Pet Store Hell: Dumbass Dog Owners

Hi RHUers, it's PetShart Stevie again!

It's been a while. I think the slow crushing hell of cockamamie custys has me all out of whack. I wanted to tell you about a couple things that happened this week.

First off, I think anyone who's too stupid to own an animal should have them taken away from them. I really think people need to take some kind of examination before buying pets.

One lady came in with her dog and as I was checking them in, her little 5 year old daughter says, "Did you notice he was bleeding?"

Obviously I'm thinking, "Wtf?" So I go around and look at the dog whose du-claw is so long that it has literally grown around and into the skin.

ARGH! You'd be surprised just how often this happens...

Anyway, we tell them we can't bathe dogs with an open wound due to possible infection, blah blah blah, and suggest that she takes him to see the resident vet.

"Oh, I don't have time today."

WTF LADY???

I sincerely hope they actually took him to the veterinarian soon after when she wasn't too busy to be a responsible pet owner.

The second is far more disturbing.

A lady calls on the phone and asks if we have any appointments for today. I tell her to come on in right now since I'm not too busy.

There's a pause on the line and she says, "He has a little bug bite on his back."

I just tell her that it's alright and I'll be extra careful around the area. Then I ask her if there was anything else on his skin I would need to be aware of. She said no, just that little bug bite. Alright, fine.

She comes in with her two kids and as I'm doing my routine check I notice the "little bug bite."

...it's a HUGE freaking open wound mound no smaller than my fist!

In a very nice way I tell her that she needs to take the dog to the vet NOW.

She does thank god, (leading me to believe that she really does care about her dog, she's just an idiot) and they actually get her in for an appointment.

I tell my manager and the groomer working (they weren't in there when this happened) and tell them to watch when the dog comes out because they need to see this.

They were both like, "HOLY HELL, WHAT THE F**K!!!" ...yeah, I wasn't kidding about the sheer size and horror of the thing on this poor 13-year-old golden retriever's back.

Anyway, my boss comes over after talking to the vet and says, "Guess what that was.......gangrene."

GAN. F**KING. GRENE.

I wanted to track that owner down and punch her in the face. How can you be so irresponsible??? Do you know how long that had to be like that before it turned into gangrene???

If that was your kid, you'd be in hysterics...but you wanted to bring him in to get him cleaned? What, because that huge gaping wound wasn't pretty? GOD DAMN PEOPLE, THINK!!!

Apparently she was crying at the register and obviously felt horrible about it (which she SHOULD) so at least that's something. She had a few medicines for him and I'm hoping that she's learned her lesson.

That's all for now...I'm sure there will be more, unfortunately.

-- PetShart Stevie

 

Comments

[Muse]

"Feeling bad" means nothing if you're that stupid. It can and will happen again, and the poor dogs will suffer for it. -_-

[me]

That's cause many people see dogs/cats/pets as just things. You "own" them right, like you own a pair of shoes or a book. It's just a thing, it doesn't have feelings, or feel pain (cause it can't tell you in words it's in pain). Just feed it and walk it, like a friggin tamagotchi.

[Magical Shrimp]

Goddamn it, people. Seriously.

I can't stand these stupid negligent owners. The most obvious and easy things to do are just SO MUCH WORK for them. I had a hedgehog named Alfie who developed Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome (like MS or Parkinson's). During the last months of his life, he was completely reliant on me to feed him and give him water by hand 3 times a day, clean him up and change his sheets everytime he pooped and peed, and to make sure I turned him over because he was paralyzed from the waist down and had no balance. Know why I did all that? BECAUSE I WAS HIS OWNER. And these people can't look after a dewclaw?

[Michael Chandra]

Our previous dog once got a severe injury. Basically, while being in care of a company during our vacation, he ruined his tail from the nervous wagging against walls. My mom wept when eventually, after we tried to take care of it for a while, she was forced to have half the tail amputated. This was after we and the vet had done everything we could in order to try to let him keep his tail, but the injury was too bad.

And here some stupid cow is too lazy to get to the vet? Cut her ovaries please.

[SheWhoSleepsWithPittBulls]

My mother and I get worried over a small lump on our Pitty's back that turns out to be a reaction to a vaccination and THIS stupid bitch waited until you all TOLD HER that she should get her dog seen? Unreal. Pets rely on owners to care for them, and this is how we treat them? I agree with whoever said that if it was a child, she'd have been frantic. Pets need just as much love and attention as children do, at points. Just because you bought the animal doesn't mean it doesn't require any further care.

If you ask me, people like THAT should be the ones on the leashes.

Also, here's something else: People who spend money on pure-breds and fancy breeds irk me when they fork over all the money to say they have the animal only to not take care of it. If you have all the money to BUY it, you should have money to take care of it.

[Sara]

How do you live with the smell of gangrene and think it's normal...Seriously? That's probably one of the the most foul odors out there as far as wound infections go.

