Melissa Kaplan's
Herp Care Collection
Last updated January 1, 2014

Petco Correspondence: July 30, 1997

Mike Fry (Animal Ark), to Don Cowan (Petco) and Melissa Kaplan)

This letter from Mike Fry to both Don Cowan and I comments on my comments, and suggests a way for further dialogue.

July 30, 1997

To: Don Cowan
Cc: Melissa Kaplan

From: Mike Fry
(Reprinted by permission of Mike Fry)

Hi Melissa!

I am glad you jumped in! You made several excellent points. One place I have noticed a sharp increase in the volume of complaints about Petco is rec.pets.herp. It seems with each passing year there are more of them. Those of us working with reptiles know that informed consumers do not generally buy reptiles in these stores. It is that simple. This, of course, means the animals they do sell are being sold to an uninformed mass market, that, in my experience, is ill prepared to deal with the needs of a mature or sick iguana (or fill in "chameleon", or other exotic pet here).

[Don,] Melissa jumping in on this communication has given me a great idea, though! How about we schedule a "group chat" with representatives from Petco and say 4 or 5 members of the reptile rescue community? We could discuss these issues in a much broader forum. In this context, perhaps Petco would have an opportunity to see how widespread and serious the problems really are. Perhaps I could learn that the problems are not as widespread as I believe they are?

We could arrange to have participation from different regions of the USA to see if there are differences in perception and conditions geographically.

A non-biased outside person could moderate/facilitate the discussion.

/s/ Mike Fry