I am seriously in tears right now!!!!

I found out my neighbor has a bearded dragon as well through a serious of random encounters. Well I asked to see the dragon today and the person(Who shall remain nameless) took me inside, I have NEVER been so appalled.. The dragon was in a small fish tank, could barely move his whole body around! He was on CAT LITTER. It looked like he had a burn but I am not 100% on what they look like the top of his head was blackish with peeling skin. They had a bulb for uvb lighting(tho the brand I am not too sure on) and a heat rock for heat! I am honestly surprised this guy lived as long as he had! She said shes had him for about 4 years. I seriously left in tears, I have contacted the humane society and the landlord here but I am not sure what else I can do. I've ordered another dragon and my boyfriend said only one more =( and I dont have the necessary funds nor a car at the moment to get him to a vet that I am sure he desperately needs. My heart is seriously breaking guys.. I am going to talk to my boyfriend when he gets home from work and see if I can get the person to surrender her dragon to me until we can find a new home for him. but omg i am so sad. I just needed to vent ... I've never seen anything so bad!

That is terrible!!!

Omgosh! I hope you can figure something out.. What did the humane society have to say? I can't imagine seeing something like that :x. I'm not one to bite my tongue so I can only imagine how that would have went..

Did you try talking / educating the owner about better care?

Thats so sad You should print out several care sheets and give it to them. And try to show them the proper care. Poor thing

The humane society is in the next town but they said they have been alerted to this before. I told her that she was doing it wrong and she just said he had been living that way since she got him with no problems.

UPDATE At 4 this afternoon(so 2 hours ago) my bf got home and told me we couldnt leave him in that situation. So we called the cops who sent over someone to mediate. She ended up giving the baby to us at the request of an officer.He isnt healthy I'd be surprised if he lived through the week! His belly looks caved in(Maybe I am just used to Boba Fett who has a huge belly <<Proof) Poor baby. I will try to get a pic of him up here as soon as I can, I just dont want to stress him out with a photo shoot lol. I now have him in a 20 gallon tank(which is small but it will work til i can get into town to get another one) We have him with a repti sun 10.0 and a 100 watt clear bulb. The temp in his cage is around 110. I put some collar greens with some mustard greens in a dish. He ate 6 crickets when we got him. Now we are just letting him rest. Any suggestions on getting him better? Tomorrow he has a vet appointment~The vet in town here isnt really a reptile vet but they said theyd give it a shot and hopefully that will be enough until we go down to Lacey in August.

Does he look underweight/starved? If so, don't feed him too much because his stomach isn't used to digesting food and if fed too much he will vomit.

Moved from General to Beardie Rescue]

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Oh my word! The lady honestly thought her beardie was just fine?!?! I'm glad you did the right thing and luckily she willingly surrendered him to you.

Even if he doesn't survive for long, at least he'll know what a good home is/should be.

Have you figured out what is going on with his head? Was it a burn or retained shed? If it's a burn, on a pinch, you can apply Neosporin on his head. Just be careful not to get it in his eyes. If it's from retained shed, cocoa butter lotion would slowly lift it off.

Does he look like he has MBD? Do you have any liquid calcium on hand?

zandi202":1soo4nh2 said:

Does he look underweight/starved? If so, don't feed him too much because his stomach isn't used to digesting food and if fed too much he will vomit.

Click to expand...

And may cause his stomach to rupture from over expanding.

Good for you! Poor baby I hope he gets better. I don't understand how people could get a pet and not know how to properly take care of them how they should be. Just makes me so upset and sad for the poor pets.
Glad he is in the right care now. Please keep us updated on his health.

~Eddie

Try this...

Critical Care
Critical Care is a premium recovery food which can be given to reptiles that are unable to eat their normal diet due to stress, illness, surgery, or poor nutritional status.This specially formulated product contains all the essential nutrients of a complete herbivore (plant) diet.

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http://www.beautifuldragons.com/Criticalcare.html

I'm so glad you got him! In that picture, he looks a bit like my girl did when I first got her. I just wanted to add a few things to what everyone else has told you. You should try to keep the heat a bit lower during the day (especially if he didn't have proper heat with your neighbor, a huge change in temperature can shock him; for a healthy adult beardie I would aim for a basking temp of 100-105F, so you'll probably want to aim for 100F or so, and make sure he has a cool side of about 75-80F), and I would try to keep it around 80F at night. Also, I would give him a warm bath if you haven't because he's probably really dehydrated. And definitely take it slow with the protein (again, too much can shock his body). I'm pretty sure it's okay to let him eat as much salad as he wants though, so you can see if he's interested in salad. For feeders, I think Tracie (drache613) told me to start with about 10 feeders a day to see how well my girl's urates were turning out. I would definitely pm her and ask her what she'd recommend.

I'm not sure what the vet will be able to do for him if they don't do exotics, but if you don't have a gram scale, it's probably a good idea to ask them to weigh him for you!

Hope that helps! Good luck at the vet's tomorrow!

Well he didnt make it through the night. He passed away around 6 this morning(I was awake he started making this odd gasping noise and then he just put his head down and closed his eyes) pretty traumatized right now. We are getting him cremated and were going to keep his ashes to show he was loved even if it wasnt too long..

I'm so sorry that this happened, but at least he was in a good home for the last little bit.

I'm so sorry