Puff H. Bailey's "new blog" (belated)

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It has fairly recently come to my attention that it's something of a tradition around here for each beardie or family of beardies to have their own thread, so here goes nothing...

Brief review, as I've mentioned most of this in other posts -- Puff was about a year old when we got him from a local rescue around 4 1/2 years ago, and we all seemed to adjust well at first, but the following year was a bad one for all of us...

One story I have never told, because it is a very painful memory for me and one that I am not proud of :oops: :cry: , is that in the summer of 2014, I had what was probably a "nervous breakdown", and became convinced that I could no longer take care of either of our reptiles (we also have a corn snake), nor could I let my husband do it, and I railroaded him into taking them to the local animal control facility on a Friday evening after he came home from work. (No one can talk sense to me when I get like that, and all I could think of was that I had to get them out of here while they were still in good health.) Fortunately, Anchorage has an excellent animal care and control facility. They were there for about 40 hours and my heart was broken. On the following Sunday morning I came to my senses and realized that I was either going to have to give up on them forever, or let my husband help me take care of them. He has always been willing, but I'm a control freak and had been insisting on doing everything myself. So we had a hasty discussion and made plans for me to teach him how to do what I'd been doing and no longer seemed to have the energy to continue to do myself. Then we rushed back down to the animal control facility just as it opened for business in the morning, hoping they would still be there. They were, and we brought them back home. My husband, true to his word, has been doing most of the hard work to care for them ever since, and thanks to him, we still get to keep them and I still get most of the cuddles -- not fair to my husband but he doesn't seem to mind. They are ours for life now, and I have realized that we passed the point of no return when we brought them home. I don't think I had previously realized how much I loved them until that horrible 40 hours when I believed that I would never see them again, and without knowing if they would ever have another home even as good as the one they've had with us.

As I have also said elsewhere, Puff was diagnosed with adenovirus at the end of that year, and was pretty sick for a while, but eventually pulled through, although his appetite and activity level has never come quite back to what it was before that. For the most part, he's been doing fairly well for the last several years, and things have been better.

Latest escapade (just so this won't start out as a total downer):

Recent Saturday afternoon: Puff is pancaked out under the heat &UV lamps in his tank, and "Daddy" sits down at a nearby table with his laptop, all ready for a nice little session on the internet, and plugs in an external tabletop mouse because he prefers that to the hokey little touchpad on the laptop. All of a sudden, Puff goes nuts and starts doing his little dance, the one that usually means, "Get me out of here! I see something I want on the other side of the glass. :blob5: " So "Mommy" (that's me) takes him out and brings him over to the table, because I have my suspicions. Sure enough, he goes after the mouse cable. Probably thinks it's a worm. So Daddy decides to take advantage of the situation and grabs Puff's salad, hoping to use the old bait and switch trick to get the little wannabe carnivore to eat some veggies. Puff is having none of it -- Daddy slips greens in his mouth while he's busy chewing on bugs all the time, and Puff is wise to that. So I put him back in his tank, but Daddy isn't giving up yet, and brings the mouse over and dangles the cable on the other side of the glass, while trying to slip Puff a leaf on the inside of the tank with his other hand. Puff avoids the leaf, but succeeds in banging his nose on the glass trying to get at the mouse. At this point, poor hubby gets the order to cease and desist from his naggy wife, followed by the lecture that we do not want to use inedible, non-digestible objects to trick Puff into eating greens, as I do not want to have to replace a chewed up mouse cable, or worse yet, we definitely do not want Puff swallowing bits of it. It's ok to try to spoon feed him worms using collard greens for the spoon, but not this, and blah, blah, blah...

Bottom line, no permanent damage done to the mouse cable, the bearded dragon, or to Mommy and Daddy's marital relationship. Just another fairly typical Saturday afternoon at the Bailey's... :mrgreen:
 

sweetiepie9

BD.org Sicko
Retired Moderator
Gabriel is still puffing but I can't hear anything in his lungs, but he has no energy. He walks a little bit but not like before the RI where he could walk across the living room without any issues. He's 8 years old at least, if not older, as I rescued him in 2012 and he was about a year or so old, my vet couldn't tell either. So he's back to the vet next Wednesday and we'll see what she says. I can hear his heart beat so hopefully no more fluid around his heart. So I'll update when I see her.

