, backyard breeders...they all make my blood boil. All while shelters across the country are crowded with needy pets.
Kudos to OP for helping out needy exotic animals. It's a seriously underlooked category, and some SPCAs and local rescues have exotics/small animals available for rescue!
Argh. This makes me so angry. I don't understand the cavalier attitude that some people are able to have with innocent creatures. I honestly think it's a "short circuit" of sorts in some people's brains.
The natural (evolved?) reaction to seeing an innocent, defenseless creature is to take care of it and nurture it. The people who don't have that instinct, in my opinion, are depraved.
@MissHelen: Agreed. Does everyone have all day? Cause I can go on and on and on.
BTW, the new gecko got the ends of four toes taken off and she is doing great!
Glad to hear your gecko is doing better!! I just wanted to weigh in and say that parents really need to resist the urge to buy their children pets as gifts. The decision to own and care for a pet needs to be a carefully considered decision by all parties involved in the pet's care, and the child should be old enough to assume some of the responsibility if it is considered the child's pet.
We have two rescued cats. I really wish people would be responsible for their pets, but we have a hard enough time trying to convince people to not be negligent parents to human children! I really wish I knew why or how people can be so terribly irresponsible adults.
@KatNYC2011: I totally understand you taking your cat with you. I couldn't even imagine moving anywhere without my animals. They are my babies and I love them like crazy. Plus, they are innocent and helpless and I chose to adopt them making it my responsibility they are fed, cared for and of course treated like the royalty they all believe they are. Even though I'm terribly allergic to my two cats, I could never imagine living without them.
@Rachael432: Glad to hear gecko is doing better. I use to live up near Midlothian years ago.
I've dealt with my share of geckos that had hard times shedding, so I know how time consuming it can be. Something you could try is a container with warm, but shallow water, with a towel on top. We used this method with shedding and it's always helped out.
Kids beg their parents for pets, parents give in. Kid doesn't want the pet, parent returns it. Happens over and over again. The issue with reptiles is also their longer lifespan, so people don't anticipate having this leopard gecko when their child goes to college.
The majority of my (now-dwindling) reptile collection came from people not wanting their pets anymore, or people moving. At one point I had over 20 reptiles, most of them were 'rejects'. Shedding was the least of my concerns - a lot of them came in malnourished, with deficiencies. Just this past year I acquired a bearded dragon that had no UVB lighting and had suffered from MBD. She's got permanent damage to her front hind legs, but is better now.
People don't do their research, and pet stores don't bother to help people. Drives me insane. Whenever I stop by the pet store, if I see someone talking to an employee about a reptile, I always ease drop and interrupt the conversation. I've ticked off my share of pet stores over the years as they have lost sales due to me, but trying to sell someone a Chinese Water Dragon and not telling them how big it can get is unacceptable. They don't stop to think whta will happen is that dragon reaches it's full size of 2-3ft...
..ugh had to join you in the vent.
@flutterbi: We just did the move this past weekend. Dropping him off at cargo was one of hte hardest things I've ever done. I hated that I couldn't explain to him why he was going to be stuck in his crate in a dark and noisy cargo hold for 10+ hours. Thankfully he seemed to get through it just fine. Not even a mess in the crate.
Now that he's here he's back to his usual kitty antics and it feels SO much more like home.
@Rachael432: Yay, so glad to hear that!
@KatNYC2011: Glad he made it okay and is back to his happy self. I moved my two cats across country last year. Not the same putting them on the plane, but they had to be in the car for a week and spending the night in hotels. Then to make matters worse, we left them in the new place alone for over a month (a neighbor checked in on them daily). I'm sure they thought we totally abandon them! It took them a few days to forgive us, but they did and love where we live now.
@snoie: I totally agree with you. FI eavesdrops on people as well, he always jumps in if he hear's something that sounds off. One pet store we went to was selling dwarf African clawed frogs to a woman as CENTERPIECES for her son's graduation from 8TH GRADE. Disaster. FI went nuts. It's amazing what pet stores will do for money.
:( I don't know much about reptiles, but if you aren't going to learn, don't bother getting one. Storied like this make my heart sad.
Ugh, crummy pet owners really irritate me. I currently only have one of my dogs (my ex husband has the other - it's really the best situation all things considered). Both of my dogs are rescues. My sweet little dog was taken out of a terrible situation, and when I think about it, I'm more upset that the former owners had kids - we let people that hurt animals have children?? Yikes (made more sad b/c I have several friends battling infertility at this moment, but that's another story!). The rescue groups that I got my dogs through would refuse to adopt dogs if people said they were giving the dog as a gift (I'm sure if they talked to the adoptee, there were soem exceptions).
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I noticed that I have mostly started vent threads, but sometimes, things just need to be said.
FI and I have quite the zoo. Two cats, three leopard geckos, one fire skink, one bearded dragon, one corn snake, one ball python, and many, many fish.
Both cats were rescues, the one cat we had previously was a rescue, and two of our leopard geckos have been rescues.
The last leopard gecko we picked up, we got on Friday. We had seen her several times in the pet store that we frequent. She had severe retained shed (for non-reptile people, that means that when she shed, it had stayed stuck to her, not allowing her to grow and eventually cutting off circulation). She had been dropped off by her previous owner, and try as they might, the owners of the pet store did not have enough time or people to sit down and hold her and try to pull the shed off.
We are on our 4th day of owning her and we still have not been able to get all of the shed off. We were able to get the shed off of her face and out of her nostrils so that she can now open both eyes, breathe through her nose, and eat properly. We already know she is going to lose at least 4 toes. We were, thankfully, able to save most of them, but she will probably always have shedding problems.
I do not understand why people are willing to spend money on animals, but not spend time taking care of them. This is a problem that could EASILY have been solved, but was allowed to grow out of control. Our first leopard gecko lost her leg for the same reason. Her previous owner had not only allowed her to retain shed, but had allowed her to retain shed over an open wound because they had stuck her in with a reptile she was not compatible with and it attacked her.
All you have to do is pay attention and read a book or two. Sometimes, you don't even have to read a book, you can look up an article that will tell you what to do. But, there is no excuse for just neglecting an animal, and then dumping it off on someone else to fix. Now, she thinks we are the ones trying to hurt her because the process of removing the shed is so painful. And that's not fair.