Will you all Help me with Something? It will take 3 minutes or less.

I want my vets at Parrish Creek Vet to know how much we all love & appreciate them. I tell them they have an international following because of my blog, but I don't think they understand.

Will you take a couple minutes to thank them for their good care of Junior and my other critters. I can honestly say that many many beardies & reptiles across the world have benefitted from Drs Folland & Echols because I share what I learn from them as often as I can.

CLICK HERE! 

Just a quick note to let them know you are glad for what they did for Junior and while you are there, like their page too!

THANK YOU!! 

Junior made it through the Night!

Just got off the phone with one of my favorite vet techs and Junior made it through the night. He's moving around some and will be tube fed later this morning. He's on pain meds, antibiotic shots, and calcium syrup. 

If he does well with one tube feeding a day, then they'll increase it to 2 feedings a day. He'll be at the vet's office for medical boarding through the next 4 days so he gets specialized care to help him recover.

Junior is in the Intensive Care Unit at the Vet

Right after I got off the phone with Dr Folland, Junior tried to die. :( He stopped breathing and his heart rate started to plummet. Thanks to the quick thinking of the staff and a little tube-to-mouth resuscitation by a tech, Junior started breathing again and his heart rate stabilized. I saw him in the ICU.

He's hooked up to a Doppler monitor so they can listen to his heartbeat and he has his head in a tube with a small amount of oxygen. They are waiting for him to wake up more and become responsive. So far he's not responding to any touch or pinching of his hands. :( Because of his Metabolic Bone Disease, he's not processing the anesthesia out of his body quickly. So they just have to keep watching him until he really wakes up.

Dr Folland said he'd let me know how Junior was doing later. I couldn't stay because I have family in town. I gave him some kisses, stroked his head softly, and told him to feel better.

Praying for Junior & my Vets

Junior is headed back to the vet tomorrow. His bowels are still blocked. 😞  He's getting stronger and his bones are becoming firmer, but if we can't get his digestion to work, there's not much hope for his ultimate survival.

 😫Please join me in praying tonight that my two awesome vets will be inspired to know how to best help Junior now. Thank you! I believe in miracles and I believe God cares about all His critters and can help heal Junior through Dr Folland and Dr Echols.

Junior at the Vet

This poor wee little baby is in BAD, BAD shape. His bones are mush and he's badly dehydrated and badly malnourished.

The vet & his tech gave him 3 cc's/mL's of saline and his first injection of calcium.

His mouth is so flimsy that we are going to limit the amount of things we give him orally. I'll be giving him calcium injections and saline injections. I have a feeding tube I can gently slip into his mouth so I can tube feed him Critical Care.

Thankfully, the weather in Utah is going to be lovely this week and I can get him in the sun everyday to help him metabolize the calcium better.

There's a chance that we'll be able to get Junior strong again, but, honestly, the odds are against him. But I will definitely be giving him all the chances he needs to survive. 

Norman Post-Surgery

My vets ended up having to fully anesthetize Norman to be able to work him. Even after having him out for an hour and with several people working on him, they were not able to pick off all the dead skin and old shed off his hands & feet! Ultimately, he lost about 3 to 4 inches of his tail and 2 toes. There are a couple toes that may still fall off on their own or start to die, but they felt there was still a chance for them to recover. I'll still be soaking him and working on his toes when I can. 

For some reason, my camera did not want to focus for my pictures and the close ups of his hands and feet ended up blurry. :( 

His tail should regrow but it will always look a bit odd on the end.

So here starts the beginning of his recovery. He'll be in a sick tank until the sores on the bottoms of his feet & hands heal. He's also on pain meds to help him be less ouchy and grumpy.

The vet bill just for today came to just over $425. I think I may do a quick fundraiser to earn some extra cash for him. I have tanks I'm trying to sell, but am not having success so far. I'll keep you posted.

You can always donate to Norman's care through PayPal:

paypal.me/SarahsBeardieRescue

The Agony of Knowing when to Try and when to Let Go

My vet, Dr Echols, had the Parrish Creek clinic secretary call me this morning. A bearded dragon was brought in for an appointment this morning in very bad shape. The owners were willing to surrender it, but I was willing to try to save him?

I drove over to the vet after quickly getting ready to go. Honestly, the whole time I drove, I prayed that I would know what to do-- to try or to let go. I prayed to know if the beardie had what it took to make it or if the kindest thing would be to let him go.

