Good_Bad

I've lived with animals all my life. For the past 5 years, my part time jobs have revolved around them. I've spent the most recent two years working on and off in the pet trade, and the time before that working for a city animal hospital. I've seen my share of horror stories, but I've also seen a lot of the good that comes from pet ownership.
There's nothing more rewarding to me than to have a person (or persons) buy an animal from me and become repeat customers. Not because I care about the store making money, but because I genuinely care about every animal I sell. I love to see happy owners come up to my counter to buy crickets or other supplies, only to have them stay for 15-20 minutes telling me about how big their pet is and how great they are doing. It makes my day worthwhile.
It's even better when they bring the animal in, and I get to see first hand what a good, caring and responsible home this animal now has.

On the other hand, my job is unfortunately plagued with pitfalls of irresponsible ownership. I can't help but blame myself for some of this. I really hate it when people use phrases such as "It's just a fish," "We want to breed them for the kids," and other such classic examples of irresponsible ownership. What's worse is when I can't talk them out of it. I end up berating myself for days.
It's bad enough when someone buys an animal that manages to survive, but doesn't thrive. These are the people that overcrowd their fish, but only just so. People that breed gerbils and give them away to friends or through the newspaper. When cheap distributors send batches of sick guinea pigs, but we save them and they eventually go to decent homes, these are bad situations that could be worse.

I've also seen horror cases that, simply put, haunt me to this day.I won't detail them, but it suffices to say I've seen evidence of the unspeakable cruelty many people are capable of. And the sadder thing is, I've only seen the tip of the iceberg. I truly cannot imagine the strength that shelter and rescue workers possess. I am quite sure I don't have it. They delve deeper into this mess than I'll ever care to go. I have the utmost respect for people that do that kind of work, especially those that do it on a volunteer basis.

After seeing so much, and still such a small part of the overall big problem, I've come to the conclusion that only through education are we ever going to see the day when the majority of our animals live to a ripe old age and few, if any, perish in shelters due to overpopulation. So, my goal for this section of my webpage is to encourage you, the pet owner, or maybe just an interested person, to do all you can to both BE a responsible owner and to PROMOTE responsible ownership.