nothing much going on with me other than quicken hell, sentinel hell, and kosh hell…
well, 3 days before I was due to hand my bearded dragon over to jason I decided it would be a good idea to get his meds underway before his trip to his house and having to go through the stress of acclimating to new surroundings so I take him to the vet myself. Since I was going to pay for the vet visit anyway, I figured it would make life easier not having to deal with vet bills later on.
It turns out that he doesnt’ have any worm or coccida problems but does indeed have a lot of ‘other’ problems including dehydration, malnutrition, deficiencies, and mysterious swollen toe syndrome I’m really trying hard to solve now. So once again I am pulling back and not handing him to anyone …yet. I feel terrible about doing that, but I’ve always had good pet keeping ethics and feel really really bad about dropping the ball with him. I feel I need to solve his problems myself and not dump those problems on someone else. yeah yeah, some may think. “he’s just a lizard, for christ sake!” but no, he’s my responsibility for the moment and I need to do right by him even if it’s an inconvenience.
vet also said he’s lived in his large tank for so long it would not be good for him to move to a smaller one especially not now anyway. So I’ve basically done all that work on the 55 for nothing. whatever.. I’ll just have to piece the 55 back together for the fish.. but now that it’s all in peices, I’m thinking I should trade that in for a larger tank for the fish. decisions decisions…
Hey, it’s cool if you want to hang on to him, he is your lizard after all ;-).
I actually misuderstood, I thought he was living in a 55 gallon tank all along, and you just wanted to hang onto that particular one, guess that explains a lot.
Anyways don’t feel bad, if you do end up deciding to get rid of him for any other reason, I should still have a good home waiting for him.
Reply to squeaky19nah, he’s been in his 75 since he was 8 weeks old. I’m glad you understand cuz I just felt so bad about not making a damn decision once and for all and now this.
He’s been acting as usual which doesn’t mean much considering. Doesn’t always come out of his cave and sometimes I have to make him come out.. The vet couldn’t tell me exactly what the thing with his toes is. Only make speculations. Unfortunately not all vets know everything about reptiles so I’ve been doing tons and tons of research to see what this problem with his toes might be..
One diagnosis I keep running into doesn’t look very promising and he could die from it if it got bad enough. It’s called metabolic bone disease (MBD) which is caused by severe calcium deficiency and/or vit d3 deficiency. I *used* to give him calcium and v3 every day but I haven’t done that in loooooong long time. One good thing he hasn’t lost is his appetite. He doesn’t eat as much as a healthy dragon, but at least doesn’t need to be force fed his vits. If it is MBD, then i’m hoping it will go away after a few weeks of good eats and vitamins but I keep reading mention of calcium loaded meds. I’m not real sure how to get the correct answer without taking him to another vet. At least I’m hoping that his color, appetite, and activity level improves real soon. His color used to be radiant orange/red, now it’s just like ash. Didn’t realize till I looked as some old pics. eeep!
Reply to Tania (digsite)