Fundraising for a Poor Sad Chameleon

I am helping to rescue an adorable veiled chameleon with a dead tongue. frown emoticon I've talked to my vet and he thinks if the cham is otherwise healthy that we could amputate the dead tongue and hand feed him. So he does have a shot at still living a good life. 

He's been very active & curious in his foster home. When his foster momma got home today, he got all excited and started trying to get out to play. He's adorable! We just need to get him well.

He has a vet appt for Monday at 10:30-- soonest we could get him in for a surgery time. He will be first be assessed to see if he is healthy enough to amputate his tongue. If he is, Dr Folland will take his tongue off; if he's not, we will humanely put him down.

I'm trying to raise the money to pay for the visit/procedure (I'm thinking it will be around $200 and hopefully less than $300 total). If you'd like to contribute a few bucks via PayPal, I'd be forever grateful! We have a great foster home for this guy and a great adoptive home lined up. 

There is a link to donate via PayPal on the right side of my blog. If you'd like to help pay for this guy's vet visit/surgery, PLEASE click there! 

Thank you! 

Fun Costumes I made Today

Today I made three flower costumes for beardies-- pansy, rose, and sunflower. And a ladybug costume too. Then I made some more devil wings to fill an order I got on Etsy. I've been sewing & sewing. It's way fun to do and the costumes are selling well on Etsy. They've become a great way to earn money for rescue. 

The 2nd Pansy costume I made (I didn't like the first one)

The 1st ladybug costume (the 2nd one is better)

The rose/pink flower costume. 

The sunflower costume. I will adjust the pattern a bit when I make it again.

"Daisy's Blankies" a fundraiser

Here is my latest fundraiser: fleece blankies. $3 & $5 (includes shipping). $1 is for postage, all the rest goes to pay off the rest of Daisy's surgery and then will be used for future rescues. These are super nice fleece squares that were donated to me. They make great blankies because you can toss them in the wash when they get dirty and there are no seams for nails to catch on.

Every beardie needs a blankie! Buy yours a blankie at the same time you are helping pay for necessary vet costs for sickly reptiles. Thanks!

Deluxe blankies, $5 total

Unisex Fleece $3 total

Boy Fleece $3 total

Girl Fleece $3 total 

https://www.etsy.com/listing/185107853/daisys-blankies-fundraiser-to-pay-for

Daisy's Surgery

I took Daisy in this morning for her big day. Surgery started just after 12 and stopped just before 3. Dr Folland, my amazing vet -- Click HERE for more information-- only charged me for an hour of surgery. He made a small incision in her leg opening and went up laproscopically into her bladder where he started hammering the golfball sized stone into pieces. It was a very long, tedious process.

A urate stone is basically like really hard chalk. Here are some pieces they saved for me. Daisy has had urate stones her whole life and I'm going to have to do some research to figure out how to prevent them.

Once the stone was removed and the bladder was flushed out and stitched back up, Dr Folland had to repair her prolapse. He cleaned off the exposed tissue and then tucked it back inside her. He stitched up her bum to make sure it doesn't fall out again.

Reptiles have a hard time with anesthesia-- going under and coming out. This was Daisy in the vet incubator. I have pain meds for her (though NO idea how I'll actually get them in her) and antibiotic shots for the next month. She'll go back next week for a recheck (hopefully by then she's pooped) and then the stitches come out in a month.

It will take her a day or two to start feeling more perky. Then the goal is to get her to eat & drink. And we will be waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting for her to poop. I think tomorrow will be sunny enough that I can get her outside in direct sunshine. Dr Folland and Dr Echols swear by sunshine therapy. Direct UVB can cure a lot of problems with reptiles. So I'll try that as much as I can. The forecast for next week is predicting temps back in the 70's and I'll stick Miss Daisy outside for several hours a day.

Thanks to all who have donated to the GoFundMe campaign. I stuck the charges on my credit card, but I'm hoping to raise enough money to pay it off. So please feel free to keep donating. Any extra money will go to help other beardies & reptiles.

Click HERE to Donate.  And please feel free to share the donation info with your reptile friends! :)

Daisy, rescue number 45

I took Daisy, a 3 year old sulcata tortoise, in last night thinking she'd be an easier than normal fix. $404 later at the vet today, I learned she is not. Daisy has a prolapsed rectum-- meaning, her intestines are now falling out of her body. :( We thought, at first, it would be simple to just push her insides back inside, but an X-ray showed something different.

Poor Daisy does NOT feel good!  

Daisy has a MASSIVE kidney stone inside of her. It's the size of a golf ball (far larger than her head) and is only removable if the vets cut open her shell and physically cut it out of her body. The surgery is very tedious and long, but it has a great success rate. Without the surgery, she will die.

Here's a picture of her prolapse.

I've been blessed to have been able to pay for most of my vet bills on my own over the last 18 months (thankfully, I have a really good husband who doesn't care that our van isn't paid off and that we didn't have thousands of dollars to go on a cruise or something), but I cannot afford a surgery bill over $1,000.  Several friends recommended creating a "GoFundMe" site so I did.

Please consider helping pay for Daisy's surgery. Thanks! Click HERE for the info! 

Beardies Need Blankies-- my next fundraiser for rescue

I love giving my beardies softy blankies and warm corn bags! It's one of my favorite parts of rescue is watching a sad, neglected, or sickly beardie snuggle up into a warm blanket and sleep.

So to raise funds for rescue (mine and others), I've been making special softy blankies with matching corn bags to sell. You can buy just the blanket or just the corn bag or both. I'll even figure out how to ship them cheaply & safely.

The blankets are made out of soft flannel with very little outward stitching so there is less for your beardie to catch his nails on. They are machine washable too.

They come in small (for babies) and large (for adults) sizes. Eventually, I'll make some jumbo sizes for big beardies.

Large blankies

Small blankies

 The corn bags are made out of the same soft flannel and will come with simple instructions on how to heat them up for your beardies. The corn bags aren't machine washable. Sorry! The corn will sprout in the wash! ;)

 You can buy them separately or in a set and pay for them via my PayPal account and I'll ship them out to you. I'll get more details up via my blog and my rescue Facebook page in the next few days.

Fishies make great blankies!

All the proceeds of these goes to fund rescue efforts for me and for other organizations. Recently, I donated $10 to help rescue a whole tank full of reptiles in Illinois.

Stay tuned!

GO HERE for the prices & patterns & shipping info!!!