The Adventures of Walrus, Hyuna, Harley & Quinn!:December 21

I had scoured the internet for a bearded dragon that perked my interest. I stumbled upon some silkback beardies and thought they were interesting so I contacted a breeder in my area who had posted an ad in some classifieds I was browsing and waited to hear back.
After a while, I finally recieved a phone call from the breeder, who is from A & J dragons, saying that he had sold the silkback dragons that he had posted but that he had one more in a pet store in his area that he could pick up and show me. So, I got in my car and drove to meet him.

When he got there he seemed upset. He told me that the pet shop had not been taking care of his dragons properly and that he had some bad news.

Turns out that the pet store had housed him with another much larger bearded dragon and it had "nipped" the silky. Nipped is definitely an understatement. His little right arm lays to his side totally limp. It's got visible kinks and discoloration in some of his toes. He was very, very dry due to the fact that they had not soaked him or lotioned him the whole time he was there. I posted on the forums about his arm here : viewtopic.php?f=45&t=194141 If you guys have any suggestions on how to care for this, please stop by and give me some input.

The breeder was furious and took all his bearded dragons that he housed at that pet store. He told me that he did not feel right making me spend the amount we had previously agreed on if I liked the little guy, and that he'd give him to me next to nothing, just enough to pay for the gas he used driving there and back to his home. He also gave me his guarantee that if the little guy didn't make it that he'd give me another silky in his place because he felt so bad about the whole thing.

So, now I've got a poor little injured silky. He's already stolen my heart. I've yet to name the little guy. I'm gonna give it a little bit of time before I give him a name. Here's some pics!

 

[Annalee]

Big update tomorrow if I can get everything finished on a project I've been working on. If not, it'll be Wednesday.

 

[sweetiepie9]

Will be looking forward to hearing from you! Titan just got a biopsy done in 4 places on Friday, hoping to hear what he really has mid next week.

 

[Annalee]

Sorry about the lack of updating. I'm sick and I ended up rescuing a blue tongue skink 4 days ago. I called the lady about him a while ago and she and I couldn't come to a middle ground. She called me at 9 on the 9th to tell me she wanted rid of him and if I didn't come get him, she was going to just let him go in her back yard. I set up a temp enclosure and took him in... So... now I have 4 dragons, an Axie and a blue tongue skink. XD

He has a few patches of raw scales and skin where he's rubbed simply because he was bored. Mostly on the side of his face, a patch on the corner of his mouth and by his eye which I'll be treating with Chlorhexidine when it comes in the mail and a few retained toe issues on his toes. He's fairly hefty. I was expecting skinny but I've been told that they retain weight well. She had been feeding him the wrong diet and now I'm working on getting his weight up and back on a healthy one.
This is him. He's eating high quality cat food there for the added protein and fat. It can be used as a staple along with greens, vegies and berries. He, however, went to town before I could add anything else to the mix and I've been told you don't want to mess with an eating blue tongue. Their bite force is tremendous as they crack snail shells. Snails are one of their favorite foods.


His name is Houdini on account of the fact he somehow got on top of his locked top loading temp tank.I think it suits him.

The project I'm working on is I'm drawing themed backgrounds and making themed enclosure decor for each dragon. Walrus' is well on it's way and I have concepts drawn up for all the girls. Now I have to figure out what theme to go with for the new BTS.

 

[sweetiepie9]

Glad you're feeling better & welcome Houdini, they're a lot of fun, my friend has one named Ashley. She has a large baking dish with water as they like to immerse themselves and she got rid of the substrate she was using and now uses newspaper, as they poop a lot & it's difficult to clean the tank. She's in a 40 gallon and my friend walks her a lot on her patio, she has a leash for her. They're very easy to take care of, from what Joanne says. I've held her once, she's 18 1/2" long and a very good weight, more than the dragons ever get to. So you'll be fine with him. He looks like he's very hungry!

Sounds like the projects are also going to keep you very busy, It'll be fun to see them when you're finished. All your babies are doing well? I'm glad. Titan has been diagnosed with Yellow Fungus, poor baby, so he's being treated for it and hopefully we cure it, it's a nasty fungus but I have hope as he's young and we found it quickly.

