I currently have two bearded dragons. I am taking care of my girlfriends baby beardie (Bilbo) that I got her for Christmas. Easy care so far as I have done extensive research and been an avid reader of this site. Bilbo is perfectly healthy but still skittish and wants to explore every time I take him out, which is not a problem to me except I have two adult cats. Yesterday, I got an almost one year old, male bearded dragon (Aragon) from a local pet store, not a chain pet store. I knew better than to take him out of his new terrarium, but I was too happy to have one of my own and took a shot at it. I got him out without any aggression or resistance. He scanned the room, licked my hand, licked my shirt so I decided to sit down. Not long after, he started bobbing his head. No puffing or opened mouth but just bobbing. I quickly took him back to the terrarium and let him calm down. I left the room and let him alone. After my dinner, I walked back into my room and stood at the door. After a minute or two, he bobbed wildly and fell off of his basking spot (not high enough to hurt him). As he is in a new environment, I understand and regret scaring him like that, but I was wondering what is the best way for him to recover from this? I clearly did not make a good first impression and I do not want to have made him aggressive. Thank you.
Ha! Head bobbing is usually a good thing. It's an assertion of dominance, claiming his new territory and telling you that he's the boss. Give him a week to establish himself before handling again, and then start for short periods of time, slowly working your way up to longer handling sessions.
Well that is good and I definitely will allow him to establish his territory. Are there any other techniques to get him to warm up to me without me being invasive of his territory?