Ah, the joyous rewards of self employment...
Don't confuse the issues. Pets are cool...it's retail that sucks. Melding the two to make a living is at best a great way to buy yourself a very stressful job that will make you kill yourself if you ever stop to calculate how much you don't make per hour.
My wife wanted to open a pet store when we 1st met, back during the Cretaceous period I believe it was. Being properly trained as a youth by an overbearing control freak of a mother, I nodded my head and willfully supported her designs. Immediately I set about doing whatever I could to facilitate her dream, in spite of the fact that I was already running a large demolition company and she was working part time at the local Dr. Pet.
i attempted to encourage her to develop a business plan, research the market, etc. to no avail. She was convinced that because she loved all critters more than any one alive, she was assured success just by hanging her shingle and unlocking the door, you know...the Home Depot mentality.
To her infinite credit I must say that she has an amazing empathy that animals seem to naturally respond to. I have witnessed her handling Siberian hamsters that had previously attempted deboning yours truly with their front teeth (don't laugh, they are vicious little beggars...haven't you ever seen Monty Python's Holy Grail? Well hamsters are related to bunnies!).
We were given a diabetic African Grey Parrot that required insulin shots daily. The bird was maniacal. He could sense my presence and would hide above the doorway to my family room. Upon my entering he would drop down on my head and attempt to remove a skull plate with his rather imposing beak. When tired of imitating a raptor he would flutter to my wife's lap and actually lay on his back for her to stroke. (you know in hind site, ...I'm thinkin'...maybe this wasn't necessarily all the bird's doing...?)
While I visited properties and negotiated leases and advertising rates, she began buying and breeding future store stock. Since she was able to hand tame anything this side of a rabid badger she decided that we would not only sell every kind of earthly creature imaginable, we would also raise them ourselves.
At one time, I had, in my beautiful 4 bedroom house that I had lovingly designed and built with my own two hands...the following:
- Racking for mouse, hamster, gerbil and rat tanks...150 in all, fully stocked. Inside of six months she was selling to half of our future competitors.
- 36 breeding pairs of Guinea Pigs...that's 72 in all. Interesting side bar; there is no place on god's green earth that you can house 72 Peruvian BBQ candidates and get anything remotely resembling sleep within a mile of their incessant woinkling.
- Racking containing all manner of paired reptiles. Red tail Boas, Ball Pythons, Monitors, Geckos, Anoles,...if it bit, constricted or crapped...we had at least two.
- Cats, not that we were going to breed or sell America's favorite pet, she just could never say no anytime some one brought a litter into the store and abandoned them on the stoop. We only had five - thank the lord - 'cuz I convinced her taht it would be too difficult to fly the birds.
- Dogs,...see above cat mention. We had (2) Akitas - a Japanese breed that were developed for hunting bears...that's right, I said friggin' bears...and they were quite good at it. Hence the name of the 8 month old 185# specimen that we took in, along with his sister. There were the chihuahuas that never saw a man's ankle that they didn't mean to gnaw. The Aussie Shepherd that liked to herd by grabbing my pants leg from
behind and pulling at very inopportune times, such as when I might be carrying a basket of clothes down the stairs. The Golden Retriever puppy who developed a taste for cherry wood,... cabinets that is,... as in custom kitchen cabinets.
- I almost forgot the bunnies! Twelve hutches in all. Dwarf lop ears, lop ears, dwarf, Dutch,... I can't even remember them all. All I do remember is the screaming the morning she went into the screen porch and found that the retic python that someone had dropped at the pet store, 'cuz it was too big, duh! go figure...a mere 8'...had somehow managed to lift a hutch top door and help himself to a little lop eared snack.During the ensuing melee Bear (the Kujo of the Akita world) was let out to romp in the back yard, rather than in the 1/4
acre chain link fenced dog run. He undertook to dismantle a good 30' of my new wooden alternating board privacy fence. I guess he thought it was cherry.
We had parakeets, conures, Quaker parakeets,lories, love birds, canaries, cockatiels, rose breasted cockatoos, an Amazon, a Scarlet Macaw, Finches (Strawberry, Zebras, Gouldians, et al), a mynah a pair of toucans and she probably snuck a pterodactyl in while I was at work.
Did I mention that I'm allergic to everything above except the stuff with scales?
I cannot begin to describe the hours and days that I spent cleaning cages and scrubbing tanks. Just feeding and watering this menagerie took both of us several hours a day, and every night we were up cleaning, separating, manicuring, medicating...I seem to recall this as being roughly about the time that alcohol became a very near and dear friend to me.
Mind you we had no fish to speak of, just one meager 55 gal. assortment of too many angels, too many tetras, too many mollies, too many sword tails and too few scavengers.
Fortunately for us lease negotiations hit a snag before I started buying materials for the 12' tall water column tanks that she wanted built as markers throughout the fish department. Of course that was quite a few kids ago and today there stands one of the areas busier aquatic retailers in the shopping center next door to where we were to open. Great spot, Petco agreed...they also opened a store... right up the street.
As much "fun" as you might think it, I can only suggest that anyone seriously demented enough to contemplate this particular path to poverty spend a few weeks doing something first. Trust me on this, you'll thank me later.
Go buy a twenty gallon aquarium...nothing else, just that one single tank. Now clean it...and as soon as you're done...clean it again. Once you finish cleaning it for a second time...clean it a third time, (beginning to get the picture?).
Keep doing this for an entire day, not your average wussie 8 hour government / union day...I mean one of those self indulgent over paid 16 hour self employed days. Just to help break up the monotony try to calculate in your head how many tanks you'll likely clean if you do that for a year...then five years and ten years and so on until you get to one hundred years.
That's where you'll reach what the MBA types refer to as your break even point. That's the point at which you will have finally earned enough that you are right back where you started one hundred years before.
No need to heed Dantes greeting, there is still hope! Someone might shoot you while robbing you on your way to deposit the rent that's paying off your landlord's multi-million dollar mortgage.
Of course working the insane hours and never going home, 'cuz somebody calls out sick every day...and you are the only back up, your diet will likely consist of a pretty regular regimen of carry out burgers, carry out subs and carry out burgers. The only vegetables in your diet will be the algae that you absorb through osmosis while cleaning your tanks and dipping dead fish.
With a little luck, and a pack a day cigarette habit, hyper tension should claim ya soon enough. :lipssealedsmilie:
