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:
 

SHBailey

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Likewise. I posted a message on one of her threads a while back but didn't get a response. She's got so many beardies that maybe she doesn't have time anymore? :?

So do you know how many other mods there are around here nowadays and who they are?

Puff already crawled in his hide this morning. Another lazy day. It's cloudy and rainy and he can see that because his tank is near the largest window in the house, but he's been known to nap on sunny days too.

BTW, my husband saw your picture of your beardie and thought he was on a barbecue grill. I pointed out the little logo in the bottom corner and told him that it was a vintage Atari 2600 (if I remember correctly). :lol:
 

CooperDragon

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The active mods at the moment are Tracie, Brandon, and I.

Yes the footer image is Dundee. He used to like to crawl on the Atari which was sitting on the floor under a shelf underneath a table creating a more secure/enclosed space than it appeared to be in the photo. I think he felt safe there and could still watch the room pretty well.
 

SHBailey

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Thanks. :) It's nice to know who they are nowadays.

If you ever still play games with your Atari, as I recall they used to get warm on top. I had one too, long ago and far way in another place and another time and another life. :wink: It would be a nice warm place for a beardie to hang out.

So no one is awake but me yet this morning. "Daddy" works hard during the week and sleeps in on weekends. Puff is about due for lights on and veggies in his tank (not like he ever eats them, but we keep them in there just in case :roll: and try to hand feed them to him along with his bugs) but my husband is doing all the hard work for Puff these days -- on top of recurrent episodes of depression, I'm now limping around the 625 square foot house with a messed up knee, :( and I don't feel safe taking the beardie out of the tank if my husband isn't there to help in case I fall or whatever. And it's a long way from the tank to the computer to the kitchen (all in the same room, mind you) when both legs aren't functioning properly. So I sit in my chair and Daddy brings Puff to me for at least one daily cuddle between his bath and his meal, but Puff often gets wiggly and impatient because he knows what's coming next, and he'd rather eat than cuddle. He tolerates cuddles :| but he loves hornworms :blob8:

(I'm only 63, and I was hoping that my body wouldn't start falling apart quite so soon. :banghead: Puff is about 8 years old now, probably around the same age as me in "beardie years" and in spite of the adenovirus, he's in better shape than I am. At least he can get up and walk when he wants to.)

Daddy splurged on some hornworms at the pet store yesterday while hopefully wearing his mask and staying as far away from everyone else as he could. They were out of roaches so we had to settle for a bunch of messy crickets instead, and he wanted to get him some hornworms for the holiday. Of course, Puff doesn't know one holiday from another but any day he gets hornworms is worth celebrating as far as he's concerned. :blob5: :blob8:

Another lazy Saturday at the Baileys, except for the usual vitamin supplements besides calcium and weigh-in for Puff -- we're not going to get blindsided by another episode of adenovirus related weight loss if we can possibly avoid it.

TLDR :oops:
 

SHBailey

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MufasasMomMakayla":1t59xv5r said:
Glad Puff is doing good! Hope you’re feeling a little better.

Hiya... Glad to hear from you. How are you and your beardie(s) doing?

My knee is better -- I still feel it but at least I can walk on it without serious pain. I have an appointment for physical therapy later this month, so we'll see how that goes.

Puff, in the meantime, has apparently lost a claw from his little pinkie finger. My husband noticed it was bleeding in his bath yesterday afternoon. We don't know exactly when or how it happened -- he must have snagged it on something when we weren't looking, and it had probably happened just before his bath because it looked like a fresh injury. Fortunately the bleeding stopped fairly quickly and we put him back in his tank with white paper towels under him. He didn't bleed much more after that except for one little spot. I dabbed a little betadine on it and it didn't seem to be bothering him too much -- he can walk with it.

That particular little finger is dislocated and I have been worried that it may eventually have to be amputated, but I'm hoping not. At the least it was probably in a pretty fragile state. I called the vet this morning and left a message. He seems fine this morning and his little finger looks a little better, no more bleeding but what looks like a little hole in the middle where the claw is supposed to be. My guess, until I hear from the vet, is that the biggest problem is going to be preventing infection. I'm hoping we can treat it at home because they're still doing curbside drop off at the vet in order to keep the humans from passing the infamous coronavirus around.

Just when we thought Puff was doing pretty well, all things considered, and then this happens. :(
 

SHBailey

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So the vet said she didn't need to see hm and advised us to keep doing what we're doing and just try to watch for and prevent infection. She said that reptiles sometimes tear their claws off and sometimes they grow back and sometimes not, depending on how much of it is gone. Puff seems to be doing alright and it now looks as if some of the claw is still there and may grow back, although I'm in no great hurry to see it grow back because I have a feeling that the little dislocated finger would probably be better off without it. It's possible that it may have broken down to the quick, hence the bleeding, but it seems fine since the bleeding stopped.

