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For those of you who didn't know, @Impulse and I had mixture of both regular pets, special needs animals, and rescue animals. We started off just getting pets, but when we saw had the means to take in animals that had been abused or required special care, we started making accommodations for those.
Because we no longer have the finances to continue doing this, we asked our friend who owns a pet store if he could take them in. He came over this morning and was able to take our bearded dragon, blue tongue skink, starry night reed frogs, White's tree frog, and our crested gecko.
We're not too upset about this because what's important to us is that we made a difference in the lives of these animals, some of which would not have had a very long or nice life. We've been struggling for many years now, so we're happier just knowing the animals can go to people who can properly take care of them.
For those of you who don't know much about the animals we had, here are examples of some of the rescue and special needs animals we took in over the years:
Because we no longer have the finances to continue doing this, we asked our friend who owns a pet store if he could take them in. He came over this morning and was able to take our bearded dragon, blue tongue skink, starry night reed frogs, White's tree frog, and our crested gecko.
We're not too upset about this because what's important to us is that we made a difference in the lives of these animals, some of which would not have had a very long or nice life. We've been struggling for many years now, so we're happier just knowing the animals can go to people who can properly take care of them.
For those of you who don't know much about the animals we had, here are examples of some of the rescue and special needs animals we took in over the years:
- Chuck: we had a Burrowing Parrot named "Chuck". These are medium-large parrots that require a lot of space, but his owner left him in locked in a ridiculously small cage that we wouldn't even put a hamster in for over 20 years. He had plucked out all of his feathers due to stress and had issues trusting others. We took him in, and since he was flightless now and only walked on the ground, we got him one of those Critter Nation cages for him to live in. Over time, we tried seeing if he could give a cageless set up with a perch, but he was never able to adapt to this. He ended up passing away last year.
- Phil: our Bearded Dragon we initially thought was male, was one of the rescue pets we rehomed today. The day we got Phil, we were at a Petsmart just getting supplies when we noticed a very small, malnourished Bearded Dragon with part of its tail missing. The people who work at these chain pet stores ironically don't know much about animals, but we didn't chastise the workers, we just got the Bearded Dragon and took her home. She struggled to eat anything and also had metabolic bone disease (at one point, severe enough that she was stargazing and becoming unresponsive), so @Impulse spent weeks nursing her back to health. We had Phil for about 3 years and she was very small for a Bearded Dragon, but became very reactive and enjoyed hunting.
- Buckbeak, our Green Cheek Conure, is one of our special needs animals. We didn't rehome this one because our parrots are too attached to us and that can devastate a parrot for life. We were given this Green Cheek Conure for free because, shortly after he was born, his father bit his beak and toes off.
- Baby: after the cat, the first pet we brought home was our budgie, Baby. This was just meant to be a pet, but we noticed that over the first year we had him, he wasn't developing properly and became very thin and lethargic. He also started getting very cold, which meant I often had to stay up several nights trying to keep him warm in my hands. We took him to two different vets who said, "Oh, he's fine, just a little thin", but we knew something was wrong with him. Eventually, I checked him over myself and noticed what seemed like a tumour near his proventricular. There was only one good vet that I knew of, but it was all the way over in Corona, California, which is about 2 hours away from us. We called them and were able to bring him in the next day, and the vet, a man named Dr. Bart, was spot on with all of his testing and managed to diagnose him with Proventricular Dilatation Disease caused by Avian Bornavirus. It's something he was likely born with, but only manifested symptoms a bit later. It's something typically only seen in large parrots, although we were told that it's fairly uncommon for people to notice these issues with budgies and bring them in on time to get diagnosed. Baby is prescribed medication for life that we give him every morning, but he's very happy all the time, enjoys showers, and he can even talk! He also swears a lot for some reason.
- Bugs: some of you know about my Bengal cat, Bugs, but did you know this was another special case? She was given to me by an animal rescue agency in the area about 10 years ago now. They found her wandering around at a local country club. Apparently, some people were nice to her and fed her, but some of these rich pricks would try attacking her with their golf clubs, according to the workers at the country club. She has behavioural issues with other people and growls like a dog at them because of this, which has scared people who came over to our house in the past, including a family friend I paid to check in on our house back when I was out of the country in 2019. According to the house sitter, she said that it was "Very scary, because I'd walk in and refill her food and water bowl, but the whole time I was there, all I heard was a loud growl. It was just coming out of the darkness (our house was very dark inside back then).
