Anti-Scratch sock

[Spider8ait1994]

Thought I’d post about what I’ve done for my eldest rescue Spike in the hopes it might be useful to someone else.
Spike currently has an eye issue that is a suspected blocked tear duct that has resulted in some swelling, watery eye and discomfort. He now has a special eye cream to treat this that seems to be working well.
As a result of the discomfort he’s scratching at his eye region and yesterday had to go back to the vet because he was bleeding and I didn’t want to take any chances.
It turned out that he’d managed to scratch his eyelid and make it bleed but thankfully his actual eye was undamaged.
First thing I did upon getting home was see him a custom ‘anti-scratch sock’ to prevent that happening again.
I used fabric from an old T-shirt which I cut into a square then into a rectangle slightly larger than what it took to wrap around his lower leg and foot. I then cut the fabric further so the length was to just below his knee.
With the length correct I sewed the long sides together and transitioned that stitching down across the bottom to form a rectangular pouch.
That done I turned it inside out to hide the stitching then simply slipped it on over his foot and secured it in place with some plaster tape (leukoplast). I’ve used this tape before to secure custom dressings on my beardies and it doesn’t cause them any issues.
It’s not secured tight but more just gently stuck to his leg so that way it’s secure but not compromising his circulation.
Thankfully he doesn’t hate his sock and in fact seems to quite like it. I also saw him having an attempted scratch at the eye this afternoon and was able to confirm that his sock is effective at preventing him doing any damage to the eye area.
With any luck he won’t need the sock for long but in the meantime it’s definitely handy.
Admittedly it’s not the prettiest sock but it does the job, doesn’t affect his movement and he doesn’t seem to mind it being on.

 

[xp29]

Lmao, the lengths we will go through for our beardies.
Very innovative btw.

 

[AHBD]

Hey, that's pretty cool and seems to be working atm ! Hopefully he can't get it off , a dog or cat will wear themselves out to be rod of anything covering their feet. Hopefully he won't try it with his front leg !

I had a dragon years ago that did the same thing and when he shook his head little drops of blood
spattered the walls of his enclosure. I used unpasteurized honey mixed with water on it and made a small patch and put gauze around his head to keep it in place and it did the trick, plus the honey healed the little cut nicely.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Hey, that's pretty cool and seems to be working atm ! Hopefully he can't get it off , a dog or cat will wear themselves out to be rod of anything covering their feet. Hopefully he won't try it with his front leg !

I had a dragon years ago that did the same thing and when he shook his head little drops of blood
spattered the walls of his enclosure. I used unpasteurized honey mixed with water on it and made a small patch and put gauze around his head to keep it in place and it did the trick, plus the honey healed the little cut nicely.

I’ve been keeping an eye on him (no pun intended) and he’s had the sock on for 3 days now. He’s made no attempts to remove the sock and actually seems to like having it on.
When I let him out of his enclosure for some roaming time he seems to enjoy ‘flaunting it’ over my other dragon like he’s saying ‘I have fancy footwear and you’re just a barefoot peasant’.
The eye cream (chloropt) definitely seems to be doing the trick for his eye issue which has visibly improved so with any luck everything will be good by the time of his follow up check next week.
And yeah I use Manuka honey to help treat any injuries so I usually initially give the injury a clean with saline then pat it dry and apply betadine spray and a dressing (usually a sensitive skin Band-Aid I cut to size) and leave that for ~2-3 days before removing it and at that stage is when I’ll apply the honey every second day.
I’m lucky with my two dragons that they patiently tolerate first aid and treatment stuff which I think is due to them both being rescues that initially had a lot of experience with needing treatment so they kinda know that they need to stay still and it’ll help them to feel better quicker.
My youngest in particular likes to try to watch everything i do with the process.

 

[HyperLollipop]

That's such a creative idea! I hope your little guy gets better soon, glad to hear he's already on his way. How old is he?

 

[Spider8ait1994]

That's such a creative idea! I hope your little guy gets better soon, glad to hear he's already on his way. How old is he?

I’m not 100% certain of his age as I didn’t get much background from his original owners other than that he was kept in the same enclosure with another male and they’d been fighting as a result.
At the time the estimate from a reptile vet was he was at least 1 year old, possibly 2 years. That was back in 2018 so he’s been with me as of the 26th January this year for 5 years so based off the initial estimate he’s approximately 6-7 years old so given their average captive lifespan I’d say he’s a middle aged man. Starting to slow down but still fairly active and going strong considering his original condition which was bad enough I doubt he’d have lasted the year if he hadn’t been rescued.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Adding another reply to this thread to say that the anti-scratch sock is reptile vet approved.
He had his follow up checkup the other day and was wearing his sock when he went. Reptile vet asked about it and when I explained what it was and why he was wearing it they were very impressed with the creative and effective idea and agreed that it was a safe minimally stressful solution to the scratching problem and went so far as to say it was a trick they’d definitely keep in mind for any of their reptile patients in a similar situation.
As for Spike as of his checkup we are confident the problem is a blocked tear duct and not a soft tissue mass.
He does have slightly decreased vision in his left eye, nothing significant so it’s just a very mild decrease but we’re of the opinion that that’s just due to his age. Didn’t find any evidence of any eye condition that would cause progressive vision loss like glaucoma etc.
He still gets around just fine and it’s only maybe 1 in 10 times I have to help him out locating his insects if they skitter off to his left but I’ve taught him that 2 taps on a surface = look over here where the tapping is happening so it’s easy enough to help him out with that.
For some more detail on the sock’s materials I used a part of fabric from the sleeve of an old shirt because the end of the sleeve was already hemmed well so that’s one less bit of work to do. I used that edge as the top end of the sock.
The reason I used the fabric from a shirt is because it’s durable and slightly stretchy so it’ll have some give to it rather than being more rigid and additionally I felt that the shirt fabric wouldn’t be as easy for his claws to get through than straight cotton would be.
I just used a regular cotton thread for the stitching and hand sewed it using a running stitch.
What I used to stick the sock in place was Leukoplast tape. This is a durable, waterproof dressing tape that comes in a cylindrical plastic container with a blue color and can be found at most pharmacies in the first aid section. The adhesive this tape uses sticks well so it'll stay in place on scales but it’s also non-irritating so it won’t bother them over time.
I use this tape for sticking a dressing in place of even just to add a waterproof layer over the top of a dressing.
It’s pretty easy to tear into smaller pieces and the construction of the tape is such that when it tears it’s guaranteed to tear in a straight line both vertically and horizontally so you can get shorter pieces as well as thinner pieces without too much difficulty or a need for scissors.