Puff has also been going in his hide fairly early in the morning, often only an hour or two after lights on, and often staying there until he gets his bath in the evening and then his daily meal, but he still eats well most of the time and usually basks for a while after his meal, so not trying really seriously to brumate, although maybe he would if we'd let him -- not going to risk it. His weight is stable lately at around 500 grams.

He often goes in with his back turned to the rest of the room, and then later in the day he turns around and looks out into the room but stays in his hide half asleep. :|

He did the same thing last June -- spent most of every day napping in his hide. I still think he's got his biological clock (such as it is) set for the southern hemisphere. :?
 

CooperDragon

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As long as the claw heals over, a finger is fine without the claw. It is a fairly common injury, unfortunately, but it doesn't hold them back as long as infection doesn't set in.
Darwin has been sleeping lately too. He will wake up for a day or two and have some food and roam around a little but then sleep for several days straight again. He had a full brumation in the fall too so I'm not sure what to think about what triggers this. Instead of trying to keep him up like I did last year, I'm just letting him sleep and do what he wants. When he wakes up I offer him some water and squash. :dontknow:
 

SHBailey

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My husband thinks that why Puff naps when he does is more complicated than just the seasons (in reverse). I tend to agree with him. Puff is getting older now too, so maybe he just wants to nap more often. :?

There he goes right now, and we've only had the lights on for about an hour. :roll:
 

SHBailey

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Happy 4th of July --

So we're having a "heat wave." In Anchorage that means temperatures in the mid 70s, but it feels hot to us and it gets warmer than that in the house. Nothing like the 90 degree record breaker we had last year -- that was insane. I was actually looking forward to the summer being over, and now I get nervous when the temperature goes above 70. I've been dialing Puff's heat lamps down a little -- I use dimmer switches on all the incandescent lights so I can control the temperatures without moving the lamps. I guess I'm playing the role of a "human thermostat." :wink: The UV lamp, of course, can't operate with a dimmer, but that's ok because it doesn't put out a lot of heat. I have it right next to the heat lamps so that Puff can get his heat and his UV from roughly the same place.

Meanwhile, Puff has developed a bad habit of pooping in his feeding bin instead of in his bath. We use a separate bin for feeding so we don't end up with escaped crickets and roaches jumping and crawling all over his tank. So it cuts his meals a little short sometimes when he poops in there, but maybe that's ok if he needs to output instead of input. And it's still easier to clean up after him than it would be if he poops in his tank. That hasn't happened for a while, knock wood...

The other day my husband handed Puff to me to cuddle right after his meal because he was going to change out the stuff in the tank, and it turned out that Puff had little roaches crawling all over him, so we had some fun trying to catch them and put them back in the containers. My husband is actually getting pretty good at it, but we missed at least one and it turned up in the laundry (alive) the next day. I also occasionally find live ones in the compost along with the used cricket food and water gel. Sneaky little things. And Puff is a lousy shot with his tongue, so if he misses them they often end up crawling under him and all over him and he doesn't seem to care. :roll:

Still napping sometimes in the morning and sometimes staying in his hide all afternoon and overnight, not too much different from my husband and me. With all the extra daylight around here this time of year, it's hard to go to sleep at night when the sun is still up, so you get tired in the middle of the day. I call it "midnight sunstroke." Maybe that's what's going on with Puff too. We still get him out of his hide every day for a bath and a meal, and he still eats bugs almost every day, and sometimes a little squash and greens with much coaxing. So if he still has any ideas about brumating, we're still not going to let him do that if we can possibly avoid it. He's never gone to sleep for more than 24 hours and we still don't think he's healthy enough for any serious brumation whether he's got his biological clock set for the southern hemisphere or not.

We have him surrounded with soft things -- towels and stuff I crocheted -- to keep him from getting hurt since he's such a klutz and is prone to infections and inflammation if he gets even a minor injury. So I crocheted some covers for his ramp with little ridges on them so he can climb it like a ladder, and what does he do to get to his hide half the time -- crawls down the towels beside it and falls on his face. Oh well, at least he falls on something soft. :roll:

-- But he's still doing well, all things considered. :)
 

SHBailey

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So the last time I posted anything to this blog was around the 4th of July, and July is almost over now...

Time flies when your having "fun", :roll: and my sister and I came to the conclusion that life is like a roll of toilet paper -- the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.