I absolutely never hesitate to call the vet for my pets on serious matters... and I have a horse who will incur a $50 fee just for making the appointment, since they have to drive to my house. I know a lot of basic first aid myself, and always keep things like betadine, epsom salts, vetwrap, bute... that sort of stuff on hand, so the little stuff I take care of myself.

[Lola]

Jesus. I can't imagine letting even a small scratch go without at least cleaning it. If one of my pets is bleeding, I will sure as hell find out where it's coming from and what kind of attention it needs. If it needs vet attention and I have class, I'll either try to get my mom to take the cat (she lives nearby) or I'll just not go to class that day.

[happymaid]

I was in a very bad accident as a teen, and I suffered a complicated compound fracture (in english: my foot was ripped part way off, and sewn back on). It was a difficult injury, and one morning when I was changing my bandages, I noticed the smell of almonds.... Yea, that's gangrene, it's fairly obvious, not something you see and wonder "should I get that checked out?" My reaction was more along the lines of "wtf is that? OMG, this can't be good. I am calling the doctor RIGHT NOW"

[righteothen]

I had the only car while mine was in the shop, and was visiting my family 2.5 hours away when one of my cats was injured. Since my husband didn't have a car, and we're in the country, he called me and explained what happened. I dropped everything (was planning on coming home that night, anyway), drove home, cleaned his wounds the best that I could to see the extent of his injuries, and turned right back around to drive an hour to the closest 24-hour yet, since it was a holiday, and they were the only place open.

This woman couldn't even tell that the wound was getting worse, the dog was in pain, and that there was a weird smell. My cats would have been to the vet as fast as I could drive.

[sarah]

maybe she has a mental illness? like the hoarders that know their house is an unhealthy pit but can't do anything about it no matter how bad they feel about it

[Wirilome]

I used to work at a vet clinic and long claws were the least of the problems sometimes. We had one dog brought in, I think it was a shih-tzu mix, that was horribly, horribly matted and malnourished. It would turn it's head up at food and water and we had to pretty much force feed it for a couple of days. The owner said that she "kept it outside during the day". We cleaned it up and I wish we never gave it back to them.

I hate how people can't take care of their animals, it just makes me SO angry.

[Joe the Cigar Guy]

I can't watch the "Animal Cops" show anymore after the episode about the owner who left her dog on the fire escape. In Chicago. In the winter. Her excuse: "He's got FUR!"

[Caitlin Lenon]

My mom was a social worker, and she actually STOLE someone's cat after she put their kids in foster care because she didn't think that they were fit to be in charge of any living thing. The cat would play dead when someone walked into the room -- it was that traumatized. It took weeks before it learned that no one wa sgoing to kick/burn/throw things at it. We called it her foster cat.

[Pharmacy_psycho]

I used to work in a vet clinic that also served as the county pound. That's where I did a lot of my rescue before I got my first service dog (and even some afterwords). We had one dog come into the pound with a chain buried in the dog's neck! DAMN! That just burns my hide! We had a cat come in where a little girl had poured battery acid down it's throat. Thank heavens it lived. When I first moved out here, I was renting a room from a guy, and he was house-sitting a dog. I noticed that the owners were trying to trim the dog's nails and having trouble, so I got my good clippers out from my dog grooming days. As Stevie described, one of the dewclaws was starting to grow back into the pad. Fortunately, I was able to trim it down before it got too bad, but I warned them that they would need to get the dog to a vet and get those toes removed because of that problem.

The worst problem I ever came across was when I was working at the pet store. A guy came in looking for wormer. When I asked him to describe the worms/symptoms, what he told me screamed parvo. I told him to skip the wormer and get his pitbull puppy to a vet or he was going to lose it. His response? "It can't be parvo. I paid $200 for that dog! Its purebred!" I kept trying and trying to talk him into taking his puppy to the vet because I had worked for one, but in the end, I sold him the mildest wormer we carried. I also told him to HANG ONTO THE RECEIPT because he would need it to return the wormer if he didn't use the wormer.

About 2 weeks later a lady walks in, and I just knew.
Custy: "I'd like to return this wormer. My pitbull puppy died."
Stock Manager: "Do you have your receipt?"
Custy: "No, but my puppy is dead and I can't use it."
Me-whispers: "Don't take it back! That dog died of parvo!"
Stock Manager: "Step right over to this register."
Me: *facepalm*

So now we have a bottle of wormer back on the shelf covered with parvovirus!

[Jay]

@ Caitlin Lenon: Go your mom!

That is why I could never become a vet. I would simply refuse to give back animals and/or steal them from people.
Although, I'd probably end up in jail from trying to murder numerous owners, first.

[AnimalLover]

So many stupid, irresponsible pet owners out there. Very sad. I couldn't even read all the stories. It tears me apart to even think for a second all of the pain that animals are going through right this moment just because of peoples stupidity and ignorance. :(