Should people be allowed to have exotic pets?

I drive hours for most of my exotics to visit the vet.

[:'(]We need more exotic vets! Not everyone just owns dogs, cats and birds!

I agree with you there.  We have one exotic vet in town. 
 
Lot's of choices. 

I bet all y'alls hero is the goofy Doc on "Emergency Vets" on AP huh? the one with the glasses moustche that does stand up on the side? teehee...

Our exotic vet had to bring in another vet to help when one of our reptiles got sick.
But I just cannot drive 6 hours everytime one of them needs updated shots or check-ups, sometimes I feel like their current vet just isn't the 6-star guy that I would much rather use. [>:]

ORIGINAL: rwbeagles

I bet all y'alls hero is the goofy Doc on "Emergency Vets" on AP huh? the one with the glasses moustche that does stand up on the side? teehee...

I LOVE HIM!!! []

He is one of the only reasons I ever watched that show.
He has one of the most soothing voices too, I loved hearing him explain things.
My husband always got jealous, LOL.

ORIGINAL: Aery

I drive hours for most of my exotics to visit the vet.

[:'(]We need more exotic vets! Not everyone just owns dogs, cats and birds!

 
I will agree with you on that lol.
It was hard to find a vet at 4pm on a weekday (should be easy huh? lol) for a badly injured iguana. My mom was feeding him while I was going to not be coming home that night, and he tried to escape, so she got scared and dropped the cage door on him, paralyzied him. a hour drive, 100's upon 100's of dollers later and he was still paralyzied, but lived a good few years with the problem

ORIGINAL: Tankstar

ORIGINAL: Aery

I drive hours for most of my exotics to visit the vet.

[:'(]We need more exotic vets! Not everyone just owns dogs, cats and birds!

I will agree with you on that lol.
It was hard to find a vet at 4pm on a weekday (should be easy huh? lol) for a badly injured iguana. My mom was feeding him while I was going to not be coming home that night, and he tried to escape, so she got scared and dropped the cage door on him, paralyzied him. a hour drive, 100's upon 100's of dollers later and he was still paralyzied, but lived a good few years with the problem

Odd! It was my Rock Iguana in need of help that day too!

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you little guy. They are fragile (well, mine is over 6 feet long, and isn't so fragile anymore). They can tough out a lot, good to hear he still had a few good years left on him.

ORIGINAL: Aery

ORIGINAL: Tankstar

ORIGINAL: Aery

I drive hours for most of my exotics to visit the vet.

[:'(]We need more exotic vets! Not everyone just owns dogs, cats and birds!

I will agree with you on that lol.
It was hard to find a vet at 4pm on a weekday (should be easy huh? lol) for a badly injured iguana. My mom was feeding him while I was going to not be coming home that night, and he tried to escape, so she got scared and dropped the cage door on him, paralyzied him. a hour drive, 100's upon 100's of dollers later and he was still paralyzied, but lived a good few years with the problem

Odd! It was my Rock Iguana in need of help that day too!

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to you little guy. They are fragile (well, mine is over 6 feet long, and isn't so fragile anymore). They can tough out a lot, good to hear he still had a few good years left on him.

Thanks.
Life wen ton for him then, he was a fighter and really never let that get him down. Dragging himself around, I would even put litle clothes on him so he wouldnt get rug burn from crawling around on the floor during free time)
They are pretty fragile. he was more like a dog after that, slept in bed with me at night lol. rode with me while walking dogs (in summer offcourse)

Luckily our exotic vet has chins himself so he is fairly good with them.  And he works in the same building as our regular vet who has papillons.  It's funny how these things work out. 

My regular vet has two Macaws and a Chinchilla, my exotic vet has Pugs and a Sheltie.

It is rather ironic, since I have all of these animals, minus the Sheltie, and go to both vets. My Border Collies replace the Sheltie part. []


Tankstar, when I had my Caracal, he would sleep in our bed at night sometimes. But he was a big turd and liked to push us off. He had a horrible habit of sprawling as much as physically possible. You would've thought he'd dislocated himself in places, LOL.

ORIGINAL: Aery

I drive hours for most of my exotics to visit the vet.

[:'(]We need more exotic vets! Not everyone just owns dogs, cats and birds!

 I so agree that we need more exotic vets. The vet I go for all my animals hardly knows anything about chinchillas and I'm having a hard time finding one that does. The one a hour away is not taking in new patients and now I'm having a hard time finding a vet that knows  about chinchillas.

Don't want to take my chins back to the first vet since the last time after Tigger lost his vision in his right eye told me to just wipe the discharge out of his eye. Discharge in his eye is getting worse now and is now in both eyes, but what am I to do when my vet knows jack about them giving me crappy advice to wipe his eyes out with a wet cloth. Other vet from the same building almost popped Tigger's eye out and I wont let him touch him every again.