Lobo was in BAD shape. It broke my heart to look at him.

I did my basic "life check" tests on him. I gently turned him over on his back, I offered him water, I felt his belly. He didn't like me messing with his plugged femoral pores or trying to pry his mouth open. His bursts of spunk reassured me that he wasn't all the way dead. 

I had a quick consultation with Dr Echols and we decided I'd try through the weekend. Yes, Lobo was bad, but there were some signs of movement. The big unknown factor, as always, is his kidneys. Have they shut down? Are they still working? The stress of drawing blood would have been too much for him so we had to move forward without that information.

I warmed up my corn bag and got Lobo ready to transport home. Once he was in my carrier, I noticed he did not look even a tiny bit lifelike. I pulled him back out and gently flipped him over (the easiest way to check for death). Lobo did not move. His head flipped back and he lay unresponsive. One of techs put the doppler probe on him and we detected a heart beat still. That was when Lobo decided to move himself upright.

Crystal, one of my favorite techs, gave Lobo a saline shot and we put him back into a warmed up brooder. The stress of taking him home surely would have killed him. We decided to leave him to sleep in the brooder until later this afternoon. That would give his body time to assimilate the saline injected directly into his abdominal cavity.

I don't expect to find Lobo alive when I return at 2. I think he made it fairly clear that he is ready to be done with life. :( He is yet another example of "Too Little, Too Late." Poor diet, inadequate care, no handling, no UVB, zero research on care-- I don't know if it even matters if one of these reasons is how he got this bad. There are always lots of reasons & justifications. In the end, it usually results in a death.

Pets MUST be a DAILY thing. Daily checking on a pet helps you learn what behavior is and is not normal. Check the temperatures. Check for poop (or lack of poop). Check for movement. Check for alertness and movement. Check for clean water in the cage. Check. Check. Check.

I can't tell you how many times I've heard "He/she/it was fine last week."

Um, no.

This level of neglect does NOT happen overnight. EVER. But if you aren't checking daily, you are missing the subtle ways your animal -- especially your reptile-- is trying to communicate with you.

Through his eyes, through his movements, through his poop, through his aggression, through his coloring, through his sleeping position-- your pet is trying to communicate!

Are you listening?? 

An Incredible Conversation I had at my Vets' Office today

(reposted from a local Facebook reptile group I help moderate. I posted it there and got an amazing response, so I'm pasting it here too. Just something to think about.) 

I learned something mind-blowing today at the vet. And fairly controversial.

Dr Scott Echols is one of the reptile vets at Parrish Creek. He is also an international trainer on small animal surgery techniques and has been conducting significant studies on cardiovascular systems in birds and reptiles. This past summer, Dr Echols and another vet released a shocking study documenting the rise of deaths in pet snakes caused by Metabolic Bone Disease.

The first thing out of my mouth was the first thing out of many vets across the country: "Snakes DON'T get MBD!"

He spent 15 minutes with me showing me bone density scans, CT scans, cytology and pathology reports for Green Tree Snakes and even some desert ground dwelling snakes, both normal and MBD snakes. One of the most common indicators with the GTPs is that they lose their teeth and have to be assisted with feeding. X-rays show their skulls riddled with holes and missing teeth. An extensive pathology report done on a normal and MBD GTP showed that it was not an infection that triggered the loss of teeth in the snake, it was a lack of bone density.

Wow.

Reptile vets are still wrapping their brains around this growing epidemic and are starting to come up with hypotheses why snakes are getting MBD. The main guesses are 1) lack of movement caused by the rack system; 2) poor quality of feeders; 3) lack of UVB.

There has never been a good study done on whether or not captive snakes need UVB. Obviously snakes in the wild are constantly basking in sunny spots, but researchers always assumed it was for the heat radiation only. There may be a benefit to captive snakes having a UVB. Also, wild snakes are very very active with the exceptions of waiting for prey. Most captive snakes (like the GTP in the lobby of Parrish Creek) don't move at all other than to shift positions. Exercise has proven in humans to prevent osteoporosis and that may have an impact on reptiles too.

It's amazing to me what the higher quality of scanning equipment is allowing vets to discover with pet animals. Parrish Creek will soon be adding a CT scanner that will allow them to provide even better diagnoses and treatment for all of their clients.

