Thursday, February 17, 2011

Animal abuse at PETCO

I am disgusted at the conditions at my location Petco store in Mtn Home, AR. I went in last week before the big snow storm came and the conditions were just dirty and nasty. The small animals cages were filthy and there was at least 5 dead fish in each tank especially the fresh water. I told the manager what I thought and that it really needed to be cleaned or I wouldn't be shopping there anymore.

Well, I visited again this week after the store had several days to recover from the storm and the conditions of the animals were much worse. It was so bad that I don't think anyone came in to work at all to care for the animals for at least 4 days. There were 2 dead small animals that I saw. 
There was a dead mouse in a tank that looked like it had been attacked by other mice in the cage. The  mouse had obviously been dead for quite some time, and there was dried up blood splattered on the tank.


A hamster was alone in a cage with blood coming from its mouth and pooling beneath him. Employees must have noticed it to clear out all the other hamsters, but did not remove the dead decaying one.

There was another tank of hamsters that was way too crowded and they couldn't move around at all, and there were 2 males that look like they were going to kill each other.


There were alot of dead fish still, but not as many as on 2/8. I was horrified though when I watched 2 employees give a pretty purple fish marked as $49 to another saltwater fish. One of the employees said that it was being attacked in it's tank, so they took it out and put in a tank where it got gobbled up immediately.




I was shocked too at the amount of dead crickets laying around the store. There was literally hundreds of them just laying around dead and I saw peoples pets eating them.


The leopard geckos didn't look so good either. There was one that is starving to death, and another one with skin discoloration on it's nose. It looks like a chemical burn.



I tried taking some pictures also of an injured ferret, but there were so many in the tank and they were moving around so fast that I didn't get a good shot.

There were also iguanas in very tight quarters trying to live together. They are longer than the size of the tank and that is just cruel. There were kids surrounding them when I tried to photograph, and forgot to go back to shoot them before I left.

This store has never had the smartest or most hygienic people working there, but it continues to deteriorate every time I go in. I haven't been in since before Christmas prior to my 2 visits this month. These are horrible and unacceptable conditions for any living creature to have to live in, and I will NOT ever step foot in this store ever again. I made my complaint to another manager and I plan to contact everyone and anyone that can do something about this. I found many complaints and reports of animal abuse against PETCO from the past, and I hope that eventually people will boycott and shut this place down.

1 comment:

  1. Hi, my name is Daniel and I am PETCO's Community Manager. Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention. The animal care you describe in your blog is certainly not up to our standard for PETCO stores. I have brought this to the attention of our animal care team and they will look into it right away. Can you please email me at blog@petco.com so we can get more information. Thank you.

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