Common myths. Wrinkly skin, sunken face (eyes), droopy eyelids, are not methods able to determine
hydration status.
Outside of a vet doing bloodwork (which it sounds like your vet didn't do... if they did, please post the results) the only way to check
hydration at home is by watching the bowel movements and urates. Typically, if the BM's are moist, the dragon is NOT dehydrated.
Sunken eyes are genetic, and/or caused by a loss of fat stores in the body. Can you do a full body picture from overhead so we can better assess the fat stores at the base of the tail and the base of the head?
Loss of fat stores typically indicate organ failure (or damage) if not caused by lack of appetite and eating.
No one here is anti-vet, but many of us on here have seen hundreds upon hundreds of dragons that just needed a slight husbandry adjustment (or some reassuring words to not worry to the owner) that end up going to vets and getting prescribed medications and injections that are totally not necessary. Often times causing more harm than good. I'd be cautious with your vets advice based on what i've seen so far in this thread.
Next time your dragon poos, post a picture of it for us please.
-Brandon
Thanks!
Bloodwork was done to see if there was any organ issues due to ADV. We have been struggling with the anorexia, plus she is not gaining weight. Her food also seems to pass mostly undigested.
The sunken eyes may be genetic, but they look different that when she was healthy.
I do take what the vet says with a grain of salt (In fact I was the one that suspected then decided to test for ADV and sent it off to Tracie). The vet keeps suggesting putting her down, which has been pretty traumatic for my daughter whose beardie it is. I do not agree that we are at that point yet, and it really makes me wonder why they keep saying that. When she was 2 months old she went through all of this (she is about a year old now), the vert suggested the same thing, but we just kept feeding her, encouraging her to eat, syringe feeding her and finally she broke through. That was maybe 6 months ago. Lucky we didn't put her down when the vet suggested it then!
Her poops are quite runny (not nearly as much as when she had the parasites), but we are syringe feeding her, so there is water in the food, and I suspect she is just passing it without absorbing a lot of it, but I am not sure. I think it's tough to know anything about her
hydration in her body by looking at the poops because of this - we don't know if it's actually being absorbed.
I do find it odd that we are feeding her quite a bit but she is not gaining weight.
What I'm thinking is that the coccidia messed up her digestive system (ie epithelial cells), which contributed to the lack of desire to eat. It also contributed to food not being absorbed. Perhaps last time it took a few months to get the gut healthy again, and then things finally clicked? I'm hoping that this is what's going on and it's a matter of just sticking with it, but I don't know.
She also is low energy, and in the morning she will always sleep until we actually get her up and put her in her basking spot - she won't go on her own. She does perk up a bit afterwards though.
I can tell that she is hungry - she eats the food we syringe feed her, and gives us signals when she has had enough. It really does seem like they "forget how to eat" - they get used to things being a certain way.
Also - we have another bearded dragon with ADV who went through something similar. It didn't affect her quite as much (she is older), but we did have to syringe feed her for maybe 2 months. She's been healthy since.
More pics attached. Maybe tough to see in the pictures, but the base of her tail does look bony and you can see her spine. To me, that's underweight.
She is about 330 grams at one year old
100 degrees air temp and 100 degrees basking spot (brick), 70 degrees cool side. UVB 12% tube, 2 heat lamps (since it gets a bit sold). 70 degrees at night.
Terrarium is small at the moment, we have a 120g ready to go for her, but don't want to move her while sick, or while she had parasites. Paper towel substrate while sick, and also when she had parasites.