I only have talk and text on my phone, no data, even though my son set it up on my WIFI I have at home, but only at home. But I'm getting good at texting and it's good that my son can reach me at any time, even if I'm at work.

So Eric, my son, got Safara, my granddaughter into ballet lessons, every sat for 1 3/4 hrs. She starts this Sat. She's also going to StrongStart at school, it's a pre-kindergarten thing at the school. So she told Eric she wanted to go to school like Leo (he started kindergarten this year) so they've started going to StrongStart before he thought she'd be ready. She's also going to start play therapy beg of Nov, to deal with her mom being out of the picture now. Leo will need therapy, too, but after school is done in the summer. I'll set that up next year. It takes a year to see a therapist of any sort thru the school. I'm glad I'm getting partial retirement benefits early, that pays for her therapy. I don't think she'll need it for long, but we'll see. My son and I want her seen for a while, just to make sure. At $107/wk, glad I have the $ now.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
So Puff continues to do well, and our new light fixture arrived a couple of weeks ago. It's a flimsy, cheap little thing -- just the bare essentials. It cost almost as much as it was worth to ship it to Alaska, but the important thing is that it seems to work, has a nice reflector, and with a new tube, shows a good output on the meter. It also has a detachable cord, and my husband says the connector is something fairly standard so that we should be able to replace the cord if necessary, without having to replace the whole unit. We've had bad luck with the Zoo Med terrarium hoods -- the built in power cords don't tolerate hardly any moving or twisting and tend to short out. Even though they look nice and slick (and cost more), they're poorly designed and poorly packaged. So we'll see how this little cheap thing holds up -- it might actually turn out to be a better option. I guess it isn't always true that you get what you pay for.

Anyway, Puff seems to like it. He spent the whole afternoon basking under it the first day that it arrived, then crawled over to the corner of his basking platform, snuggled down in the towels, and took a nap once he'd had enough.

We're settling back into our normal routine with 2-3 feedings of live bugs per week, salads available daily although they don't get touched much anymore, and of course daily baths and cuddles. Still working on a very messy shed, but it doesn't seem to be bothering him at all -- just looks a little shabby.

My husband and I talked about trying me with a "flip phone," but it's not an urgent need for now. I'm home most of the time, so the land line usually meets my needs.

I'm glad to hear that you managed to find yourself a little extra income. I could file for benefits next year when I turn 62 if I wanted to, but the monthly benefit will be larger if I can hold out till I'm older, so as long as my husband is still working and we can still live on his salary, I figure it will be better to wait. I have to check in with the advisor for my health insurance again because "open enrollment" starts in November and we have to redo the whole thing for next year. She says she can help me run the numbers for social security benefits too and that we should, just to get an idea of what the best options are. I just want for us to have enough to live on when we need it the most -- not expecting to ever be "rich." I like to think that I know how to pinch a penny when I need to, but it's probably a good thing we never had kids -- couldn't afford them. Puff has cost us enough as is in food and medical bills these last few months. Solid 24 karat Golden Dragon :roll: But he's worth it, and it's not his fault he got sick, so we just do the best we can for him.

Hopefully your grandkids can get the help they need to recover from whatever trauma they got from their mother. Pre-school and play therapy both sound like good ideas for them.
 

sweetiepie9

BD.org Sicko
Retired Moderator
Safara starts counselling on Nov 8, my mom paid for the 1st 2 weeks. So that helps. And Leo will start when Safara is done but probably next summer as he's in school and seems to be alot. He's there from 8:30a to 2:30p. As for their mom, she called Healther, her mom, and got her to take the kids to the mall so she could see them. They both went behind my son's back and he gave Heather hell when he found out. He's fully responsible for those children. The mom doesn't help financially at all, even though Eric lives on just over $900/m. His partner Traci works p/t and pays for the food. It's been a rough 1 1/2 yrs for him. The mom had weekends last fall, court ordered. After 4 weekends she stopped picking them up. And then to see them on a random weekend and not show up again, it's 3 weekends now. So yes, the kids are confused. I can't wrap my head around it, so how can they? I think this play therapy will help them both. The counsellor is really sweet and smart.

