When I went to get feeders today, a girl brought her bearded dragon into the store to have the guy working there take a look at her. The lizard was pretty far gone. Her belly was completely flat and her limbs were limp and very thin. (Almost full grown bearded dragon, by the way). Her mouth was starting to become deformed. Apparently, the girl had neglected the dragon's calcium for a long time and had only just started doing it a few weeks ago. The lizard wasn't getting any better. She explained the set up and the lizard's habits, but the guy working at the store said "She is pretty far gone. You have two options. Try your best to get her healthy again, which is going to be really hard and probably wont' work, or put her down." The girl started crying the the guy said he'd see what he could do.

He tried feeding the lizard a mouse pink, but she would have nothing of the sort. She refused to swallow it. I'm not so sure she even could. Her mouth was so soft. Oh, by the way, the guy at the store had gotten my roommate and I to help him since the girl refused to hand feed the pink to the lizard. When the dragon wouldn't take the pink, the guy decided to try mealworms. (I've heard these are not good for bearded dragons.) I then told him that my bearded dragon had gotten impacted as a juvie and died from it. This could be the problem. He felt her belly and said he felt no blockage. I told him that when my beardie had gotten impacted he had stopped eating and lost a lot of weight. To get him to eat and to ease the blockage out, we hand fed him waxworms coated in vegetable oil. (This actually did help. He ended up passing several pieces of walnut shell) So he mixed some calcium into the oil and coated a wax worm with it. With a lot of coaxing, we got the worm into the dragon's mouth and she swallowed it down. I got her to eat a second and he sent the girl home with a bag of wax worms. The girl also mentioned she thought the dragon was pooping out whole crickets and worms. We told her that the dragon was probably regurging them. The dragon then took a huge poo on the table and sure enough, there was sand in it. A lot of sand according to the guy. So we think she might have a blockage of sand in her system and that wasn't allowing her to eat properly or absorb calcium well enough.

I wish I would have gotten pictures of this poor dragon. She was so horrible looking. I felt really bad for her. I'm hoping she will make it but after the girl left with the dragon, the guy looked at me and told me the dragon would probably be dead in two or three days. He'd seen dragons like that before.