So take care, pics when you can!
Deb

 

[Annalee]

Glad you're feeling better & welcome Houdini, they're a lot of fun, my friend has one named Ashley. She has a large baking dish with water as they like to immerse themselves and she got rid of the substrate she was using and now uses newspaper, as they poop a lot & it's difficult to clean the tank. She's in a 40 gallon and my friend walks her a lot on her patio, she has a leash for her. They're very easy to take care of, from what Joanne says. I've held her once, she's 18 1/2" long and a very good weight, more than the dragons ever get to. So you'll be fine with him. He looks like he's very hungry!

Sounds like the projects are also going to keep you very busy, It'll be fun to see them when you're finished. All your babies are doing well? I'm glad. Titan has been diagnosed with Yellow Fungus, poor baby, so he's being treated for it and hopefully we cure it, it's a nasty fungus but I have hope as he's young and we found it quickly.

So take care, pics when you can!
Deb

All the dragons are doing well. Growing. I'll update on that too later.

I'm sorry to hear about Titan. I read up more about it on Facebook in the For the Love of Bearded Dragons group. You'll fight for him just as hard as he'll fight the fungus, I'm sure. He's in good hands! <3 Keep me updated. That stuff is awful.

 

[CountofCasualty]

His tongue looks like ribbon! How cool is that! What type(brand) of food are you feeding him, Annalee?
I'm glad you took him in and it worked out, even though it was a bit unfortunate for him to have an owner like that.

 

[Annalee]

His tongue looks like ribbon! How cool is that! What type(brand) of food are you feeding him, Annalee?
I'm glad you took him in and it worked out, even though it was a bit unfortunate for him to have an owner like that.

It's a fancy type of friskies. That's all I remember. I threw away the can. Didn't have any bone meal or by-product which is why I chose it. They'll eat anything though. It's just a matter of choosing the healthy foods. People joke that they're little garbage disposals if you let them be.

 

[CountofCasualty]

If it's okay to put my opinion and experience out there, I'd like to suggest my favorite types of kitty food.

If you can find Wellness down there, in my personal experience that will be better. Wellness Core preferably since it's got higher quality/quantity meats in it. Friskies is okay in terms of quality but I'm not sure what sort of wet foods you guys have down there. There are a ton of really good cat foods that are pretty inexpensive that will be much better than most if not all Purina products.

Also, Natures Variety, which is a big US company, has a really good line of cat food as well and they're pretty high in terms of quality.

But if your Friskie's didn't have bone-meal or by-product that doesn't sound bad at all. The big companies are getting better in terms of what they put in, which is nice.

 

[sweetiepie9]

Thanks Anna-lee, I will fight to get him as healthy as possible. I keep being told that it's uncurable, you can only control it, like cancer. My poor Titan has been through so much in his 1st year of life that I just want to make him as comfy as possible. One of the forums has a lady who's battling hard for her beardie, too, and gave me lots of advice on strengthening his immune system and so did Cheryl from bd.co as well, so I've been writing down all the suggestions and will be getting him a few more things to help. My vet is doing some research & has the name of Sue Ciampi's vet, who's dragon Dino lost her battle with the disease, but she had it months before it was diagnosed. Titan has had this for 6 weeks from what we can figure, so I think he has a fighting chance.

 

[Annalee]

Hey everyone. I'm so sorry for my prolonged absence. I've been going through some insane life changes recently and I've been stressing about it. Everything is coming to a close now so I should be more active in the community again! I'm currently transitioning from being a part time worker and part time student to a full time student and a stay at home girlfriend. Jerod has given me the opportunity to go to school full time and not have to worry about paying my portion of our bills as it is not difficult for him to take on. He and this opportunity is a huge blessing and I'm going to run with it. It's a big change for me and knowing I'll be around the house when I'm not at school's a little scary so I figure this blog will be booming with posts since I'll be at home a lot.

All of the lizards are doing wonderfully.

Here's some pictures!


Supervised bath time. I have to put Walrus in early to calm down and then put the girls in and even then I usually have to take him out early since he head bobs and mounts.... He's such a big, hormone driven doofus.


Sexy legging after bath time. His colors are so bright.


Action pose of Quinn


Quinn's usual position. She loves that ramp.


Still working on things with Hyuna but she's much friendier when she's out of her tank. Otherwise, even walking into the room scares her.