I'm so glad Puff is doing so well, keep up the good work! See what your advisor says about Soc Sec. I'm going for my survivor's pension Nov/2020, so close now. I apply for the other 3 pensions 6 mo before I retire. And I have to start savings, so once I get my regular income back, I can start putting $ away. I'm going to owe more on income tax because my pension is going to add more to my income. It's a drag but I need that extra. It's been rough on 25% lower income for the last 4 months. But we all got through. I just have to find the strength I had yesterday.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
So time slips away, and it's getting harder and harder for me to keep up with anything anymore. Someone mentioned that they'd noticed my absence around here -- I just don't seem to find the energy to read and post messages like I used to in the last year or two. But I'm still lurking around on the few threads I've been following...

As for Puff, his weight has been dropping a little in the last couple of weeks, down to 509 grams from around 530. Not time to panic yet, but my husband and I had the discussion about if and when it will be time to check in with the vet. The iron injections seemed to help last time, so if he's headed into another adenovirus flare up and another bout with anemia, maybe it will help again. On the other hand, we don't want to stress him out by hauling him to the vet for every little thing (not to mention the stress on our financial situation), so in the meantime we are planning to feed him some extra bugs this week and see what happens. We also realize that the total weight includes things that are just passing through (food, water, and poop) so we try to minimize the variation we get from that by weighing him at the same time every week after his bath (and hopefully a poop in the water and down the drain) and before his big meal for the day.

Meanwhile, the passing of two beloved beardies (Sweetiepie9's Gabriel and Gormagon's Peaches) has reminded me to cherish every minute with Puff, because you just never know how long they're going to be with you. And Puff will probably be the last one we will ever have, due to the fact the we are not likely to have sufficient time, energy, and resources to care adequately for any more of them in the future. That makes me sad to think about, but I try not to let it spoil our enjoyment of the here and now.

My husband and I are both in the process of dealing with the hassles of "open enrollment" for next year's health insurance, although I've come to regard professional health care as a luxury that I can't afford -- it's the only way that I can stay even halfway sane. But I have an appointment next week with the advisor to go through the yearly hassle I have to do for my "Obamacare", if for no other reason than to protect us from the tax penalty. :roll:

So Puff just gave me a big black beard and a head bob or two, and I thought maybe he was going hormonal, since he missed mating season this last spring because he was too sick, but then he dropped a big sloppy poop right on his basking platform, and now he's sitting in it and giving me "The Look" so I guess it's time to go clean up the mess...
 

sweetiepie9

BD.org Sicko
Retired Moderator
Yes, love him as much as you can because you never go. I was so blessed to get all that extra time with Gabriel, but I sure miss him. I love Grr already but she will never replace Gabriel. I can still feel his beard on my left cheek that's what he always did when he snuggled with me :love5:

I can understand you not wanting another dragon, they do take alot of physical work. So keep him close.

As for the annual renewal of insurance, I have 2, national healthy that pay for docs, hospitals, specialists and extended health that covers prescriptions, ambulances.

So the only think I have to review is my extended health at work, which I leave as is every year. When I retire in 2000, I'll be put on the retirement extended health, don't pay for it, but only get 80% back on everything. So my costs will go up, but being on 3 less pills for diabetes, we'll see how I do when I see my specialist in Feb.

I'm glad Puff is doing well, they always lose weight in the winter, and plump up again in the spring.

I had a big scare yesterday, I had the balcony door open because it got warm yesterday afternoon. I put Cierra out, went to check on something, came back & she'd hidden. I didn't realize she'd actually climbed the big tank top I use to cover the doorway and I found her last night out on the balcony and she was almost frozen. Thanks god I found her when I did, I never realized she'd climbed the mesh. She was so cold, I put her against my skin, with a heating pad on low on her back & covered by a fleece blanket and held her until everything was warm. The put her to bed all wrapped up. She's up this morning, looking and acting perfectly normal, as if nothing happened. I have more grey hair as a result. No more opening the door when it's going to be cold at night. She out was in 32F weather from early afternoon until 9p last night when I finally found her.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
Ok, I wanted to see if that would work after what happened earlier this morning when I was trying to post something on another thread. I got an "access denied" message, tried to follow instructions to send a message to the administrator, but it took me into this "wizard" to set up an account before I could even send the message. Apparently I didn't know what I was doing, because after I finished writing the message it wouldn't send. I tried to save it in "drafts" but it went to Never-never Land, and so did the original message I was trying to post, apparently. :banghead: All I can figure is that the system must have detected some sequence of characters in my message that looked like something questionable, either X-rated or spam, but it seems to be working ok now (I can preview and it doesn't blow up.)

(We were only talking about beardie poop, typical stuff around here, and I wasn't using any unusually naughty words to refer to such things.) :?

