Sickly Tiger worries Teddy

I had Tiger out tonight so I could see how his breathing sounded. He's been sick lately though we haven't been able to figure out what is wrong with him. He sounds worse tonight than he ever has. He's got a vet appointment in the morning and I'm hoping maybe his symptoms are more obvious now that we can figure out what is happening.

Every time Tiger took a wheezing, gurgly breath, Teddy (who had to sit on my lap too) showed deep concern.

I tried to take a video of Tiger's breathing, but he stopped gasping and gurgling every time I had the video feature on. Hopefully he'll do it tomorrow for Dr Folland so we can figure out what is wrong and how to fix him.

Tiger's eyes are hugely swollen and they leak tears/fluid. His nose leaks fluid too. His mouth seems abnormally red. His breathing is labored. This will be the 4th time we've taken Tiger back to the vet in the past 3 months. His blood work and physical exams have all been fine. Perhaps he had an early onset respiratory infection that wasn't showing up yet?? I'm stumped. Dr Folland has been stumped. Tiger is worse now and I'm hoping that will make it more obvious what we should do now. We've tried antibiotic shots, antibiotic eyedrops, flushing the eyes with saline, flushing his nose with saline, anti-inflammatory eye drops, etc.

I'll update you tomorrow.

Noel is also going back in because his eye never cleared up, and Kiwi will hopefully get an "All Clear" report for her MBD and broken bones.

Noel, rescue 164

I named this baby "Noel" which means "birth" in Latin because I hope this is the season for his re-birth.

 My rescue buddy, Heidi, dropped everything to go get him and bring him to me. She sent me pics of him along the way so I could see how skinny he was. She told me how angry she was to pick up him up (the dad didn't want to) because he was ice cold.

He did move around and open his eyes some while they were driving. That was a good sign that he was active once he warmed up.

The first thing I did was weigh him so I knew how many cc's of sterile saline to inject in him. 62 grams! SO tiny.

The second thing I did was offer him a drink in a warm bath. I held his head up because he didn't seem to want to. I dripped water on his nose and tickled his lips to get him to drink. It didn't work. Every so often-- especially when I touched his feet-- he would launch himself out of the bath. When he had his mouth open, I quickly dripped water into it. But it still didn't inspire him to drink on his own. 

I pulled some dead lettuce out of the corner of his mouth. It still had some amount of spit on it which is a good sign that he's not totally dehydrated.

I gave him a saline injection into both of his upper shoulders. It made him look like he had shoulder pads! It's almost impossible to take a pic of that. 

A saline injection between his muscles and skin will help rehydrate the cells of his body more quickly. I will give him one every 24 hours for the next 3 days before I offer him food. The primary focus for critically ill reptiles is always hydration. Once they are hydrated, their bodies can better tolerate food. Giving food (especially protein) to a critically ill bearded dragon is a sure way to kill them quickly.

Poor little Noel didn't even flinch when I put the needle into his back a couple times. :( His movements were all reactionary and largely involuntary. He was obviously in severe stress mode and not able to handle the changes.

While I was waiting for him to arrive, I set up Drake's old tank (completely sanitized, of course) for him. I put Noel onto a newly washed & warm hammock under a light.

Now we leave him alone and wait to see how much fight he has in him still. I will limit my interaction with him so he's less stressed. I will check on him frequently to make sure he's not dead. I call these "death checks" and I do them a lot with critically ill beardies (especially in the middle of the night). Tomorrow around 1 pm, I'll give him another saline injection and see how he does. Two doses of saline will help me know if his kidneys are still functioning or if they've shut down. If the malnutrition and dehydration have shut down his kidneys, then it is only a matter of time before he dies. There is no way to bring back dead kidneys. :(

He has a chance of survival if he can survive the stress of being moved today and if his body starts to process the fluid. But there's no way to know what chances of survival he has. It's just a wait and see thing. There's no other option.

This is the hard part of rescue. Waiting and wondering if you've done enough or if you're efforts qualify as "Too Little, Too Late."

I'll keep you posted.

Mid-Afternoon Mango

Mango's color improved after the trauma of being held and poked with a shot. 

That's the good news. 

The bad news is that I found him laying on his side. :( 

If he makes it through until the morning, I'll give him food, a baby food slurry with some vitamins. 

There's still some hope that he'll pull through since he's still alive, but it's going to take a miracle for the lil guy. 

