Allie's Story

Four years ago, I rescued a bearded dragon lizard named Alice. Alice turned into Allie. Allie was a sweet bearded dragon lizard. We didn't know her approximate age so we were told she was seven to nine months old. While I didn't have enough information on her, I dived right in to a world I didn't know anything about bearded dragon lizards. There is a lot of conflicting information about them and due to that conflicting information, I didn't know if I was doing everything right. When I asked her previous owner about what she ate, she told me to look it up and that was it. I went website to website, looking for information, looking for things she would need for a happy long life with me.

Bearded dragon lizards aren't great starter reptiles. What happens to them when they don't get the right care is they can get something called Metabolic Bone Disease, or MBD. It curves their spines, kinks their tails, and makes their bones very brittle. It is very painful to them. There are some ways to tell if there's MBD in a dragon and that's through an X-ray. It is due to lack of calcium and sunlight, which we need to provide. There are other illnesses and diseases if we're not careful. There is atadenovirus which is called a star-gazing disease or wasting disease. Once a colony of bearded dragons get it, it's often a death sentence for them, and yellow fungus disease, which is very contagious and is often a death sentence. There are treatment options available for yellow fungus and adenovirus. It's not cured, but treatment is possible. Allie was not the healthiest bearded dragon. When I first got her, she had a bacterial infection which was treated right away. Then I noticed that every year, Allie would become sick with respiratory infections. It would happen when the seasons changed, and it didn't matter whether or not I had used alternative heat sources at night, used a huge pillow in her tank to keep her off the ground at night with a heat source, and even warmed her up daily. She was as normal as can be when it was spring, summer. No respiratory infections whatsoever. Every time she'd have her examination at the vet, she would become sick.

There was no telling what was wrong with her because everything checked out normal. The vet said she was healthy and didn't look sick. Well, I guess something was happening inside I didn't know about because with three years, she developed a lump on her chest which worried me. A lump meant something was very wrong. I even used a medicine for her lump, but it didn't go away. I went ahead and took her to another vet. They did a test to see what it was. They aspirated it and found it had multiple bacterial infection cells. Instead of an antibiotic or treatment, they scheduled a surgery to remove the lump. They removed the lump and it healed nicely. By December, she was sick with a respiratory infection so severe, she needed medicine. She cleared up right away. Everything was going good for Allie. Bearded dragons hide parasites, sickness, and anything that may get them hurt in the wild. The same goes for them in captivity. I didn't know if Allie was hiding it all this time, but I had to believe that she was hiding something.

Then in January of 2015, she developed a fungus on her belly. I struggled day and night with her. In February, I asked for a visit and the vet refused because I still owed a balance from her surgery. In March and April, I struggled to save her life. Then in May, a few days before my birthday, she passed away. Later, I learned that the vet's office allowed her to run around the desk and on the keyboard before the surgery. I was so mad and wrote them a long lengthy letter. The vet apologized to me. When Allie passed away, she took a huge piece of my heart with her. It was so hard seeing her tank empty and the harsh truth of what it may be made me think I would have to throw all of Allie's items away! The tank was salvaged and thoroughly cleaned with ammonia and hot water and then bleach and hot water. I scrubbed the tank top to bottom. Shortly after Allie died, a breeder of bearded dragon lizards began to talk to me about having one of hers. I was alright with giving a new bearded dragon lizard a home. A new baby needed a Mommy. Well, on April 15, 2015, Mr Maya was hatched. In June, I went to get Mr Maya. To say in the least, I never expected a baby bearded dragon and I was worried I would fail in his care. But- that's not true. He has grown from the size of my thumb to a full grown 19 inch big bearded dragon lizard with a lot of personality.

He was into everything when he was a year old. He even tried to eat a wild caught beetle and it wouldn't even fit into his mouth. This was when he was outside, on the ground, in his new makeshift harness.

The picture I have taken is the first real viable truth that angel animals exist. The picture below is Allie and Maya. The camera lens was clean that day and ever since this picture, Allie has shown up in many different ways. Not only that, she has also given me pennies, dimes, and nickels every day.

Allie and Mr Maya