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Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly, what a day. 🎶

Sir Hiss

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you’re very special to me *gives you this*

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The crevice calls to him

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Fancy boy

#bearded dragon #reptile #lizard #grem #found a broken makeup box at work #its not a permanent tank fixture but a fun photo #he tolerated for 5min then yeeted off

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i referenced and image of my baby and color picked and just went from there !!

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razzle dazzle...

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As someone who deals with bad husbandry on a near constant basis, this is a reminder that you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I know it is frustrating, and sometimes straight up infuriating, when someone has an exotic pet that they are not properly caring for. Should people do more research before getting exotic pets? Absolutely. Do animals suffer sometimes because owners weren’t prepared to care for them? Unfortunately yes, and there’s no way to justify that. But listen. Being a dick to someone who is actively asking for help does nothing to help the animal.

There are times when I genuinely have to go in back and vent my frustrations because I can’t believe the level of neglect I’m seeing. If it was a cat or dog, it would be considered animal abuse. But if I go in there and tell my clients that they’re bad owners and they’re killing their pet, do you think they’ll listen to my advice on how to help their animal? No, they’re probably gonna shut down and miss most of what I say, and they likely won’t come back for follow up. I can’t help them if they don’t trust me.

We can scream to the heavens about how people shouldn’t own certain animals or that they should have done more research but if they are actively asking for advice on a pet they already have…

Also, in my experience, most people have good intentions. Yes I still deal with people that make me very very angry because they see their exotic pet as disposable, or as a toy for their kid they can’t be bothered to care about, but most people want to genuinely do right by their animals. When I go over husbandry with owners, a lot of them are genuinely upset at themselves because they felt like they did do a lot of research and were doing the best care possible with the knowledge they had. And I do feel for these owners, because finding out what information is legit and what is bs is not straight forward. The reason I made my own care guides was partly to consolidate information, and partly because I wanted to make sure I had something with the most up to date information possible available for owners. Because there’s a lot of sketchy shit out there for exotics. Some of it is personal preference, some of it is a general misunderstanding of the species, and some of it is straight up lies.

For example, I frequently have to explain to owners that they don’t actually have UVB for their lizard, even though they thought they did. They bought a combo basking and UV bulb…but you kind of have to read the fine print to realize it’s only a source of UVA, not UVB. These lizards end up vitamin D/calcium deficient and the owners are genuinely distressed about the mix up. They thought they were doing the right thing, and may have even been told by a pet store employee they had everything they need.

Scientific literacy is also a learned skill. A skill I was introduced to in advanced Animal Science undergraduate courses and then vet school. Those aren't exactly experiences the average person has, so it's really overwhelming for a lot of people to try to sort through all the information that's available.

You don't know what you don't know. Again, this is not an excuse to let an animal suffer, because let's be clear that many of these animals are unfortunately suffering. But sometimes (usually) the way to help the animal is to help the owner. If someone is already asking for help, then they know that they may not be doing everything right. It is so hard to see animals suffering from preventable conditions, but you need to keep your ego and your emotions in check. Making the owner feel like a villain does nothing but put them on the defensive and make them less likely to ask for help in the future or follow through with any recommendations they were given. It also makes other people who are reading those responses less likely to want to ask for advice as well.

tldr; purposefully try to guilt or insult people asking for help with exotic pet husbandry ultimately does more harm than good to the animals we're trying to help.

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hehe dragon time

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good morning from Glamour :)

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I made another Valentine’s Day comic :0 

Full image

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Las serpientes son pajitas grandes

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"Do I really look like that??"

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doodlin my cold blooded kids

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relaxed legs

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Long time, no post but Grem's good! ✌🏽

#bearded dragon #reptile #lizard #grem #he doesn't live in my bedroom any more so i don't have spontaneous photos all the time

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pov: old man sniffs you

[id: Tippex, the white sided black ratsnake, sniffing with his tongue around on his cork round in his enclosure]