Spike’s Progress

[Spider8ait1994]

That little guy has more spunk than any 10 people I know lol
My guys are not elderly and don't move that much (except Sinatra and he is a holy terror lol) if we don't goose Zsa Zsa she'll sit in the same place all day and she just turned 1 year old this month. Stumpy isn't very active either andche isn't a year old yet.
I'm pretty sure Spike is the exception not the norm

That’s pretty interesting to hear and it makes me wonder whether there’s anything in his environment or diet that keeps him as active as he is.
As previously mentioned I do home grow most of the greens and veggies I feed my guys.
Maybe even just the fact that we’re in Australia where they’re native to so it’s a lot easier to get their habitat conditions into an ideal range.
I also do what I can to keep their minds active and entertained as well. One example is that if I have to leave the house and nobody else will be home I put the tv on the kids channel with the cartoons for toddlers and they seem to love sitting and watching that with the bright colors and sounds and it keeps them entertained rather than sitting alone in a quiet house. I took a zookeeping course a couple years back and through that I really learned the importance of enrichment for captive animals for keeping them active both physically and mentally which does lead to improved wellbeing because an animal thats bored isn’t going to want to be as active, can develop poor mental health and even turn to self destructive behaviours.
Man I really wish these critters could talk and tell us all about this kinda thing. On the one hand it would be interesting and helpful to know what exactly they’re feeling and wanting but on the other hand the constant demands for fat juicy wormies.
Talking of courses reminded me that I’ve recently completed a few more and earned certification in Australian native wildlife rescue and conservation and I’m planning maybe next year to take a veterinary assistant course to really learn more about that kinda thing and possibly later volunteer with the local vets mainly with reptiles and native wildlife.
I’ve found these courses have definitely been worthwhile when it comes to caring for my dragons as they’ve given me much more awareness of the unique needs, health and anatomy of reptiles and as seen with Spike having this knowledge has definitely helped me to pick up on abnormalities early on to get him help before a problem becomes a big one.
If anyone would be interested I can go and take a look at the reptile zoology/herpetology course I took and see whether they take international applications.

 

[xp29]

That’s pretty interesting to hear and it makes me wonder whether there’s anything in his environment or diet that keeps him as active as he is.
As previously mentioned I do home grow most of the greens and veggies I feed my guys.
Maybe even just the fact that we’re in Australia where they’re native to so it’s a lot easier to get their habitat conditions into an ideal range.
I also do what I can to keep their minds active and entertained as well. One example is that if I have to leave the house and nobody else will be home I put the tv on the kids channel with the cartoons for toddlers and they seem to love sitting and watching that with the bright colors and sounds and it keeps them entertained rather than sitting alone in a quiet house. I took a zookeeping course a couple years back and through that I really learned the importance of enrichment for captive animals for keeping them active both physically and mentally which does lead to improved wellbeing because an animal thats bored isn’t going to want to be as active, can develop poor mental health and even turn to self destructive behaviours.
Man I really wish these critters could talk and tell us all about this kinda thing. On the one hand it would be interesting and helpful to know what exactly they’re feeling and wanting but on the other hand the constant demands for fat juicy wormies.
Talking of courses reminded me that I’ve recently completed a few more and earned certification in Australian native wildlife rescue and conservation and I’m planning maybe next year to take a veterinary assistant course to really learn more about that kinda thing and possibly later volunteer with the local vets mainly with reptiles and native wildlife.
I’ve found these courses have definitely been worthwhile when it comes to caring for my dragons as they’ve given me much more awareness of the unique needs, health and anatomy of reptiles and as seen with Spike having this knowledge has definitely helped me to pick up on abnormalities early on to get him help before a problem becomes a big one.
If anyone would be interested I can go and take a look at the reptile zoology/herpetology course I took and see whether they take international applications.

Man that is awesome
I would love to take courses like that. My problem is time (or lack of it) whenever I get to retire I'm hoping to be able to do stuff like that to keep myself busy. I'll probably work in local reptile stores just to becarpund the animals.
I have no doubt Spike does as well as he does because of the stellar care you give him.

