I’m so glad to learn that Pebbles the bearded dragon is recovering after being dumped on the beach. We found this turtle, pictured, on the beach in 2013. He was desiccated and very thin, but we thought he would recover as he could move weakly. We put him into a little fresh water and tried to feed him, but he got weaker and weaker and died a week later. At the time I wrote a letter to a Brighton paper about it and how cruel it was to abandon a pet.

There was no way a freshwater turtle could survive for long in the salty sea or the dry beach.

I hope your articles will encourage people who no longer want their pets to treat them kindly and find them new homes, rather than dealing them death by laziness when they are judged to be more trouble than they're worth.

Deborah Kohn, Scotland