As a moderator, any suggestions or ideas, Deb? I'm fine to just let it go and chalk it up as a glitch, since it looks like at least I haven't been blacklisted by the entire website...

Really, they do an excellent job keeping this site up and running. This sort of thing rarely happens, in my experience. I said so in my message too, but I don't think it got through, so you can tell them so from me if possible. :)
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
So on to the latest news since I've been out of the loop for several weeks -- I seem to have that Alaskan thing where we go into "brumation" off and on this time of year, and can't make ourselves do anything but sleep and/or goof off, or at least that's how it goes for me. Catch up time until the next brumation cycle -- because I never know how long it's going to last before the next time my "get up and go" (what little I have) will have "got up and went." :sleepy2: :shock: :blob5: :| :sleepy2:

So Puff's weight is down below 450 grams now, and he saw the vet early this month. His blood tests turned out not too bad this time -- not severely anemic, although the vet suspected that some dehydration may have made it look higher than it really was. The rest of his blood work was fairly normal -- his white count wasn't high enough to suspect any serious infection, and his uric acid levels are all over the map, nothing really unusual for him. He got injected with some fluids and some more iron and B12 (which won't hurt if it doesn't help), and has a follow up appointment for a recheck after Christmas. We apparently have a chicken-and-the-egg thing going with the shedding and the hydration -- having such a hard time shedding because he tends to get dehydrated, or having such a hard time staying hydrated because he's shedding (trying to secrete fluid under his skin to get it off).

We do everything we can (short of an IV) to keep him hydrated -- baths every day, dribble water on his nose (sometimes he drinks it) and serve his veggies with lots of water (little butternut squash cubes soak it up like a sponge).

And I'm afraid I've failed to sufficiently resist the temptation to "help" him with his shedding. I think he's kind of mad at me, but we've finally got most of it off, even that part on his tail that I was concerned about. About all that's left is the anterior part of his tail and the very tip, and a few other odd little scales and patches, but he no longer looks like someone splashed bleach all over him the way he did a couple of weeks ago.

There are little bits of beardie skin all over the house, even though he doesn't have the run of the house. :? We try to keep both of our eyes and both of our hands on him when he's out of his tank.

We also survived another one of Alaska's famous earthquakes -- this one was a magnitude 7 centered less than 10 miles from Anchorage, and it had to be the scariest one I've ever lived through (and that's saying a lot, because I've lived in earthquake country all my life, and this wasn't my first one). It hit right before I was about to turn the heat lamps on, and it threw things off shelves and all over the floor. It must have woke Puff up and frightened him, but it took me a while to wade through all the books and other things that were all over the floor and get to his tank. Fortunately there was no damage to the tank -- it's glass, but heavy tempered glass designed to hold 125 gallons of water as an aquarium. Our power was out all day, so I took my own advice about how to keep a beardie warm with mammalian body heat during a power outage, and my husband and I took turns cuddling him and cleaning up the mess all day until the power came back on later in the evening. He tolerated it well and slept through most of it since it was pretty dark. We waited to feed him until the power came back on so we could be reasonably sure he'd be warm enough to digest.

As far as we can tell, there was no severe structural damage to our home, and only a few things got broken, although there was some damage to roads and other things around the area. State offices and schools were closed for several days until they could make sure the buildings were safe, and my husband got a 4 day weekend out of the deal, with a mess to clean up when he went back to work the following day. They lost some monitors and computer equipment, but things are pretty much back to normal. I was too scared to remember for sure, but I was sitting here with the computer when it started, and I may have saved our monitor from getting broken by holding onto it when it looked like it was going to fall on the floor or get flung across the room.

Then there were the aftershocks, but for the most part things are getting back to normal although we were all pretty "shook up" (pun intended).

And we're finally getting snowed on too, which is expected this time of year. The folks that like to ski are happy about it, but we were out of live bugs and my husband had to shovel the car out from under it before he could go to the pet store for some more...

I would love to always have a beardie if I had the stamina and the emotional stability to consistently care for him (or her), but the problem is that a beardie, or any other live critter, for that matter, needs to be taken care of every day whether I'm up to it or not, and more often than not my poor husband gets stuck with the hard work while I get the cuddles, which is not fair to him. Also, there's a problem with keeping a reliable supply of fresh greens and live bugs...

