I mean what about zoos,entertainers, educators etc who all have employees who get involved with the animals and don't own them? Is it okay to pay strangers to work with your animals but not have a good friend volunteer?
If a person can choose to put themselves in danger by having a large exotic then I don't see anything wrong with a person also choosing to put them selves in danger by helping them.
Like I said I respect the decision not to put others in danger but I think we also need to respect others decisions to do things that may be dangerous. And isn't that part of having friends, being willing to do stupid and dangerous things for them(pick them up from a bad part of town, go with them to collect their things from a scary (ex)boyfriend's place).
a lep/jag that jumped me from behind as I was leaving his cage, that felt like a ton of bricks.
I had a donkey do that to me once. Managed to cling to the gate till she got down. Problem was there was a small herd that all rushed the gate soon as I had gone for it. So if I hadn't managed to keep off the ground it would have been very bad. In the end the only safe way to get out was climb the fence away from the gate.