My FIL who's a vet, an old skool one mind you...says that there is next to no one interested in exotic vet medicine or large animal even anymore because the "money" is in small animals...dogs and cats. The are all about the $$$ these days...he says.

ahh the lovely giant panda, american zoo's maintain a few of these creatures, which it costs more to maintain them than the zoo is bringing in. they try like heck to breed them, adding to the already existing debt. then when one is actually born we are obligated, by law, to give it to china...for free. how awesome is that. sorry roddy red fox in cage 4, you are being put down due to your medical needs, we are too busy putting all our funds into making pandas for china!!

Gina, what I found interesting when I was in America is the total lack of interest the average American seemed to have for their own native species bar the very charismatic carnivores. I was so bummed that I didn't get to see a raccoon or an opossum because they're apparently not interesting to the public. In Australia, every zoo has a native animals section. They have nocturnal houses where you can see the kind of possums you pay people to remove from your roof, and they have kangaroos, which you can see in any half-decent patch of bush in the country. And yet, we love to see those common Australian natives. And there are plenty of natives we rarely get to see in the wild that we adore watching as well.

We also have a lot of rehabbers. The nice thing about pouches is that often when mothers are hit by cars, the babies in the pouch survive. We have a lot of wonderful people working for free around the clock to raise those babies with the soul intent of releasing them back into the wild. They cry as they see them go, but they always say it's worth it to know they'll have the life that was almost stolen from them.

I don't really understand how people can want to keep them. When I took Kit in I thought it was going to be awesome to have a wild hare living with me. I didn't expect him to live that long and I wondered if I would have to let him go sooner rather than later, but I wanted to keep him. Now, I wish I'd realised that it wasn't right to want to keep him. No one knows my harechild as well as I do, and so if I can't convince myself that I'm giving him everything he needs, then how can I be giving him everything he needs? I don't understand why people want to keep something that belongs in a different world. I just don't, and I doubt I ever will. I think, by taking them out of their world, you take away what is so wonderful about them. I only have my experiences to go by, and I can't imagine any other wild animal being easier to provide for, or really needing people. That's just me, I guess. What do I know?

Aery, the only sugar gliders I've ever met have been right little buggers trying their hardest to latch onto fingers. [] I really cannot imagine them being nice pets. No one over here who's had to handle sugar gliders ever wants to do it again. []

Once, many years ago, I was with a much older and wiser friend and we were watching a tiny wading bird foraging along the shoreline, darting back and forth, running and pecking. I was so charmed by it I said "I want one!"

My friend said to me, "You've got one; it's right there."

I didn't understand how significant that was until I had my own wild animal for a while.

Gina, what I found interesting when I was in America is the total lack of interest the average American seemed to have for their own native species bar the very charismatic carnivores. I was so bummed that I didn't get to see a raccoon or an opossum because they're apparently not interesting to the public.

 
I might've already shared this one...but when we lived at our old house....same city as now...we had possums (our possum..are those Opossums or possum?)...and they'd drive my pack NUTS at night.
 
Well they were usually on the fence trundling along and I'd just push them over the side with a broom because otherwise they'd 'freeze" on the fence right above the dogs...annoying! Why they always did this at 10/11pm instead of like 2am never made sense to me! Plenty of people still up and around and dogs out for last outs you know?
 
Well one apparently decided to be active during the day....and my dogs got a hold of it. I let them out then came back outside to change water and there ws a dead possum in the yard...and a couple of dead tiny minature possums here and there. Apparently she must've been denning under the shed and came up at the wrong time.
 
I was totally bummed...she was defintiely dead and pretty torn up. I put up the dogs and poked her a bit and noticed her tummy was moving...there were about 8 LIVE babies in her pouch and were they cute! I never thought possums were cute but their babies are [] It was totally gross to dig around in a dead possums pouch but I did it...I grabbed them all and cooed at them a bit then put them in a box and the box in a crate and called AC. They asked if they had hair and upon my yes said that was good because then they had a better chance of making it. They came later that day and picked them up to take them to an assigned rehabber to raise and release. In the short time I had them I kept peeking at them and they had these beady little wild eyes, lol! Very interesting animals and totally cute babies.
 
It was sad cleaning up Momma and the little ones that didn't make it. But my dogs were being dogs...and unfortunately playing possum did not work this time.
 
Now it has worked in past....where I've cleaned up a dead possum...put it into a plastic bag and come back to an empty bag with a possum sized hole in it, lol!
 
The Ft Worth Zoo here....recently opened a "Texas Wild" exhibit...it's permanent...it has all widlife native to here separated by region. It's a very cool exhibit and they are rightly very proud of it. So next time you are in America, Ft Worth, Texas is the place to see native stuff []