Adeno Thoughts

So Tracie,

We can all do the standard 5th grade nitpicking for another 200 pages or you can end this now. I do believe we all have much better things going on than to do this again.

A) I was mislead, here is the "unofficial results" email. (posted with headers) I should of never posted her negative status on my Society page without confirming her status with official results in hand. I made a honest mistake. It will never happen again. I AM SORRY.

B) I lied, she never emailed me the "unofficial results" I made that up to protect her. I trusted her and thought she was a friend. At the time we spoke on the phone, out of respect for her since we had emailed several times & she said she would email me or mail me the results, I honestly thought that she would. She has been beat up enough here so giving her the benefit of the doubt is what I had intended to do until she proved me wrong. I fully expected to receive those results. So oh well. I honestly don't know if she ever tested. Maybe we will never know unless she ever comes out with it. I tried & gave her a way out. It did not work out. There is nothing I can do about it. No one can say that I didn't try.
IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. I AM SORRY.

Denise is not testing this year. At the time we spoke on the phone, out of respect for her since we had emailed several times & she said she would email me or mail me the results, I honestly thought that she would. She has been beat up enough here so giving her the benefit of the doubt is what I had intended to do until she proved me wrong. I fully expected to receive those results. So oh well. I honestly don't know if she ever tested. Maybe we will never know unless she ever comes out with it. I tried & gave her a way out. It did not work out. There is nothing I can do about it. No one can say that I didn't try. Besides, she never said that her tests were conducted at the U. of Florida anyway. Where did you ever get that from? I wanted to protect her privacy, & she may have tested. If you all harrassed her vet like she claimed, then, personally I don't blame her for not releasing them to me or to anyone else. You all have a way of mobbing people. Tracie

Tracie, you set PATS (yourself) up as an independent/unbiased 3rd party, willing to verify negative AV results for the general public. Many people depended on you to provide them with accurate information concerning the validity of test results belonging to those breeders listed on the PATS website. You, by your own admission above, fabricated and discussed with Tammy negative test results from one of the breeders.
You, as an active, trusted member of the bearded dragon community lied about the verification of another’s results. You were expecting the results - yet you posted on the PATS website that a breeder tested negative - but did so without verification.

You have failed.

PATS now has a new meaning - Pogona Adenovirus Testing Scam.


Although adenovirus is believed to be widespread throughout the captive population, that does not mean that a small-scale negative tested colony cannot be maintained. I think that both sides of the “adeno argument” were actually looking forward to this information - with multiple verified tests to back it up.

The reality is, most dragons are positive - including ours. The theory of adeno-viral exposure means that just 1 positive dragon in a colony = all dragons within that colony have been exposed. They are all considered contaminated - until proven otherwise. There is currently no testing method available which will identify a negative dragon; therefore any dragon that has had direct or indirect contact with a positive tested animal is presumed to be positive. (I say “presume” meaning - to assume as true in the absence of proof to the contrary.)
For us, in order to even entertain the idea of maintaining a negative colony we would have to dispose of all of our animals, burn our cages, throw away all of our bins, lighting equipment, supplements, etc… essentially move our whole facility from our home to elsewhere and pray that we can find long-term, negative tested dragons. It is not going to happen. Certainly not when our animals are healthy and thriving.

On the other hand, we believe it is possible that a small, closed collection may continue to test long-term Av negative. If you have a small colony and are undertaking the challenge of eradicating adenovirus from your collection - we have a proposal for you. This is a serious offer and we have no time and/or patience for games - ALL information will be verified and made available for public perusal.

-- Provide 3 negative EM results (which we will verify) on each of the adult dragons in your colony taken over the course of 6 months to a year. Each animal must be identified for individual sample results. We’d also like to see 1 group sampling of 4-8 week old babies tested with negative results. If 1 EM returns positive results, we will confirm with a PCR to determine if a mistake was possibly made. (+ PCR result means you’re +, - PCR result means continue EM testing.)
-- We will then cover the cost of 3 PCR tests throughout the following year - at intervals of our choice - ‘mid’ and ‘end’ breeding season, when their systems are taxed. 2 PCR fecal samples must be collected by your veterinarian through a cloacal wash. The 3rd PCR is to be collected from the latter clutches of offspring. We do require open communication with the breeder and their veterinarian and will gladly pay the veterinarian for services rendered.

This is not only an opportunity for someone to achieve multiple negative results - both EM and PCR… since in the end, we will all gain some information.

You want facts? We all want facts. And I don't have them for you. What I have is my experience and what has worked and what has not worked FOR US. I have never at any time claimed to know more then anyone else, we are normal people with a love for these dragons. Have we made mistakes along the way??? Heck yea we did, but we learned. Will we make more mistakes? Well not if I can help it but I can't predict the future either, I'm sure we will.

We have dragons on two floors in our house now and I can tell you what works upstairs isn't what works downstairs and vice a versa. In the same house we have to have different conditions on different floors. Go figure, this is something I learned the hard way. Our dragons in the basement did awesome, they were always bright eyed and more active then the ones we kept upstairs. But we didn’t notice it until we built a room and moved dragons downstairs. Well months went by and even though we clean our cages very well multiple times a day things were happening and we didn’t notice. Well most people know that almost everything we read is that dragons come from arid regions. Arid meaning dry. Well something that I have really never thought about was humidity until I spoke with some friends. Our dragons upstairs were dehydrating. They were misted a few times a week and fed multiple times daily with very mixed diets, yet they were still dehydrating and having shedding problems. Well with advice from some people we checked downstairs and we were running at about 53% humidity while upstairs we were running about 20%.