A Suspicion

I've spent hundreds of dollars on vet testing to figure out why some of my beloved beardies have such severe diarrhea. The tests were normal and I'm suspecting that there is something in the recent batch of Flukers pellets (that I've fed for 3 years) that is causing severe digestive upset. 

Is anyone else using new bottles of adult formula and their beardies are having severe diarrhea? 

This is the other version. My bottle was empty and I reused it which is why the pellets are brown. 

Use the contact form on the right top of my blog to contact me if you have. 

Sickly Dex

In the last few weeks, Dex has been very lethargic. I took her in yesterday for bloodwork and got the results back today. 

Dex has a very high white blood cell count (sign of an infection) and a high calcium level (possibly eggs). 

My guess is that I have another female with undeveloped eggs that are starting to be toxic. :( I'm taking her in for an ultrasound on Monday and we should be able to see if she has eggs. 

Dex tested positive for adenovirus (ADV+) and so the idea of surgery becomes a complicated option. ADV+ beardies are much more susceptible to infection and stress. I'm not sure she can handle the trauma of having her eggs, ovaries, and oviducts removed. 

I guess we'll cross that bridge when we come to it next week. 

Poor Sick Stella

Stella was one of my first rescues & adoptions. She's been in an amazing home and doing great for years. 

The problem with reptiles is that they hide their illnesses SO well that it's hard to know if something is wrong. By the time, they appear to be ill, they are so sick that it's often too late to save them. 

Stella has the hallmarks of a sick beardie-- flat eyebrows, sunk in eyes, and a black beard. See? 

Stella has been hiding an illness. My guess is that she has stuck eggs or egg follicles that have started rotting inside her, but we won't know for sure until my vet does an x-ray tomorrow. 

I gave her a saline injection tonight to rehydrate her. Sunk in eyes can mean pain and/or dehydration. She'll go in first thing for an x-ray and we'll decide what to do next for her. If she needs surgery, it will have to wait until Monday. Hopefully we can limp her along until then. 

She's in a warm sick tank tonight. She fell asleep standing up and I laid her down. It's hard to say at this point if she'll 

make it or not. I'll check my notes, but I don't think we ever knew how old she was. 

More updates tomorrow. 

Sickly Katy

One of my dear friend's has been going through a divorce and is now a single mom of 4 kids. Yesterday she sent me pics of her beloved beardie who is obviously unwell. :( 

I coached my friend on how to help sweet Katy yesterday, but I wasn't sure if she'd even make it through the night. After so many losses and changes lately, my friend and her kids could not bear the thought of losing their beardie. There was lots of sobbing. I felt terrible. 

It was a great relief to hear Katy made it through the night. I dropped off my kids at school and drove 30 mins one way to meet my friend and get her beardie. 

Katy is at the vet now reviewing fluids for dehydration and having her blood tested. She looks very bad, but I have no idea what's going on. 

I know she's in good hands now and they will do whatever they can to save her life. I hope she's able to pull through this- whatever it is. 

I'll keep you posted. 

Sami came back

Last year, I adopted out Sami & Lexie for Christmas. They are in a fabulous home with amazing owners. I wish all my beardies went to such great places. 

On Thursday morning, I got a text from their owner. Sami wasn't doing good. She hasn't been eating and is very lethargic. I got this pic: 

I had them bring her to me. She's in a sick tank in my room. Dr Folland saw her today and took an x-ray. Everything is normal with that though we did find an old, healed break in her leg. 

I'm going to force feed her Critical Care and watch her for a few days to see if I can get some weight back on her. If not, we'll have to do some blood tests to find out what's going on. 

Once we get her better, she'll go back home. Until then, she's doing okay and loves to be wrapped in a blankie and snuggled every night. 

Sad Sicklies & Bad Junie

No real change for my 3 sicklies. :( Dory will go in next week for another check. 

Mooshy is hanging on but I keep finding him in awkward positions where his body is half off the hammock. He got his 2nd saline shot today. 

 Peanut hardly moves and won't eat at all. I force feed him daily. He is gaining weight though; I guess that's a good thing. 

I did give Mooshy & Peanut a mixture of baby food mango mixed with Pedialyte today to give them something very digestible. I'll get some baby food squash next time I go to the store too. 

So we just keep plugging along. I check Mooshy several times a day to make sure he's alive. In the evening, he and Dory get kangaroo care with me (I wrap them in a blankie and tuck them in my shirt for a few hours). 

