Rocky's story starts with Papa Smurf. Papa was surrendered at a local pet store and was supposed to have another bearded dfragon surrendered at the same time, but the second dragon escaped before they could get into the car. In May 2012, 5 months later, Rocky was found in a shed and brought in. They took care of him until I could afford to get him a tank and lighting, and I picked him up on 5/14/12. He couldn't walk straight and flipped himself over onto his back repeatedly when trying to walk. Gentle rango of motion exercies and stretching helped, and just letting him walk on his own loose on the floor helped. He had a painful muscle-spasm that made him go into uncontrolled head jerks and he would give up eating when that would happen. Coaxing him to eat on his own was an every day routine for the first 4 months, until the twitches started to go away. He was given liquid calcium, AcidolphiLiz and liquid B vitamins daily and as the twitches started to subside I discontinued the B vitamins and AcidolphiLiz and reduced the liquid calcium doses to twice a week. Now Rocky can walk with just a limp, and he has a very small amount of residual stiffness on the right side that seems to be slowly improving. Because of his exertion problems and gasping with exercise, Rocky will remain a life-long resident at Sweet Dragons.
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