In fact, I'm starting to wonder if some of the suppliers use Alaska as a dumping ground for their inferior merchandise. After all, who in their right mind would live in Alaska and try to keep a bearded dragon, or any other such exothermic creature who needs to stay warm and who needs to eat fresh greens and live bugs? Crazy, right?

Right. They're here. Lizards and turtles and snakes, and plenty of them. I'm not the only Alaskan nutcase who loves reptiles. :wink:

Health insurance is a very sore subject with me right now -- it's destroying my mental health. So could they just snailmail me the stupid bill already, and we'll multiply the silly little premium by x12, write a check to pay it off for the whole year, snailmail it back and be done with it, since not even my tech-savvy husband can make any sense out of their website. The whole thing was well intentioned, but the politicians made a mess of it, and then the computer geeks who designed the websites and software made an even bigger mess of the implementation. :banghead: Ooh -- don't get me started. I really shouldn't badmouth computer geeks. I'm married to one, and he probably could have done a better job designing the websites than whoever the government hired, even though they probably had PhDs and he's only got a couple of AA degrees and a bunch of industry certs, and I have to suppose gets paid way less than the government guys for doing the same sort of work, maybe just on a smaller scale. :roll:

Our vet also said that it's normal for beardies to lose some weight in the fall, but I'm afraid not this much -- 80 grams in no more than 2 months? Have any of your beardies typically lost and gained that much through the seasons and still been healthy? We don't know what's normal for Puff, because this is the first year that we've been monitoring his weight on a weekly basis. Maybe this is how it happened this last year when we weren't looking, and I don't want to get blindsided by that again -- I want to avoid having him end up emaciated and anemic by next spring the way he was this last year if at all possible. Both of our vets (both good ones) seem to agree that it's hard to tell if this is a fall thing or an adenovirus thing. Nothing wrong with his appetite -- he's eating lots and lots of bugs and even some veggies with coaxing, but not mortally hungry enough to go for greens all by himself yet, and I'm no longer sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

I'm glad you found Cierra before she froze to death, but I realize that was over a month ago now so I hope she's suffered no long term effects. It's finally getting colder here too after an unseasonably warm fall, well below freezing outside and trying to keep the thermostat adjusted to compensate -- gas bills going up. Puff doesn't go anywhere near the outdoors -- always in his tank under the heat lamps whenever we open one of the outside doors. The blast of cold air makes the thermostat freak out and the heater work overtime, but Puff stays warm and comfortable whenever we can get away with it. It's rare that we take him outside even in the summer, because there are usually so few days here that are warm enough for a beardie.

-- And I've rambled on long enough. One bad thing about not posting for too long -- it makes for really bad TLDRs when I finally do. :oops:

Hope you and your family (both humans and reptiles) are getting ready for a nice Christmas. :)
 

Gormagon

Extreme Poster
Yup, I still miss My Peaches but, life continues at feverish pace. I got me a baby Dragon about 2 1/2 weeks ago and, let me say this, he is mighty fun to find in that HUGE viv, lol!!! He has grown in size from 5 1/2 " to a whopping 7". He's still to skittish to get a weight or a measurement, he is a work in progress. We named him Charlie. He's eating well and, all is going according to plan (so far)!!!
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
Congratulations for the new addition to your family, Gormagon. If all goes well, he'll grow into the vivarium really fast, and probably when you're not looking too. I've never raised a little one, although I understand it can be quite a project -- that's why I wanted to start with an adult for my first (and now maybe only) attempt. However, lately I'm beginning to wonder if an adult with adenovirus might turn out to be getting just as hectic as a baby somewhere along here pretty soon, if it hasn't already...

I know that Charlie won't be able to "replace" Peaches, because they're all unique and special, but he may be able to help you heal the bearded dragon shaped hole in your heart, and I know you'll take good care of him, so it probably won't take him too long to get over his skittishness and learn to trust his new human slave. :)
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
Hello everyone. It’s been a while, and I’ve more or less been to hell and back. I was hospitalized here in Anchorage and then got sent to Juneau – long story. I’m home now, and things are slowly getting back to “normal” (whatever that is).

My husband took very good care of Puff while I was gone, and he’s doing very well. His weight seems to be holding at just under 450 grams – a little on the thin side, but he seems fine otherwise. Had a very good checkup at the vet, and even the vet techs commented on how much better he seemed. Fought like a little tiger when they tried to look in his mouth, but the vet said that’s what he likes to see because it means the critter is healthy – it’s when they just lay there and put up with it that he worries that there’s something seriously wrong.