Harley is quite partial to her supers. Most of the time she won't even look at dubias until I give her a few supers. I don't even think she enjoys her dubia anymore.

I have a new temporary addition. An ex-manager of mine wants to get a bearded dragon for her daughter for Christmas so my breeder friend who gave me Walrus, gave me a baby who has a nipped arm for free since he knows how well I did with Walrus' arm. She's TINY. I mean... wow. I didn't expect her to be so small so it has been quite a shock. Sometimes I forget that my babies started out that small. It baffles me that I got Walrus around that size and now he's a whopping 14 inches with his nip. She is also a baby sister of Walrus. She is a hypo trans leather.


Size comparison


What you lookin at?


Barely the size of my pointer finger.


Here you can see her injured arm. She puts weight on it sometimes and it's healing really well but she still keeps it off the ground like Walrus did. She runs exactly like the video I posted of Walrus when he was a baby.

So that's what has been going on in my world! How is everyone else doing?

How is Titan, Deb?

 

[Annalee]

Also, Deb and Jolene, if you guys have any suggestions on bearded dragon breeders in Canada, do let me know. I have a really good friend who lives in newfoundland who is interested in getting a dragon.

 

[sweetiepie9]

Awww, that is really sweet of Jerod to take on the house expenses and let you go to school full-time, means you'll finish earlier and do better because more time to study.

I don't know of any breeders, but that's because I find my dragons in pet shops & on this forum, so never looked into it. Jolene got Thresh from a local breeder, but we're in British Columbia, above Washington, so on the west side of Canada to Newfoundland. I'll ask around, though, see if there are any breeders closer to her.

And your little tenant is so tiny, hard to remember Walrus that tiny, I know, it's hard to remember Rubio as being a baby, but he was & he was tiny, too.

Titan is doing well, as far as it goes, he's covered with the Yellow Fungus but it seems to be receeding, or maybe it's just me hoping. He sees the vet on Friday. I checked with the Reptile Doctor (he lives in Australia & runs a hospital/vet office, but he got back to me to verify that what we're doing for Titan med wise is what he'd subscribe, too, so that was good to hear. He's eating and pooping well, so can't ask for more than that. I have strict protocals in place because I don't want this to travel, so Gabriel is in the living room (and enjoying it) and Titan is in the bedroom (and enjoying it). I handle Titan only with disposable gloves and all of his linens go into a separate bag & are washed separately with disinfectant bleach. Actually I'm washing the other guys stuff in bleach, too, just in case, this YF has made me paranoid. I check the other 5 daily but so far no sign of the disease at all, for which I'm grateful. Don't know if I'll ever get his healed of this rotten disease, I keep being told it will be a matter of control or could be ultimately fatal, so hard to tell at this point. I'll keep you posted.

I loved the pictures and little Walrus is still a bull, eh? He's so funny, I know you get him away from the girls when he tries to mount them, that's so funny, you wouldn't think at his age that he'd know how to do that!

Keep in touch, love to hear about your crew!
Deb

 

[CountofCasualty]

There's two major breeders, Capitol Dragons and Daichu Dragons. Capitol is eh. One of my friends(and a member of the forum), got her dragon from them. They oversaturate the photo's and it's very misleading(advertised him as a orange and he was green/brown and is only colouring up recently to the orange). They also mispacked him and about 1-2 inches of his tail was damaged and fell off. They barely offered 10% of his price back for it, so I personally would avoid them.

Daichu I'm not sure about. On Fauna there is a Canadian BOI, I surf it for breeders all the time. There are lots of smaller time breeders, and a few stores that offer dragons that ship Canada Wide.

In terms of breeders in NF, I'd avoid most of them. From what I know there's a lot of miscare and interbreeding. There is an NF Reptile Group on facebook though that they might be able to join and read through for names.

A lot of US breeders are willing to ship to Canada as well. If they're willing to pay the price for it all, they could look into that as well.

 

[hoopyscoop]

Hi! :wave: I haven’t heard from you in a while, how are things going?

 

[Annalee]

Hi! :wave: I haven’t heard from you in a while, how are things going?

Wonderful! Everything is great. I am busy with my bestfriend from Germany staying woth me to visit and we are having a blast. How are you?