 

[ChileanTaco]

I also do what I can to keep their minds active and entertained as well. One example is that if I have to leave the house and nobody else will be home I put the tv on the kids channel with the cartoons for toddlers and they seem to love sitting and watching that with the bright colors and sounds and it keeps them entertained rather than sitting alone in a quiet house.

We do something similar. We don't have a TV (okay, I could use a tablet or any other kind of display), but we put on nature sounds.

Also, on purpose, I have placed Taco's enclosure in front of a window (actually, it's a corner of two windows), and he loves watching what is going on outside so much.

I took a zookeeping course a couple years back and through that I really learned the importance of enrichment for captive animals for keeping them active both physically and mentally which does lead to improved wellbeing because an animal thats bored isn’t going to want to be as active, can develop poor mental health and even turn to self destructive behaviours.

Great, I would have loved that so much I had no opportunity to take such a course, but I have read a lot about biology (and I mean biology, not cute little animal stories ) including behavioral biology, and I can agree very much.
I had almost studied biology, with the plan to go into field research, maybe also becoming a national park ranger (but then decided for physics and kept all the outdoors and biology things as a hobby). Animals are very important to me, and I'm interested in them - and not only the "cute" ones - from an early age on. Often people had seen me as "too romantic" when saying that for me, an animal is also a "somebody", but I see now that it becomes more and more accepted. Like that animals having various degrees of consciousness and understanding, and not something like "we have it, apes and domesticated animals have it a bit, others not".
We might, of course, e.g. fear or worry in a more complex way than a bearded dragon or a butterfly does, but I'm pretty sure they can also, as much as they understand.

Man I really wish these critters could talk and tell us all about this kinda thing. On the one hand it would be interesting and helpful to know what exactly they’re feeling and wanting but on the other hand the constant demands for fat juicy wormies.

Really so much! It would make many things easier.
In the meanwhile, I would hope that more people would observe their animals closely, would not buy pets "as a gag" (really, some people do... just shortly I read about a pet that was bought as a fun gift for a bachelor's party ).
And: It's sad that especially reptiles are often seen as cold, as "not much behind", and even keeper's sanity questioned (!) on how somebody could keep such an animal and what might be psychologically wrong with them.

If anyone would be interested I can go and take a look at the reptile zoology/herpetology course I took and see whether they take international applications.

Is this an online course? Generally, I might be interested, but it depends on the details.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

@ChileanTaco @xp29 so I contacted the place I went through for the herpetology/reptile zoology course and they have said if you’re interested they can likely arrange enrollment.
For me a big draw of this course was that it’s self paced and can be done entirely online with your assignments submitted for marking online and results returned to you the same way.
The standard timeframe you get to complete it is 1 year from the enrollment date but they do offer extra time if you need it.
You can pay the course fee all at once or you can do a payment plan where you pay a smaller amount at set intervals until you cover the full cost.
I found the 1 year timeframe was more than enough with the schedule I set myself of taking one week per lesson and you do get to download and save the lesson notes to your computer to have them forever so it’s also a great reference resource and of course at the end you get your completion certificate if you’ve passed the course and that certification if recognised australia wide should you ever come over here and want to do reptile related work.
I’ve added a link to the info about this specific course here so if either of you are interested I’d be happy to help find out all the details for international enrollments.

Course info link

 

[ChileanTaco]

Thanks for the link! I would have to check out, as I work full-time with usually plenty of overtime and thus really would have to look.
A certificate is not important to me as I will very likely not come to Australia working with reptiles (I'm an astronomy professor based in Chile and I'm also not into doing something like a gap year or changing careers).
I'm just generally interested in a lot of things, and one of them is wildlife.

Can you let me know how much it costs? It says 20 - 30 $ per week (which would be already quite a lot for me, income here isn't that high and I normally don't spend 100 $ month on a hobby), but how many weeks, so what is the total cost?

