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[meatbunny]

So, I've got this bearded dragon. His name is Oolong. My fiance found him on the side of the road, fighting a cat. We couldn't locate his original owner, & since one of my roomies always wanted a beardie, we kept Oolong rather than finding a nice reptile rescue to take him in

Comments

[just_rianne]

i love his coloring!

[mamachop]

Yea, I agree nice colors. Wow, did you see the parents of this offspring before hand? I wonder what they looked like to produce the colors in this beardie.

[meatbunny]

Nope, no idea what his parents looked like, or even how old he really is (judging from his size when we found him & the size he is now, my best guess is that he was around 8 months old when we found him April before last).

Such are the drawbacks of finding pets on the side of the road. ;}

[cihuapilli]

Poor little guy... has he been on any antibiotics? Cat scratches usually harbor major bacteria. :S

I had a beardie that I lost to yellow fungus... so I know all too well about the cost of caring for an ill beardie like that.

Good luck and keep us posted.

PS. He's a cutie!

[meatbunny]

Yup, he's been on all sorts of meds... I can't remember all of them off the top of my head, but IIRC, he's at least been on Baytril, Amikacin, Albon, & SMZ-TMP... and Novalsan & Neobacimyx applied topically.

[galaciel21]

Aww...I'm sorry to hear how your poor dragon has to suffer. I'm sure the cat scratch had something to do with the consistancy of growing abscesses even after you keep getting them drained. Perhaps when he is being drained, is the vet getting everything out? I'm not a lizard but I had a Staph Infection (where it couldn't be cured by antibiotics) where I grew abscess after abscess even after getting them drained (Oolongs story reminded me of that time). To ensure that they wouldn't grow in the same spot, when the dr. lanced them, he would take a q-tip and stick it inside the skin to ensure that he broke every puss pocket that was surrounding the area underneath the skin that he couldn't squeeze. I asked my husband if bearded dragons could possibly get staph infections and he didn't see why not. But since you got the abscesses cultured you would have known

[meatbunny]

Perhaps when he is being drained, is the vet getting everything out?The last couple of times? Probably not, no. Since the abscesses haven't responded well even to very agressive treatment, our current vet thinks that it's better to just keep Oolong as comfortable as we can w/ a minimum of stress for Oolong & expense for us. Nowadays, he drains the abscesses as well as he can w/o putting Oolong under. Since this treatment takes less than a half an hour (rather than leaving Oolong at the vet's office for half a day) & seems to buy Oolong several weeks or months of relatively abscess-free life, we're happy to pay ~$55 rather than $175-$300+ for surgery every few months

[suburbangothic]

He looks to be in healthy, rounded belly and tail shape besides those abcesses. I had a bacterial outbreak this summer that had to be treated really aggressively with injectibles beyond Baytril, and I suspect the appearance of both a cat (now thankfully gone) and a group of possums defecating in my yard (also gone) to be responsible for the abcesses I have to deal with. They looked like antbites all over the belly and legs of my beardeds, which have outdoor cages in the warm months and access to the flowerbeds (especially for nesting) and I'm still dealing with it reoccurring now that I've let them out on warm days again. Ugh. The abcess pus is thick and cheesy, so it doesn't just drain out like in a mammal, thus it's easy to miss totally scraping all the goo and packing it with antibiotics, something only a vet should do anyway in most cases