u/yossariannotsorry

I made a pretty avoidable series of mistakes today and I want to document them so someone else doesn't spend three hours crouched over a hole in their backyard negotiating with a lizard.

First, what I did wrong. I took my beardie outside for the first time with no real enclosure, no plan, and apparently no understanding of how fast a scared reptile can disappear into a hole. I figured a kiddie pool would contain him, especially if I brought some roaches out for him to chase. (Bear in mind, he doesn't even really like being held by me.) I let him out onto the kiddie pool, poured the roaches out, and he ignored them, leapt over the pool wall, and immediately bolted deep into an old vermin hole under a concrete pad at the edge of my yard. The gap was maybe an inch and a half. He is not an inch and a half thick, which is how he got in, but he was too scared to come back out on his own.

Lesson one: first outdoor exposure should be in a secure enclosure or on a harness. Full stop. The backyard is not a controlled environment and a stressed beardie will find the one place you absolutely cannot reach him.

Now, here's what didn't work: food, patience alone, gentle prodding, mild pleading.

What worked: a basking bulb positioned near the entrance of the hole. Beardies are cold-blooded and will move toward heat instinctively. Once I got the light close to the opening, he started creeping forward on his own over the course of about an hour. I paired it with a clear plastic container lit from inside positioned at the exit so he'd have somewhere warm and enclosed to move into. When he was far enough out I trapped him in the container by flipping it up once he was in it directly under the basking light.

He was stressed and covered in dirt. A lukewarm shallow bath for about 15 minutes calmed him down slightly and cleaned him up. Water should be shallow enough that he can stand comfortably. Pat dry, get him back under his basking lamp in his enclosure, leave him alone for the rest of the day to let him decompress.

Don't take your beardie outside unsecured. If you do and he disappears into a hole, don't panic and don't flood it, don't try to grab him aggressively, and don't hover. Get a heat source to the entrance and give him a reason to come out on his own. They'll move toward warmth. Use that.

He's fine, albeit a little more leery of me. I'm fine, albeit a little more aware of my own capacity for stupidity. We're not doing that again.

I made a pretty avoidable series of mistakes today and I want to document them so someone else doesn't spend three hours crouched over a hole in their backyard negotiating with a lizard.

First, what I did wrong. I took my beardie outside for the first time with no real enclosure, no plan, and apparently no understanding of how fast a scared reptile can disappear into a hole. I figured a kiddie pool would contain him, especially if I brought some roaches out for him to chase. (Bear in mind, he doesn't even really like being held by me.) I let him out onto the kiddie pool, poured the roaches out, and he ignored them, leapt over the pool wall, and immediately bolted deep into an old vermin hole under a concrete pad at the edge of my yard. The gap was maybe an inch and a half. He is not an inch and a half thick, which is how he got in, but he was too scared to come back out on his own.

Lesson one: first outdoor exposure should be in a secure enclosure or on a harness. Full stop. The backyard is not a controlled environment and a stressed beardie will find the one place you absolutely cannot reach him.

Now, here's what didn't work: food, patience alone, gentle prodding, mild pleading.

What worked: a basking bulb positioned near the entrance of the hole. Beardies are cold-blooded and will move toward heat instinctively. Once I got the light close to the opening, he started creeping forward on his own over the course of about an hour. I paired it with a clear plastic container lit from inside positioned at the exit so he'd have somewhere warm and enclosed to move into. When he was far enough out I trapped him in the container by flipping it up once he was in it directly under the basking light.

He was stressed and covered in dirt. A lukewarm shallow bath for about 15 minutes calmed him down slightly and cleaned him up. Water should be shallow enough that he can stand comfortably. Pat dry, get him back under his basking lamp in his enclosure, leave him alone for the rest of the day to let him decompress.

Don't take your beardie outside unsecured. If you do and he disappears into a hole, don't panic and don't flood it, don't try to grab him aggressively, and don't hover. Get a heat source to the entrance and give him a reason to come out on his own. They'll move toward warmth. Use that.

He's fine, albeit a little more leery of me. I'm fine, albeit a little more aware of my own capacity for stupidity. We're not doing that again.

Hey, y'all. Is there anything wrong with the fact that my daughter's bearded dragon never uses his hides? He has a warm-side and a cool-side hide, the warm-side is resting on a flagstone floor and the cool-side is a burrow with an 8-inch substrate floor (mix of 40% soil, 30% sand, 30% excavator clay.)

At night, he seems content to pick a random spot of the enclosure to sleep, either on a branch or against the wall vertically after climbing some of the backdrop. But ever since I built the enclosure, he hasn't once tried either of his hides. I think he *once* went into his warm-side hide to briefly look around and then came back out within seconds.

His hides are both to proper spec, with a 6" wide and 4-5" tall opening that leads into a 10-12" diameter hide with an internal height of 6".

He is very active, constantly running around his enclosure or alternately basking on his perch stone. He is about three to four months old and seems healthy?

Dulce surveys his empire.