Petland

Question
Hello,

I am moving to St Catharines next week and stopped by the same pet store yesterday to inquire about their pet rats.

Can anyone provide me feedback on the store?

Answer
I wish I could say something positive, but frankly I do not put any trust in pet stores regardless of the name of the place.  The employees, who they refer to as so called "pet counselors" are NOT trained formally about the pets that they care for. Yes, they say that they put their employees through training but is the info they teach accurate?  No...sadly...its far off and this is sad. WE NEED SO BADLY to have people that work at these pet stores know what
they are talking about for the well being of the animal!!

I went into a Petland here in Ft.Myers FLorida about two months ago, and they had hermit crabs there. I know alot about them, too, for the record. Had two that were 8 yrs old when I had to give them away to another hermit crab lover....anyhow, they called them "tree crabs" and had them living on rocks.  Nothing to burrow in like hermit crabs like....no water, just a sponge like most uneducated stores have for the crabs.  I can go on and on but all of that stuff is just wrong wrong wrong.  Crabs need super deep SOFT substrate, a warm and humid tank and NO TAP WATER, but a dish of water that has the chemicals removed such as chlorine, and of course another dish with sea water (salt water) for them and food that has NO PRESERVATIVES...plus lots of shells for them to change into when they grow. Do it right and your crab can live to be 40 yrs old. This same person said that rats can get pregnant when the female is around 6 months old...so boys and girls can be together.  So...that may not tell you that every Petland is like that, but lets just say that once again, its just another run of the mill place that, unless someone that really knows about pet rats can get a job there working in the small mammal section, you will be told to feed them rat and mouse seed mix and that males and females can be together till the female is 6 months old.  LOL

Ask yourself this...no matter what pet store it is, if they sell live mammals for snake food, DO NOT SHOP THERE!  Yes, snakes need to eat, and I love ALL animals, even though snakes eat my friends, nature is nature, but feeing a snake, a CAPTIVE snake a live rat can be dangerous for the snake, too.  Although snakes in the wild may be dangeruos and aggressive, the snakes most people keep as pets are naturally not aggressive, at least if bred right, they should NOT be...so if they dont feel like eating, they wont kill their prey and a terrified rat can be just as dangerous as a loaded gun and his claws and teeth are like that of sharp daggers that have a fatal consequences.  The rat will go insane on the snake, ripping the snakes skin apart, and literally killing it, so feeding live can be just a deadly in some cases for the snake as it is for the rat!  I have seen snakes die from their injuries from a scared rat.  In the wild, snakes like to hunt....they are natural hunters of course...what fun is it for a snake to have your food just handed down to you?  So dont let ANY snake owner tell you that its NATURAL for snakes to eat rats....yes, it is, but there is nothing natural about keeping a snake in a glass tank and handing it its food without the snake having to work for it.  Also, in nature, its fair game for all, and the rat or mouse has a good chance of escaping....in a tank, forget it. The only way the rat will escape is if the snake spares his life and the rat will end up taking the snakes life instead.  Nobody wins.  They sell humanely killed frozen rodents for the snakes..and all snake owners should learn the proper way to feed their snake using this method. That said, a pet store that sells live feeder rats and mice are no good....uneducated, dangerous....the rats are from a breeder that knows nothing about rats except male and female rats make babies which means MONEY.  The pet store will go through the litter that they get, picking out the ones with the interesting markings on them, some that may have big ears like dumbo ears etc...some with different patterns etc...and sell them as pet rats rather than feeders.   They are still not bred for health and the worst part is, the females have a high   chance of being pregnant since they dont separate them properly.

I give all pet stores a thumbs down UNTIL I have been in there, checked things out myself, talked to the employees that are assigned their own "area".   I have been in pet stores there I am totally ignored and once, I asked to see a rat and she freaked out, looked for another person that worked there to get the "disgusting" animal out of the tank  for her so I can see it and they tried to pick it up by the  tail until I stopped them cold in their  tracks. I summoned for a manager, gave them my  business card and told them  just how bad things went.....I have many stories like that, so I cant tell you if this pet store is worthy of your business or not. If you want rats, have you tried looking for a local hobby breeder?