Husbandry, this is what husbandry is. It is a very small part in the grand scheme of things but it can have detrimental effects. Because of our ignorance we risked damaging our dragons. But does it change anything that we didn’t know? Of course not, we screwed up and put our animals lives at risk. We listened to people that knew more then we did and we made the changes that we needed to make. Well months or more our dragon upstairs look like a million bucks again.

My question now is this, If I had come on a group asking for help because my dragons upstairs weren't looking 100% like they should, how many people would have asked about our humidity level? If I was a betting man, I would say that I would get pounded with questions weather or not we test for Adeno. If we had lost a dragon during this time I have no doubt that Adeno would have been blamed. Look people things happen and we learn and move forward. Our colony now consists of 40 adult and sub adult dragons. A heck of a lot of things can go wrong quickly. Just like the bacteria in the hornworms that was mentioned earlier. I was asked if I recognized the symptoms, the truth is, No I didn’t. When we did it was to late. We have a fantastic vet that understands our needs, he comes here when and if we need him. He comes here on social visits, he calls if he is stumped on another patient. What happened to our dragons happened so fast it was unbelievable. If I had noticed something a day sooner, would it have changed anything? Possibly, I don't know. One female was in the dirt digging to lay eggs when she was effected (or when we noticed signs), 12 hours later she was gone. Another one ate in the evening, she was also pregnant, the next morning her eyes were sinking in to her head, that night she was gone. The same day we saw the same signs on another gravid girl but we were able to get her to the vet, she died in his office and he then took her and posted her that night. Want to talk about scared? The worst part was we had no idea who was going to be next. When symptoms were shown it was to late. Maybe there were earlier symptoms that we didn’t catch. I could believe that with the first two. Every dragon we had was examined. While this was happening our vet gave us baytril because he didn’t know what it was but he did figure it was bacterial issues. We dosed many dragons in panic. Now again I'll ask, being that Tracie was quick to point out that I was trying to hide something. What would anyone here have done? Our pets were dieing and we were scared to death and had no answers early on. Was I supposed to come on here and beg for help? I have a very qualified Vet who was already on the job.

My point is, I have no doubt that our dragons are positive for Adeno, we lost 4 gravid females and a yearling male plus eggs from other girls that were treated with baytril. Why did it kill these dragons and not all of them? If one or two are positive, they all are positive, they all have it from in direct contact. Maybe their systems were compromised because the girls were all gravid and the one male had literally just come up from brumation. Instead Sandy was so quick to decide that their systems were compromised due to AV. My dragons are healthy and robust. They were poisoned and had compromised systems due to being gravid. Do I have proof? No, but neither does Sandy to support her theory. Maybe things could have ended up differently for our girls, we will never know and as heartbreaking as that was, we're still here.

No one knows everything, we try, we get knocked down, but weather you decide to stay down or get up and move forward is what gives you the power needed to keep moving forward and succeed.

There you have it Sandy. I hope you got what you were looking for.

Jeff

Originally Posted by Lynn

01-20-2007, 07:38 PM I am so sorry to hear about your dragons..My heart goes out to you..I had all mine tested a few months ago..All tests came back neg.

Wow,
I wonder if Lynn of Lynn's Bearded Dragons would be interested in your offer? She did test negative, and is a long term, experienced breeder. I don't know how large her colony is though, but might be worth asking her if no one steps forward. It would be nice to see a actual long term study done and posted for all to see. Exciting.....

Pogona Adenovirus Testing Scam. LMFAO!!!

You guys are awesome! What an unbelievable offer! They don't get any better then the two of you. I want to personally say Thank You for all you do!

Originally Posted by draggintails

Let me bring up old blood for explanation as much as I hate it: Denise did not have PCR tests, any samples pulled by Studio City Animal Hospital. SCAH has not sent in one bearded dragon adeno sample...(please, please confirm this) Dr. Stacey (U of FL) was so intrigued with Denise's statement on the forum that they called SCAH. "There is no Denise Latanzi in our database" "No, we do not do that testing at our hospital" Dr. Flanagan/owner/Studio City Animal Hospital.

Call Dr. Stacey or Dr. Jacobson and ask him about his conversation with Dr. Flanagan..he will be happy to speak with you about it. Also, there has been no barrage of phone calls to that hospital as much as one would like to claim, that is a smoke screen. Pick up the phone Tracie, these are professionals who will be happy to speak with you about this and correct false information.

Just to refresh my memory. Didn't she state the tests where done somewhere else? Thanks.

Jean,

Sure, if you know her please tell her. This offer is open to anyone who breeds on a small scale...

Originally Posted by Dennis Hultman

Just to refresh my memory. Didn't she state the tests where done somewhere else? Thanks.

Dennis,

Denise posted the name of her vet hospital as Studio City Animal Hospital, and that her vet was a female. Dr. Flanagan is a man.

Denise at first didn't know the name of the lab that her vet sent the tests to (what normal person would), and once she contacted her vet's office, she reported that her vet told her the tests were sent to Cal Avian Lab.

I may be misremembering this part, but I think she also stated that Cal Avian had outsourced those tests, but she didn't know where.

Edit: I posted that her vet is a female, I think, after several people referred to her vet being Dr. Flanagan.

Anyone can call Studio City and find out that they don't do testing in their facility, that is true, but Cal Avian does do PCR testing via private veterinaries. As Tammy has said more then once, make a phone call!!!!