And in other news-- Junie tried to burn down my craft room today. :( He knocked his Mercury Vapor Bulb off and it burned the sheet under his "perch" area. I found the room filled with smoke as he sat calmly on the curtain rod. Bad Junie. 

This was around 11 this morning. I was supposed to leave the house at 10 for a couple hours but didn't sleep well last night and was being pokey. I feel sick inside when I think of what could have happened had I not been here. :( 

Critical Care Mornings

I tried to feed roaches to all 4 of my sickly beardies this morning but only 1 of them ate well. Lil Bit gummed down 3 small roaches. Dory was only able to catch and eat one. Peanut & Mooshy didn't even show interest. 

Back to the Critical Care routine I go. 

Lil Bit gets 1 cc. Peanut gets 2 cc's. Mooshy gets 6 cc's of Critical Care and 6 cc's of Pedialyte.

 All of them are gaining weight slowly. Peanut's jaws are still too rubbery to actually chew roaches. Mooshy doesn't seem to have the strength to chase the roaches. Until they are strong enough to eat on their own, I'm going to continue to force feed them. 

Crikey, rescue number 57

This is Crikey, a 14 month beardie who, I think, is suffering from severe gout. Poor boy. He's got a vet appt first thing tomorrow morning at 8 am. A friend of mine rescued him from a bad situation in Vegas and has done a good job with him, but his condition continues to worsen.

Gout is a condition where the kidneys fail to work correctly and uric acid is released into the bloodstream where it accumulates in the joints. The acid crystals are sharp and make movement very, very painful. You can see how swollen Crikey's joints are. He's stopped moving almost completely and has very little appetite. 

Gout is very difficult to treat because it's root cause is kidney malfunction. You can often get rid of the symptoms, but you will always have a beardie with poorly functioning kidneys. So you have to have a special diet and continual treatment to keep the beardie's uric acid levels in check. 

Look at his poor feet & knees! Every joint in his body is swollen and so painful to move. Poor little buddy. We'll see if we can get him better. Dr Folland is a rock star (in case you haven't figured that out from my posts already) and offers Crikey the best chance of survival.

I will keep you posted. 

Zeus, rescue number 52

Zeus was sold last year on Black Friday and has pretty much been sick ever since. I'd been working with his 2nd owner (yes, he was bounced that fast) since this Spring. No matter what she did, she could not get Zeus' mouth to clear up. 

(all my pics are blurry because my cameras have been acting up lately). 

I took him in on Monday and took him immediately to my vet.

Dr Folland cleaned off his mouth, checked him for mouth rot and other issues, and sent him home with lots of medicine.

Every day, I soak his mouth with a liquid antibiotic solution and gently work off the scabs and dirt. Then I coat it with an antibiotic cream. Every three days I give him an antibiotic shot. His mouth is still pretty raw and he HATES me cleaning it. Poor guy.

He eats great and is otherwise active. I'm hoping by next week that it will look & feel much better for him. He's really tiny for being 9 months old. He needs to grow and put on some weight.

Sweet Minnie

Minnie has not been well the past two weeks. She won't eat and she's been very lethargic. I've ended force feeding her twice. Today I took her with me to teach in my youth detention class and she stayed tucked in my shirt with her eyes closed most of the time.

When I got home, I put her in the sunshine in an open window so she could warm up and get some UVB. I sat at the table and did my homework. After about two hours, I noticed she had moved to a small shady spot so I decided to put her in the living room window where there is more shade. The second I picked her up, I could tell something was wrong. Her entire belly was bloated. It felt like someone had blown up a balloon.

I got on the phone right away with my vet's office and took her over there. As I drove her breathing became more strained and her beard turned black. Her eyes started to appear sunk-in-- all signs of dying. The vet was able to drain a lot of blood & stinky fluid from her belly which surprised all of us. Because her history is so unknown and her health has been so poor, it was pretty easy to choose to put her out of her misery quickly through euthanasia. :(

Minnie and her siblings were underfed as babies and they ate each other to survive. She and her brother were abandoned in a house in Salt Lake. She has had a crappy life from the beginning due to lazy and negligent owners. At least in the end, she was loved and cared for. I held her in her blankie every night and let her bask in sunny windows.