“Daddy” also splurged and got him some hornworms for a belated Christmas present. I’m told that he scarfed them up with much enthusiasm. Can’t do that too often because they’re not cheap, but once in a while. Also a little package of freeze dried mealworms – beardie “junk food.” I told my husband they’re not nutritious but the vet said a few of them as a treat won’t hurt as long as we don’t make a meal out of them – mostly chitin and starch, and he compared them to “potato chips.” :wink:
 

sweetiepie9

BD.org Sicko
Retired Moderator
I'm sorry to hear you had to be hospitalized, but I'm glad to hear that you're home again. I'm also glad to hear your hubby is a stand up guy and took great care of Puff :D It's great to hear that he's doing so well, after the scares you've had.

I'm updating on my thread if you want to see some pictures. Alot has happened since Oct but even more in the last month.

I hope you're able to stay well, I know it's a real struggle, I'm having the same one right now.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
Hi folks –

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to post anything on here, and we’ve got some good news and some bad news, but mostly good…

Puff developed a lump in his wrist, so off to the vet to figure out what it was. First time they’ve ever been able to culture anything identifiable out of any of these little lumps and infections and whatever-they-are that he tends to get, and it turns out to be Staph aureus. :shock: :banghead: So we just finished a rather grueling course of antibiotic injections :( , and back for a recheck along with the last of the injections. The lump is still there, and this time it had halfway filled up again with a different kind of goop. Another needle aspiration for cytology studies – cancer scare. That’s the bad news.

The good news is our vet called with the results to let us know that it looks like an old injury that was healing but had become inflamed – no evidence of malignancy -- so apparently, sometime in the last several months, he must have managed to bang his wrist on something in his tank when we weren’t looking. :? His little pinkie finger that had the infection in the bone (a while back) is also now dislocated, and it’s on that same hand, so I’m not sure if that’s related to the same injury. I’m guessing that he may have snagged his claw on something on a different occasion. We try to prevent such things, but sometimes Murphy’s Law gets the best of us.

BTW, my husband doesn’t believe in Murphy’s Law, but he lives by it. So does Puff, most of the time.

So we’re advised to be more careful about keeping everything around him very clean – we try our best, but we don’t always succeed, what with my limited energy and my husband’s limited time.

His weight is back up above 500 grams now, and his appetite and activity levels are slowing down, possibly because he’s approaching his more comfortable healthy weight. However, he’s also been napping in his hide for part of the day, and my husband and I were talking about the possibility that we may have accidentally tricked his biological clock into thinking it’s fall instead of spring. When I was hospitalized and my husband was taking care of him, he had to turn the lights on an hour earlier in the morning so he could get to work on time, and now that I’m back, I’m turning them on an hour later because my husband has to feed him bugs when he gets home. Then they’re on late at night so Puff has a couple of hours to digest before we all go to bed. It amounts to a 14 hour artificial photoperiod year round, reduced from 15 hours when I was gone – Long day for him, so maybe he needs a nap in the middle of the day. Ideally I’d want a 12 hour heat and UV lamp day for him, but that’s not possible right now given our circumstances and my husband’s work schedule. It’s also possible that he just doesn’t feel very good with everything that’s been going on, but he’s still eating a few bugs every day and basking under his heat lamps like he’s supposed to after his meals.

BTW, Puff’s biological clock is pretty weirded out anyway. He once went hormonal in the middle of the winter. We had a horny beardie for Christmas that year. :blob8: :mrgreen:

He’s been liking his butternut squash lately too, and my husband thinks that’s probably the best thing we have going for us in terms of keeping him hydrated. If we keep them in a small puddle of water, the little squash cubes soak up the water like a sponge. My husband hand feeds it to him because he rarely eats it out of his dish. Gets pretty messy, since the more water it has in it, the mushier it gets. The other day I peeled a little bit of dried squash (from the night before) off of his face during his good morning cuddle and he slurped it right up, but seemed to have a little trouble trying to chew it because it was dried.

It’s been just one thing after another with this little beardie. He got kind of a raw deal from life, so the last time we talked with the vet, we all agreed that the goal here is not to keep him alive as long as possible, but to make whatever time he has left as pleasant for him as we can, and keep him from suffering if we can possibly get away with it. For now he does not appear to be in any pain – I can feel the lump in his wrist and he doesn’t freak out when I touch it, and it seems to be staying smaller since the last treatment.

