A friend of mine (who I've known for a month) is leaving town tomorrow and brought her beardie over to my house for me to watch while she's away for two weeks. I'm so mad at her I could scream!



She says she got the beardie over a year ago - she's barely a foot long and is a little on the skinny side. She has her in a 10 gallon aquarium with sand (from the beach!) and one tiny stick. When I asked her where the heat bulb was she said it burned out. I said "no problem" and went to get one of my many extras. Then she said it burned out over four months ago! (Lord please help me restrain myself from hurting this woman!) She then took a frozen bag of green beens out of her bag and handed them to me. That's all she's been feeding the poor little dragon for the last year! GREEN BEANS! No crickets, no protein source, no UVB, no calcium! She says the pet store told her to feed it "greens." I'm amazed that this little girl is this healthy. No signs of MBD - just very small for her age. She looks like she is 4 months old.



I am so upset *shaking fist in the air*!!! She definately needs a larger cage, a UVB source and a better diet! I ordered a Reptisun 5.0 for her and some crickets are on the way. I printed up a dozen articles from the internet on beardie care and when she gets back I'm going to have a long chat with her. I think she genuinely cares about the beardie, she just doesn't know how to take care of her. You'd think that a halfway intelligent person would get a book or something! Geez! There's just no excuse. This is borderline abuse.



I'll post pictures tomorrow of the little girl if anyone is interested. Also she's very jumpy and hates to be handled because her owner didn't hold her much. My husband managed to hold her for a few minutes last night. I'm going to attempt a bath tonight. She gobbled some REAL greens out of my hand this morning - so that's at least a good start. I've got some calcium in her and some vitamins too. I should probably get a fecal sample to the vet. She's most likely got parasites, if not something worse from the beach sand. Yuck!



Sorry, just had to vent.



Veronica
Beautiful Dragons

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