Do you also maybe have complimentary online resources that would cover something similar, but just not lead to a certificate?
(Like: Somebody seriously interested in university level physics might follow for free recorded real university lectures on youtube, one won't earn a degree but can learn on your own if that's enough for you.)
I might use this as a start.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Thanks for the link! I would have to check out, as I work full-time with usually plenty of overtime and thus really would have to look.
A certificate is not important to me as I will very likely not come to Australia working with reptiles (I'm an astronomy professor based in Chile and I'm also not into doing something like a gap year or changing careers).
I'm just generally interested in a lot of things, and one of them is wildlife.

Can you let me know how much it costs? It says 20 - 30 $ per week (which would be already quite a lot for me, income here isn't that high and I normally don't spend 100 $ month on a hobby), but how many weeks, so what is the total cost?

Do you also maybe have complimentary online resources that would cover something similar, but just not lead to a certificate?
(Like: Somebody seriously interested in university level physics might follow for free recorded real university lectures on youtube, one won't earn a degree but can learn on your own if that's enough for you.)
I might use this as a start.

Sure thing. I’ll take a look at that for you tomorrow. If does end up being too pricey but you really wanna take a look I know I have all the lesson notes saved so I could bundle those up and give you a link to them so at the very least you’ll part of it to go through.

 

[ChileanTaco]

@Spiter8ait1994
For me it's basically "likely quite expensive for me, plus don't have so much time, plus likely never would need a certificate" so I'm really not sure whether I'll sign up.

 

[xp29]

@ChileanTaco @xp29 so I contacted the place I went through for the herpetology/reptile zoology course and they have said if you’re interested they can likely arrange enrollment.
For me a big draw of this course was that it’s self paced and can be done entirely online with your assignments submitted for marking online and results returned to you the same way.
The standard timeframe you get to complete it is 1 year from the enrollment date but they do offer extra time if you need it.
You can pay the course fee all at once or you can do a payment plan where you pay a smaller amount at set intervals until you cover the full cost.
I found the 1 year timeframe was more than enough with the schedule I set myself of taking one week per lesson and you do get to download and save the lesson notes to your computer to have them forever so it’s also a great reference resource and of course at the end you get your completion certificate if you’ve passed the course and that certification if recognised australia wide should you ever come over here and want to do reptile related work.
I’ve added a link to the info about this specific course here so if either of you are interested I’d be happy to help find out all the details for international enrollments.

Course info link

I bookmarked the site and I'm going to download the brochure. It looks like it would be interesting to do just for the personal knowledge. My biggest issue is always just time though. If I can free up some I might actually take the course.

 

[ChileanTaco]

My biggest issue is always just time though. If I can free up some I might actually take the course.

The same is for me. (I'm one of those people who are not signing up for a streaming service because... *lol*)
At least, it's flexible and not fixed times - I gave up courses as something like "each Friday (or put in another day, doesn't matter) night/morning" won't work for me.

 

[xp29]

The same is for me. (I'm one of those people who are not signing up for a streaming service because... *lol*)
At least, it's flexible and not fixed times - I gave up courses as something like "each Friday (or put in another day, doesn't matter) night/morning" won't work for me.

Same. I get up at 5 a.m. and immediately start taking care of my beardies. I'm out the door by 6ish to work. I usually finally get to sit down around 8:30. I try to be in bed by 9- 9:15. Not much time left to do anything.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Got a message this morning from the surgeon who worked on Spike for his chromatophoroma asking how he was going and letting me know that it’ll likely be toward the end of this year the article about his case gets written. He also mentioned that it would be in either Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association or Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine.
Additionally sorry it’s taken me a bit to get back about the course, ended up having a bit of a busy week but I’m working on getting the exact costs.
As mentioned previously they offer payment plans to split the cost into smaller amounts paid at intervals and if you can afford to pay in full they offer a discount.
I have also compiled the lesson notes I have from when I worked through the course into a folder so if anyone just wants the information in the notes I can share that with a dropbox link