My husband is going to have some time off next week and then again the week of Memorial day, and we’re to make a follow up appointment about a month from now, but in the meantime we plan to keep him at home and let him de-stress from all the medical procedures for a while, not to mention a little economic recovery on our part. Solid 24-karat Golden Dragon again this past few months, but nothing compared to the medical bills that I’ve been racking up myself. I never thought I’d say this, but: Thank God for Obamacare. :roll:

We are lucky to have two excellent reptile vets, and I suppose I am lucky to have found some pretty decent health care providers for myself as well.

Hope everyone had a nice Easter. We got a snow dump. People like a white Christmas, but sometimes in Alaska, we get a white Easter too. Some people like to have Easter egg hunts in the snow. We make the best of it, and this time of year it will probably melt off fast. They’re predicting nice weather for this next weekend, but you really can’t predict the weather in Anchorage, and the local meteorologists who think they can have had some explaining to do lately. :wink:

05-10-2019 This TLDR sat around on my local hard drive for several weeks and I’m finally getting around to posting it. Meanwhile, Puff is still doing well – eating a little less and still napping in the middle of the day, but his weight is holding steady at just over 500 grams, and what’s left of the little lump in his wrist is still staying small. I hope the rest of you are still having a nice spring. We’re getting rained on now but at least it’s not snow! :)
 

sweetiepie9

BD.org Sicko
Retired Moderator
Well I moved into an apartment down the hall from my son, his girlfriend and his 2 kids. So my grandkids are down the hall from me and I see them every day. The move really went well, but I did too much work and my back suffered but now I'm starting to feel better, 2 weeks later. I transported the 5 dragons in shopping bags, towels underneath, then wrapped them with their fleece blankets. The tanks and furniture were the first things put up and I kept them sleeping for a few days while I set up the lights. Castiel sleeps in May anyway, so he was already starting to brumate when I put him in his bag and he's still sleeping in his tank. I somehow messed up 3 UVB lights, but have replaced 2, so have 4 good lights. I ordered another one and when it comes in next week, I'll set it up and then wake up Castiel for a good long soak and then he can go back to sleep. Nathaniel is due to brumate in July, Cierra in August. They've done this every since I got them, my first EVER dragons to sleep in the summer! Nathaniel and Cierra will be 6 yrs old in Dec. Freay will be 2 in September and Grrl, we figure, is about 7.

Wow, poor Puff has been through alot, and you, too!, it's amazing how they can injure themselves while just being in their tanks. I'm glad you caught it early and got it gone. He is probably a bit dehydrated, so I have a recipe for pedialyte baths: 1 quart hot water, 2 tbsp sugar 1/2 tsp salt. Mix up well, then put in bath & add cool water. Let Puff soak for 20 min and he can drink this, too. Give him a couple a week for a few weeks, see how he feels.

I also highly recommend you get Serrepeptase for him too. It's a mild painkiller but good anti-inflammatory for dragons. It's made of an enzyme in the silkworm and it really works. I've been giving it to Freya and Cierra after egg laying and it's really helped them get more energetic.

Traci has alot of products on her site, you should check it out. It looks expensive, but you don't use much and lasts a long time. She has a large Benebac that is a great probiotic, also Reptophilous that she made herself and that works great. My Castiel gets the runs from it, so I switched to a powder that you mix in water. It's worked great, too. And it's on her site, I just can't remember the name.

I changed my liquid calcium to calciblast that Tracie sells on her site, too. I've been using it for awhile and it's done wonders for my girls during egg laying time. They are all 3 healthy and hydrated, even after 2 clutches each. So that's another product I'd recommend for Puff.

I'm glad he's got his weight back, too. Nathaniel was only 410g when he woke up from brumation in the fall and I've been stuffing his face with worms every since, so he's got a decent belly again. I also found out that my crew LOVE arugula, they jump right into the dish. My boys have been hand fed, both worms and greens. Since arugula, I put it on top of their worms and they eat it will digging for the worms LOL Never been able to do that for years. I can just fill up their dishes now and it will all be gone by the time I get home from work. So that was a positive.

