Well think of it this way, if you got sick with an illness that potentially could kill you and if left untreated would most likely kill you, would you want to go to the doctor or would you just line up some antibiotics, a needle and some answers from people on the internet that you have no idea their credentials. Then inject yourself with these antibiotics and see what happens. You might live, you might overdose and die, you might not cure yourself, who knows.
The thing is an animal in your care cannot say "im hurt" or "I need a doctor" or "im sick". They depend on us for everything. I think what most people are saying is if you are gonna buy an animal or even adopt/rescue one, be sure you can actually take care of it which involves vets. Buying the animal is actually the cheapest part of the whole process. Feeding, housing, maintenance, health care are the expensive parts but most people don't think about that.
I'm really not sure how you can say people are on a "high horse" by advising the OP to see a vet instead of trying to play doctor with medicine that he/she doesn't even know the dosage amounts much less whether it will even treat the problem. Baytril is very rough on an animals system so its not like something you want to just throw at them. Some animals take it better, while some take it much worse and some can even have adverse effects and can die from it. For one it kills pretty much all the gut flora aka good bacteria in the animals stomach so I hope the OP has reptile probiotic. It also dehydrates them very much as well as most of the time kill their appetite, upset their stomach and possibly cause lethargy in some animals. When I was giving it to my bearded dragon for enterobacter(vet did a culture), she took it pretty well but I had to syringe baby food to her, give her daily bathes and keep her extra warm as well as mix in reptile probiotics into her baby food daily.
So to the OP, don't think you are just gonna give baytril daily for 10-30 days and do nothing else because you will probably end up with a more sick snake than you got now and possibly worse if it turns out that the RI is from a virus instead of bacteria since baytril doesn't work on viruses. Anyways good luck.
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