And she also got to be the Easter beardie too. :)

Update on Spike

Last fall, I learned that Spike had yet another major infection in his body in less than a year. Because each of the infections we treated before were in different extremities of his body, it was obvious that his infection was systemic (or widespread) and there was nothing to be done. Instead of opting for a major surgery (removing his foot), I chose to bring him home and let him enjoy his life with all his limbs.

Within the past few days, Spike's infection has returned again to his throat. He has stopped eating well and is beginning to gasp like he did last October. Based on the progression last fall, I know it's only a matter of a few weeks before he is gravely ill. I don't want him to suffer again like that.

Dr Echols, one of my amazing vets at Parrish Creek, is conducting two incredible research projects on reptile circulation and respiration at the University of Utah. I had discussed donating Spike to the project a few weeks ago. So, if all goes well, Spike will become part of this amazing study and will be humanely put to sleep this week. If, due to his illness, he is no longer a good candidate for the study, then I will pay for Dr Folland to put Spike humanely to sleep. He has had a super good life here for the last 5 months and I hope that makes up for the fact that his life beforehand stunk.

Poor Spike. He's been bounced many, many times in his 6 years of life, but here he has been loved and cherished. I am sad that there is nothing to be done to remove the infection from him, but happy that he can (as my beardie friends say) "cross the rainbow bridge into beardie heaven."

Stubs & Minnie, rescues number 46 & 47

This brother & sister pair were abandoned in a house a month or so ago. As babies they were severely underfed and had no choice but to eat their clutch mates (and each other). They were also kept on sawdust. ugh. 

Stubs is missing the tip of his tail, all his fingers on one hand, and a couple fingers on each foot. He is really a sweet beardie and quickly learned that he likes to snuggle at  night. He is a sweetie. And he was adopted out tonight. Yay! 

Minnie is the sicker of the two beardies. Her eyes are massively swollen and she's very lethargic. I did manage to get her to drink yesterday, but she will not eat. :(  She loves being swaddled, but I discovered if I wrap her up in a towel, she will never, ever get out. I had to unwrap her today to make her eat. She is very docile and calm-- that could be her temperament or it could be that she is so sickly.

I'm taking her to see Dr Folland on Monday. I've flushed out her eyes multiple times but they are still huge. She loves to sit in the sun in the window and immediately goes to sleep-- actually everything makes her go to sleep. That's part of the problem. It may be awhile before she is healthy enough to adopt out.

The green is just from the mercury vapor bulb on her cage.
She's not actually green. :)  

NOTE: I changed her name from "Mimi" to "Minnie." Mimi just didn't seem to fit her. :)

Ziggy, rescue number 39

Found this beardie online yesterday and sent my friend to buy him for $25. Look at his tail! :( No wonder he is so aggressive-- that tail is disgustingly swollen. 

He'd been kept for years (owner had NO idea how old he is) in an outdoor greenhouse and fed kale and superworms. The guy brought home a half dozen beardies to decorate his outdoor greenhouse. Within a short amount of time he had dozens of beardies running around. Totally irresponsible beardie ownership.

Thankfully, he rehomed all his beardies except this one who he said was too aggressive.

My friend picked him up and took him home. Not only was his tail super infected, one of his fingers has been infected for so long that the bones have been eaten away.

She kept trying to put him on the counter and he kept trying to climb back onto her shoulder. He did not want to be put down. She did give him some fluids and a little food. 

Aggressive? Really? Try scared, in pain, and neglected. Poor buddy. 

I attempted to remove infection from his tail, but the tissue is so diseased that the infection has replaced the healthy tissue. It will have to be amputated. His finger infection has spread so badly that at least part of his hand will have to be removed too.

He is in rough shape, but he is still spunky. It was a relief this morning when he woke up. He's so happy to be warm that he's been spending all his time on his heated cornbag and under his blanket.

I have a vet appt this morning and Ziggy will be in surgery around 11:30 am. Today starts the first day of the rest of his "happily ever after." He'll be on antibiotics for a long time, and I suspect that his infection got into his bones & blood stream. Once a beardie gets a systemic infection, it is almost impossible to get rid of all of the small pockets of pus. He will most likely be like Spike, my third rescue, and will fight infection for the rest of his life until it eventually kills him. But at least he is out of that crummy greenhouse in a place where he is loved & cared for.

It will be a month or so before he's ready to be adopted, but I am intent on finding him a home where he is adored and cherished!

This is Ziggy this morning. I was happy he was alive!