Honestly, my head is a bit rattled by this, but I've seen all the evidence and can't dispute it. 

Vet Trip

I took Leo and Drake to the vet today. Leo got a beak trim and a Vitamin A injection to help with his swollen eyes. I have a two week game plan now to help him get back on track. If he's not eating within two weeks, I'll take him back to the vet to be tube fed. 

Drake is still not eating on his own. He sleeps all the time and has lost weight. He breathes through his mouth a lot too. 

Drake stumped Dr Folland on his last visit, and today he tried to repeat the stumping. His eyes are clear, his mouth is clear, his belly was soft. Nothing obviously wrong. He has zero body fat though. 

So they took blood to do basic blood tests to see if anything shows up. We'll start there. 

He is still shedding off the nasty stained sand. 

Blood tests come back tomorrow and we'll go from there. I'll start force feeding him every day instead of weekly to help pack on the calories. 

Updates on the others from the Vet

Akime got her special bandage off today. Hooray! Her skin is all healed over for arm. Because the skin is so fragile, we put a simple wrap cover on it to protect it from her grabbing. When she gets stressed, she grabs at the bandage with her good arm and can't let go. 

She and Lotus are going to a their new home at a Chameleon Sanctuary next week! Woo hoo! We've just been waiting for the bandage to come off. 

Drake appears to have defective or blocked tear ducts that prevent his eyes from draining properly. He will always have weepy eyes that need wiped frequently so they don't get crusty. 

He's been shedding off the nasty sand stained skin too which is making him into a handsome Beardie. I'll start looking for a home for him soon. 

Georgie got an injection of antibiotics to help with her runny nose and goopy eyes. She was not happy to be examined and eventually outlasted the vet who wanted to look in her mouth. 

Baby Foot got his nails clipped since they had curled up and under his feet. We did get to see that he is for sure a boy. Until now, his shell has been too deformed to tell. Definitely a boy. :) 

The next vet trip will be for Midnight the iguana. Everyone else -- so far-- is healthy. 

Dex at the Vet

Dex was spayed today. Her belly was filled with undeveloped eggs! More than any other surgery I've seen. 

While in surgery, the vet noticed that Dex's liver is very pale and has quite a few places where it's bleeding. He took a biopsy of it to figure out if it's related to the stuck eggs or to her adenovirus. 

It's very possible that even without her eggs, Dex will still remain unhealthy because of liver failure. :( 

She's home now and sleeping off the anesthesia. Poor girl. I hope she's able to recover from this. 

Ouch!

8 beardies swabbed and one had blood drawn. 

And that was with a discount! I don't even want to do the math. 

Test results will come back next week. 

I know there are cheaper tests out there, 

but the culture swab test my vet uses is the most accurate. It tests for the specific polypeptide chains in adenovirus and is so sensitive it can pick up even one or two viruses. There's no chance there will be a false positive or false negative. 

Phoenix at the Vet

Phoenix needed another tube feeding today and a check up. 

It was a terrible experience for him. :( 

He fought us and ended up tearing off one of his scabs. He's been shedding, but struggling to slough off all the dead skin. I had skin pieces all over me. 

He peed and then pooped and thrashed some more. 

We're starting him on antibiotics now to help his skin heal quicker and to prevent a respiratory infection. We tube fed him Critical Care and he threw it all back up. 

By the time we got him back in his box, he was exhausted. He wouldn't even move. I worried the stress would kill him. 

His mouth is still swollen and raw. His one eye is completely dead. His other eye seems to be okay. The skin on his neck is burnt and dry, but not ready to shed off. And the fecal test shows he has pinworms. 

At this point, we will watch him for the next week. He's come so far, but still has so far to go. :( I hope he's able to pull through this okay. If not, I think the best option will be to let him be done with his misery. 

I hope it doesn't come to that. 

Scorch at the Vet

Scorch is the other albino Burmese python rescued from the fire. He started showing signs of a respiratory infection so he went to the vet today. 

I was nervous with him because he was said to be more aggressive than the female (who I adored!), but I didn't want to appear wimpy to the vet staff. I took him out and ended up having SO much fun with him! 

He doesn't have a respiratory infection, but he does have multiple mouth hemorrhages (like canker sores) all over his mouth. He'll get on antibiotic shots and on antibiotic mouth drops. 

Here's only half of the pics I took: 

Dr Folland looking in his mouth. 

