UhHuhHer
Well-Known Member
So, I happen to know a person on Facebook (and off of Facebook) who breeds rats. She is the kind of person that I think most of our rescues end up coming from. She's absurdly irresponsible and refuses to accept that she may not know everything.
Recently, she had a baby die because she did not have it in an appropriate cage. And that was bad enough. But she outright refused responsibility. So, wanting to avoid another tragedy even though she won't be convinced to stop making babies anytime soon, I suggested better cages. This led to a series of terrible excuses, during which I learned a few things.
First, the litter was unexpected because she failed to sex her babies correctly. Second, she doesn't have anywhere near a proper environment for her rats, which I already suspected. Third, she was no concept of responsibility or common sense.
At that point, I became a little short and our conversation became less pleasant.
I'm just so tired of hearing about people like this, who refuse to learn how to care for an animal properly, before they think they're qualified to own a bunch, and make more. And this person is now in some of the groups on Facebook that have been very safe places in the past, and is passing herself off as someone who rescues, and frequently claims to have more experience than I know for a fact she has. So, now, I have to deal with her more, and now I also suspect that she knows that what she's doing isn't correct, because she intentionally edits it around other rat owners.
I've made mistakes that have ultimately hurt my rats, too. I understand that that happens. But it happens to her again and again because she refuses to learn or to do anything inconvenient to her, to care for her rats, and it's so sickening to hear about all the time.
Recently, she had a baby die because she did not have it in an appropriate cage. And that was bad enough. But she outright refused responsibility. So, wanting to avoid another tragedy even though she won't be convinced to stop making babies anytime soon, I suggested better cages. This led to a series of terrible excuses, during which I learned a few things.
First, the litter was unexpected because she failed to sex her babies correctly. Second, she doesn't have anywhere near a proper environment for her rats, which I already suspected. Third, she was no concept of responsibility or common sense.
At that point, I became a little short and our conversation became less pleasant.
I'm just so tired of hearing about people like this, who refuse to learn how to care for an animal properly, before they think they're qualified to own a bunch, and make more. And this person is now in some of the groups on Facebook that have been very safe places in the past, and is passing herself off as someone who rescues, and frequently claims to have more experience than I know for a fact she has. So, now, I have to deal with her more, and now I also suspect that she knows that what she's doing isn't correct, because she intentionally edits it around other rat owners.
I've made mistakes that have ultimately hurt my rats, too. I understand that that happens. But it happens to her again and again because she refuses to learn or to do anything inconvenient to her, to care for her rats, and it's so sickening to hear about all the time.