I'm joining this site because I was on another one that told me I was a bad person for taking my snake to the vet. I got tired of everyone telling me that I didn't know what I was doing and taking her to the vet would just make everything worse.

I've never had a snake before, and know almost nothing about them. I got my little girl (a few months old) from a flea market, more or less. I took her to the vet because I haven't been able to feed her and she started looking quite awful. She (not sure if she's really a she) was getting so skinny that she had lines down both sides of her body.

When I took her to the vet he was very worried about her and said her condition warrented force feeding. He spent half an hour with me just looking over the snake and telling me everything he could. She weighed 52 grams and was slightly dehydrated.

Since then I have warmed the tank more, 97-87-80 degrees across the tank. I have two hides, and the humidity is around 60%.

I force fed her 2 times and now it's been a week since she last ate and I would like her to eat on her own.

I've tried a lot of feeding tricks, but so far I've not been able to get my hands on live pinkies/hoppers.