The move exhausted me, haven't been to work in 3 weeks but going in today for 3 hours, then start 4 hours a day next week, in 3 weeks full time. My son drives me 1/2 way to work so travel is much easier in the am. At night I take the regular route home which takes 1 1/2 hrs, about. But I love my new space. It's a 750 sq ft 1 bedroom apartment. My living room is 20' long by 14' wide, so the dragons are side by side along the long wall at the back of the living room. They fit perfectly! So that was good planning. There is still alot to unpack, my son is helping me tomorrow. Time for walking Bella. I'll post pics soon on my thread.

I'm so glad you're home. I have a way to reduce his hours under his lights. Now that you're home, put his lights on later, so it's like 7 hours before hubby feeds him, then he has 3 hours to digest his food. My kids are morning dragons because of my hours at work, I work aft,early eve. So their lights go on at 7a, so have time to do what's needed after I walk my dog. I leave for work at 10:30 now that my son is driving me for awhile and start working at noon to 8p, then home by 9:30. He can't meet me at night because he's alone with the kids, his girlfriend (future wife) works until 9:30p. So I just do the whole trip home in pm. I just LOVE my new space. Have pictures, so I'll try to get them posted asap.
 

SHBailey

Gray-bearded Member
Original Poster
So here it is June already… :shock:

Your new 750 square foot 1 bedroom apartment is bigger than our 625 square foot 2 bedroom house, Deb, but we all manage to fit our beardies in. Puff’s tank is along one of the walls in the living room, across from the heater so it’s more or less the warmest place in the house for him.

Anyway, I’m glad to hear you like your new place, and it’s good that you’re closer to your family. I’d tell you to take it easy but I don’t know how anyone can do that when moving. I’ve been doing a little spring cleaning myself -- actually, more like post-earthquake rearranging of things that never should have been stacked up as high as they were in the first place – this is Alaska – what was I thinking :oops:, and speaking of backaches, me too. I don’t think I did any permanent damage though – just overused some muscles that I almost forgot I even had.

Yes, we do everything we can to help Puff keep hydrated, including the daily soaks in warm water, dribbling the water on his nose with an eyedropper while he’s in the bath – sometimes he drinks, and misting his veggies often so he gets as much moisture as possible if and when he eats them, which admittedly isn’t very often these days – he’s not interested in veggies if he can get bugs. Back to normal. :roll:

Puff is also around 7 years old, assuming that he was about a year old when we got him, but like Grrl, we don’t know for sure. If he’s getting any ideas about brumating for the summer like some of your beardies do, we’ll be weighing him weekly and encouraging him to eat more if he starts losing weight again. I’d just as soon forget the whole thing if it’s all the same to him – I’d worry too much. So far, he’s just eating a little less, pooping a little less (what doesn’t go in doesn’t come out), and napping most of the day, so if he doesn’t get any more serious about it than that, no problem.

We tried putting worms in Puff’s salad to get him to eat his greens, but he was very good at picking out the worms without getting any of the greens. “Daddy” can get him to eat a few bites of greens by hand feeding him and by using a leaf as a “spoon” with a roach or some squash on it. He does seem to like butternut squash. The only time he’ll eat greens all by himself is when he’s mortally hungry because he’s lost all kinds of weight – went through that last spring when we were happy at first that he was eating his greens all of a sudden, but it turned out to be too good to be true. :(

Puff had a good checkup at the vet this last week. :) He still has a small lump on his wrist and maybe always will, but it’s staying small. And we got to listen to his heart with an ultrasound device and the vet says it sounds healthy. Also got to hold him for a nail trim with a little device that files them down – safer than the clippers but still tickles, so he was a little wiggly for that, but at least did not completely throw a fit. We are lucky to have two very good reptile vets.

Spring is finally in progress around here after that little setback at Easter time. Rain instead of snow, with a few nice sunny days (or hours or minutes) sprinkled in between. We have a yard full of dandelions for Puff as well as grass that grows really fast with all the extra daylight and needs to be mowed. My husband had this last week off and had some time to get a few things done, even tried planting some collard and mustard greens and some endive. It’s an experiment... :?
 
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I miss you so much, Amaris 💔
What is a quick way to warm up a cold beardie? His heating element went out overnight and now he's very cold.
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Clapton is acclimating okay I think. He's quick as lightning so I'm not sure how much I should bring him out of his house yet. He's not at all interested in his salad though. I wonder if I should change what I'm giving him. Least he's eating his crickets.

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Buy calcium powder
Material to raise surface for basking spot
Scenery decals for back of tank

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