First Ball

None of us should or can diagnose the beginnings of a belly rot issue online, that's a vets job, but I'm wondering about this "bathing" she's doing. If she has access to a large water dish I'd ditch that and go with a nice, small, non-spillable dish. They don't need to soak and it's not particularily good for them. If she is soaking a lot, have you checked her for mites? They'll often soak if they have mites. Also they will spend time in a big water dish if they don't like or have enough appropriate hides, sometimes if their enclosure temps are wonky. Does she use her hides? Temps okay and stable?

I'm not a fan of big water dishes, between the problems with them being spilled, snakes soaking more than is good for them, using them as a toilet and standing water in a warm environment growing nasty bacteria....well I just don't think they are a good thing really.

For the record i didnt diagnose anything. Thats why i said he should see a vet. Sorry for the misunderstanding...

Well, a great thing about being a student at Texas A&M is that we have an excellent, large vet clinic over here. I was lucky and was able to walk in, and get her checked out today.

Turns out that they're mild burns caused over an extended period of time, which in her case turns out to be her digging. Apparently she's taken a few too many naps directly on top of the UTH according to the vet. So when I got back, I replaced all the aspen and put a layer of newspaper down first so she can't get directly on top of it. In a way I guess I sorta blame it on lack intelligent research on my part. I went directly off the petco care sheet and like it's been pointed out earlier to me, the warm side needed to be a little warmer so she wouldn't feel the need to lay on the bare glass on top of the UTH.

Oh, guess I wasn't too clear on the bath thing. I find her in there about once every 1 1/2 weeks, and she's usually not in there any more than 10 minutes... She's just a weird little girl.