 

[xp29]

Got a message this morning from the surgeon who worked on Spike for his chromatophoroma asking how he was going and letting me know that it’ll likely be toward the end of this year the article about his case gets written. He also mentioned that it would be in either Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association or Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine.
Additionally sorry it’s taken me a bit to get back about the course, ended up having a bit of a busy week but I’m working on getting the exact costs.
As mentioned previously they offer payment plans to split the cost into smaller amounts paid at intervals and if you can afford to pay in full they offer a discount.
I have also compiled the lesson notes I have from when I worked through the course into a folder so if anyone just wants the information in the notes I can share that with a dropbox link

Not only have you and Spike been heroes, his saga is going to help countless others. O hate that ge hsd had to go through it all, but at least some good is going to come if it.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

Not only have you and Spike been heroes, his saga is going to help countless others. O hate that ge hsd had to go through it all, but at least some good is going to come if it.

Yeah he’s definitely an inspiration and a hell of a fighter. With all he’s been through there was never a stage where he acted like he wanted to give up and I’m definitely hopeful that sharing his journey with everything can get more awareness and hope out there for others facing similar scenarios.
In particular with two aspects:
His rehabilitation from extremely poor condition showing that even if it looks real bad, the right care and attention can turn everything around.
And then there’s the whole chromatophoroma thing. When he was diagnosed and I started researching this tumor (side note I do like to research any issue that pops up so that I can be better informed of what to expect, what to ask about and what options there are as I find it makes things easier to understand and collaborate with the vet on treatment strategies and symptom monitoring) there wasn’t a lot of hope for a good outcome because of how little was known in the way of an effective treatment and at that stage I was definitely not expecting him to still be here over a year later so with the outcome he’s had hopefully spreading the awareness about the tumor and what was done for Spike can aid in owners picking up on the signs early and seeing more successful treatment options.

 

[xp29]

Yeah he’s definitely an inspiration and a hell of a fighter. With all he’s been through there was never a stage where he acted like he wanted to give up and I’m definitely hopeful that sharing his journey with everything can get more awareness and hope out there for others facing similar scenarios.
In particular with two aspects:
His rehabilitation from extremely poor condition showing that even if it looks real bad, the right care and attention can turn everything around.
And then there’s the whole chromatophoroma thing. When he was diagnosed and I started researching this tumor (side note I do like to research any issue that pops up so that I can be better informed of what to expect, what to ask about and what options there are as I find it makes things easier to understand and collaborate with the vet on treatment strategies and symptom monitoring) there wasn’t a lot of hope for a good outcome because of how little was known in the way of an effective treatment and at that stage I was definitely not expecting him to still be here over a year later so with the outcome he’s had hopefully spreading the awareness about the tumor and what was done for Spike can aid in owners picking up on the signs early and seeing more successful treatment options.

It's sad we have to learn in this way but at least they did learn some form of treatment. I hope Spike can live out his life with no more issues. He deserves that at a minimum.

 

[Spider8ait1994]

@xp29 @ChileanTaco
Just called the course place and got the costs for you.
This is all in Australian dollars so you’d have to take a look at that in your currency but Aussie dollars are tbh pretty **** in relation to most other currencies (save New Zealand dollars) so I know in USD definitely $1 USD is worth more than $1 AUD.
The total cost is $3254.00 AUD but if you want to pay in full they’re willing do discount to $3000.00 AUD.
As for the payment plans I mentioned they do those plans are $25 to $30 AUD per week until the total is paid off.
Currently as of writing this reply:

$3254 AUD = $2044.27 USD or 1,971,442.76 Chilean Pesos

$3000 AUD = $1890.41 USD or 1,817,556.32 Chilean Pesos

$25 AUD = $15.75 USD or 15,146.30 Chilean Pesos

$30 AUD = $18.90 USD or 18,175.56 Chilean Pesos