Hi Munchkins,
I'm sorry to hear about your ginea pig, I had no idea they lived so long, which is your good care.
Loiosh belongs to Nicole, a member here, who had gone to Japan for a year. She also has Didi, who's a small 5 yr old male. Loiosh got sick about a week after she came to our home on July 1. We thought it was relocation stress, as we had to change her viv, the original was too big to fit into our small apartment (we agreed to foster them before we knew we had to move, we promised to foster Nicole's beardies for a year while she went to Japan). We never expected to have any issues with Loiosh, having just met her, but I knew there was something wrong. When she started the spasms I took her to our vet, who told us she had low calcium in her blood. Loiosh & I fought the spasms for 3 weeks, went to the vet twice, but she was too sick and died last Monday am.
Angel was a rescue that we took in in March/09. She was 16 mo old but had never had any UVB. She was in a 75 gal tank with a log and a food dish, on sand that stunk. We managed, with alot of help from this site, to get her walking, then running and being a normal beardie. She lived until Feb 10, but she had a great year. She had renal issues that we weren't aware of, poor thing, all related to her severe MBD.
So now we have 5 dragons, 4 of ours-Lonzo 7 yrs, Sweetie 4 yrs, Leo, 3 yrs and Rubio 2 yrs. Then Didi is Nicole's. He's been a joy to have, he leaps everywhere he goes. :mrgreen:
Loiosh took us by surprise, we never expected that she was ill, nor did Nicole, but beardies hide illnesses and only show them when they're really sick. Even though we've had 4 years looking after beardies, it's still difficult to know if they're ill, even though we're getting better @ catching things before the escalate.
Boy, I'm long winded on the subject,
Deb