Waiting for his meds- 

I never ever thought I'd like big snakes, but I love these two! I had so much fun with them. :) 

Nubs is having a Sleepover at the Vet

Nubs has had really runny poop lately. So funny that I can't even get anything to do a fecal test on. I did a fecal test 2 months ago when his poop was more solid (but still runny) and I found 2 coccidia eggs. One of my favorite vet techs checked it too and found 1 pinworm egg. That was not enough to be the cause of his runny poop. 

Sometimes there's even blood in his poop. :( :( 

I took him to the vet today so he could be checked and they could go a fecal. Sweet little Nubs sat there and did nothing. 

My vet is going to take a swab and test him for adenovirus. :( And they'll try to see if he'll give him a poop sample in the morning. 

I'm going to miss my buddy tonight. I sure hope there is nothing serious wrong with him. He certainly has had a tough life between being chomped, being starved to death, kidney failure, and almost dying on me. He's young too-- only about 2 years old. 

I will post more when I get an update. 

Update on Spyro

There was Good News & Bad News from Spyro's vet visit today. 

The good news is that she doesn't have eggs. The bad news is we have no idea why she prolapsed so badly. I am treating her with medicine that will kill off any coccidia or pinworms she may have. Because she has been unable to poop, we couldn't do a fecal test to check for parasites. 

For now, she's back with me and I'll keep her calm and warm. This morning, she was still straining to push though I have no idea why. I'll go back next week and the vet & I will figure out what to do next. Hopefully I can do a fecal test between now and then. 

Here she is tonight. I'm not sure why she appears to be in pain. :( I gave her pain meds. All we can do now is wait & see. 

Spyro, rescue 130-- Graphic Pictures!!!

Spyro, a 5 to 6 year old female beardie, suffered a nasty prolapse today. It's one of the worst I've ever seen. Her owners surrendered her to me so I could take over her care. A prolapse is when part of their intestines get pushed outside of their body through their vent. 

This was the picture I saw-- 

I told the owners to immediately soak the end of the beardie in warm sugar water. Sugar water causes the tissues to shrink. Do NOT let it get dry or dirty. Keep soaking and get to a vet ASAP. 

When I arrived at the vet, this is what it actually looked like-- 

Horrible! She was in SO much pain!!! It was much bigger than I thought. 

I had to force her into a warm water dish to clean her off. And then I had to hold a gauze soaked with sugar water to her prolapsed for about an hour. 

Dr Echols, my second favorite vet, really struggled to get the tissue back in. He almost wasn't successful. 

Look at her eyes and beard. If she could scream, she probably would have. After about 10 minutes, the tissue went in. There was quite a lot of blood. 

Let me educate you for a minute--- 

Vets have two goals in treating prolapses:  1st, fix the prolapse and 2nd, find the cause & fix it. 

Dr Echols is pretty sure he feels retained eggs in her belly. That can easily be a cause for a beardie to push so hard in an attempt to get out eggs that she ends up pushing out her guts. :( 

Other common causes of prolapses in beardies are parasite infestations or impacted guts. Coccidia can overload the guts of beardies and, in an attempt to get the full feeling out, a beardie will push and strain until the guts fall out. 

It's the same effect with an impaction (constipation). Instinct makes a beardie push and push and push to empty its bowels-- even if it causes a prolapse. This is why it's so critical to test for parasites if your beardie strains to poop or has nasty poop. And to make sure they are not on a loose substrate (sand, walnut she'll, etc). 

Time is CRITICAL with a prolapse. The vent squeezes the intestines and cuts off the blood flow. A long prolapse will actually kill the intestional tissue and the dead tissue will have to be surgical removed and the bowel rebuilt. As you can guess, most beardies do NOT survive that process. A red prolapse still has some blood flow; a purple or grey prolapse is very bad. 

YOU MUST GET VET CARE ASAP!!!! 

Spyro came home and got some pain meds. For awhile, I wasn't even sure she'd make it through the night. I put her in a warm sick tank and let her sleep. She already looks a little better. 

Tomorrow morning she will go back to the vet for an ultrasound. We need to figure out if she does have eggs and then we'll decide what to do. Preventing a prolapse was one of the goals for having Skye's surgery last month.

I'll post more tomorrow. I'm pretty sure she'll make it through the night. I'm sure a good night's sleep in a soft & warm tank will help a lot. 

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.