Meanwhile, Puff continues to spend most of his days napping in his hide, and still often goes down there not much more than an hour after we turn the lights on in the morning. He gets fished out of his hide for his bath and his dinner when my husband gets home from work, since it's gotten to the point where I can't reach the bottom of the tank, so he can nap all he wants when I'm home. I wonder if he would brumate if we let him, :? but he still eats crickets and/or roaches when we offer them, and squash and greens once in a while, and he still tolerates a little cuddling almost every day. His weight is stable for now, so he's doing fairly well, all things considered.

They're predicting an Alaskan "heat wave" with temperatures in the mid 70s this next week (you people in the lower 48 can have a good laugh about that), so I'll probably have to adjust his heat lamps a little. We're just over a month out from the solstice and August usually turns cool and rainy rather than being the hottest month. We'll have dandelions in the yard for Puff for another month or two, and then it's back to buying his greens at the store.

My husband got a fresh kabocha squash and cooked it up for both Puff and us, and I can see why it's Puffs favorite -- tastes pretty good to me, a little like sweet potatoes. Then my husband put some dirt in an old barbecue and planted the seeds, and much to my surprise, they're growing. I told him not to expect much, and I still doubt that we're actually going to get any squash -- it was a little late in the season for starting new plants, and winter comes early around here. But there's still lots of extra daylight for a while at least, so we'll see what happens. It didn't cost any extra for the seeds, so why not. :mrgreen:

I hope everyone is staying safe during this Covid thing. I'm scared of it even though I'm completely isolated at home. My husband is still working even though his office is shut down to the public. They're working a skeleton crew and letting him come in to help clients over the phone and internet, maintain the computers, and study for another certification now that he has more spare time than usual. He goes out for groceries too, wears a mask and tries to stay away from everyone, so I'm hoping we can hold out until they develop a vaccine. Fortunately, at least we don't have to worry about catching adenovirus from Puff and Puff doesn't have to worry about catching coronavirus from us.

...Not much else going on around here, so please excuse the TLDR.
 

SHBailey

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Original Poster
So it's been almost a year since I posted anything here -- time goes on.

Puff had another flare up of adenovirus -- at least that's what the vets thought it was. He hadn't pooped in 3 weeks and he wasn't eating, so we took him to the vet even though I couldn't be with him because of the pandemic -- no humans allowed in the office. My husband dropped him off in the morning and picked him up on the way home from work at the end of the day. They hydrated him and soaked him and did an ultrasound and bloodwork. All his labs and X-rays fortunately looked normal. They saw some "ingesta" on the ultrasound which didn't look like he was going to poop anytime soon, but he finally did by the end of the day.

After we brought him home he didn't eat anything but squash and greens for several weeks -- no bugs, which was a complete switch for him. Usually he eats bugs but not veggies. Finally he started eating lots of crickets and roaches again, but fortunately he's still eating squash and greens too, so getting a fairly balanced diet these days. He didn't lose a whole lot of weight all through this and his weight is fairly stable now at around 500 grams. He's about 18 inches long so that's a fairly healthy weight for him. We feed him every day and let him eat as much as he wants, since he tends to be underweight most of the time.

Spring is finally coming to Alaska and things are just now beginning to turn green. Puff is around 9 years old as of this spring -- we don't know his exact age because he was a rescue. So between that and the adenovirus we don't know how much longer he'll be with us, but he seems to have dodged another bullet this time around and is doing well now. :)
 

CooperDragon

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Thanks for the update. I didn't realize it had been since last summer(!) since I've seen you posting in other sections. I'm glad to hear he is doing well and his appetite is back up again, that's a good sign. I hope he has many more happy years with you.
 

SHBailey

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Yeah, I haven't been posting on here as much as I used to. A lot of other things have gotten in the way in the meantime. It doesn't seem like 8 years since we brought Puff home snuggled up under my coat, but that's how long it's been. It was still early in the spring and cold out with snow all over -- It doesn't melt until late April around here. A lot has happened since then, both for Puff and for my husband and me.

We got our covid shots in March and April, and it was cold both times -- drive up outside of our doctor's office so we didn't have to go to one of the mass vaccination centers. Having to roll down the windows with our bare arms in the cold was more unpleasant than the injection itself, which didn't hardly hurt at all. Still, Puff was lucky he got to stay home. :mrgreen:

We just bathed him and fed him and weighed him -- my husband does almost all of the hard work these days and I get the cuddles. Puff's weight is stable for now and he just scarfed a hornworm (splurge) and a bunch of crickets-- not interested in veggies today. Now he's in his tank basking and giving us "The Look" :|
 
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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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