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Info Ashley Caspillo-SakaraGT4/Sakara *Possible Buyer Beware!*

i woul agree 100% i wouldnt rehome them if you know they have IBD or coul possibly have in IMHO... you get them into a home for good.. then that person either has or gets more boas or pythons... then it is passed to their snakes and they all die..... i would not be happy what so ever.. you would be doing the snakes more good by putting them down.. a lot less pain for them.....
 
Kyle,

I can't say I blame you for not wanting to euthanize your snakes. However, they have definitely been exposed to some shoddy care, mites, and possibly IBD and whatever else Ashley may have floating around in her collection. Meanwhile, she's actively trying to get MORE cheap/free snakes, so there's no telling if she's been successful.

I'd make HER pay to test them. She certainly seems to be able to afford tattoos, piercings and has been actively looking to acquire more snakes. She has the money.

Kyle, you've been too nice for too long. This is ridiculous. She was responsible for your snakes while in her care. She's LOST several snakes, including one of yours, I hear. There was not full disclosure of the health of her animals.

This is a serious problem that can't be taken gingerly.

YOUR snakes SHOULD have been tested FIRST, and she should have paid for it.
Hers could have waited.
Although I think it's safe to say, she has not had her snakes tested AT ALL and she's lied to you.

If she didn't want to pay to have your snakes tested, I'd try to follow whatever legal protocol I could to recoup my losses. Small claims?
I mean, yeah it's time and money, but unless you are prepared to just cut your losses and let her have the snakes and cages, that's about your best option if you want to be able to move these snakes to other homes in the future.
Otherwise, you would be just as reckless as her to try to rehome them knowing their background.

The other option is to figure out a way to get them home with you, and do what you can to keep them separate from my existing snakes, even if I had to sell/rehome the current collection, or have someone take care of them temporarily.

This is a very serious situation, that I feel should be handled as such. There's no way to be sure the snakes would end up staying long enough in homes and not being bred right off the bat, to rule out any potential issues.
 
I appreciate everyone's concern on this matter. As I said I only asked this person about re-homing/adopting out, I did not say that I went through with it. He informed me like the rest of you that he's uncomfortable rehoming them because of their history. We can go around until we're blue in the face saying what *should* be done, but in the end what's done is done. I can only think of solutions to the problem from here on out, it doesn't do me/us any good to keep restating the problem.

My snakes have not been tested. I will not pay to have them tested. I will also not receive them back into my apartment until either Ashley's snakes are 100% clear or my snakes are 100% clear based on biopsy and/or blood tests. I also will not shoot myself in the foot by selling off my carpets and Amazons or loan them out to someone else EVER AGAIN, not even for a breeding loan.

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty in this country, some of us may have forgotten that judicial right. While there's evidence to support that Ashley's snakes have IBD, there's not data to actually support or deny that conclusion. Small claims court in TX is up to $10,000 so that is a viable option if it comes to it. Ashley and I have come to an agreement about my missing chondro and the holdback hypos produced last July. The further resolution of this situation still remains a private matter between Ashley and myself.
 
Well, I realize you think this all to be a witch hunt. I can tell you with complete certainty, NONE of the info provided regarding the Necropsy indicating IBD or Ashley's own posts regarding mites and lack of quarantine, her lies about the breeding status and temperment of the reticulated python, or the subsequent deaths and losses in her collection were invented. They were all pulled from her OWN posts. It's pretty damning evidence, IMO.
The fact she has NOT bothered to make restitution to anyone WITHOUT a large degree of coercion from the community, and has not been forthcoming with ANY information is also indicative of guilt, IMO.

She's also illegally keeping, and has bragged all along about how all her snakes are legal, in a locked room, in locked cages, etc and so forth. IF that is the case, how has she lost Phoenix (the almost 4foot boa) and your Chondro and at least one other snake to escapes?

And yet she STILL continues to attempt to obtain more from cheap sources.
Sorry, call me a biased juror, but I see guilt stamped all over this.
IMO it's been the biggest cluster fudge EVER. It's been handled poorly since the original BCL died, and it's just progressively gotten worse.
 
She either needs to pay for your snakes to be tested or pay for new snakes of equivalent value.

Anything less and you really do need to take her to court.

Then again, even a blood/biopsy coming back negative is not a guarantee of health, because the last I heard Dr. Jacobson hasn't developed the antibody test yet?
 
Court, I'm not denying that the BCL had IBD. It's plainly documented on the necropsy report.

Yes Garret, therein lies one of the problems. It would months to get all her snakes tested fully because multiple tests are required to completely rule out the presence of IBD.
 
Thomas, It's been a year almost since I dropped off my snakes to babysit. I only found out about the issue in December, when this thread started, so half a year has passed. Short of taking her to court all my stubborness and repeated requesting to get her snakes and my snakes tested has not got my snakes or her snakes tested.

Garrett - Having a blood test and liver biopsy performed (roughly $650 x 8 = $5200) on my adult snakes would be more than what the current market price to replace them would be worth ($1200 approximately).
 
And that ~$5200 is only for one batch of tests for the eight individuals, no? Well it seems that it would behoove her to simply replace your animals and keep the exposed ones for herself and her twisted motivations? Perhaps better than euthanasia, but then again, her collection is hardly "closed"...
 
Of course she has offered to pay half of testing, but didn't offer to reimburse me for current market value. I had asked to be reimbursed for full purchase price of my investment snakes, but upon checking my emails I apparently had not asked for current market values. We'll see what happens.
 
I don't believe that is an unreasonable request. I certainly can understand where you would prefer to go that route financially, but I'm sure the decision isn't a pleasant one to make.
For what it is worth, I do sympathize with you, Rachel & Elizabeth and however many countless others are facing this sort of uncertainty with their animals.
 
At risk of straying off topic a bit, who is the one that said blood and liver is all that is needed? When I got my testing done, it included live arthroscopic biopsy of liver, kidney, stomach, heart, spleen and skin, as well as blood for histology work. It cost me $385 per animal JUST for the arthroscopic biopsies, then several hundred more per animal for the testing done at Northwest ZooPath. All in all, my testing ran pretty close to a grand per animal, although to be fair, I didn't go with the minimal testing route, I went the route that would produce the most accurate answers.

Am I to understand that they've come along in their understanding of IBD enough to only need blood and liver samples for testing? The blood test has been around for a long time. It's called a buffy coat, but it's considered inconclusive if the inclusions are not detected as present in the cytoplasma of the white blood cells.

Just curious as it seems to come up a lot.
 
Dr. Jacobson informed me his PhD student has developed a test that will stain the IBD pathogen in blood samples. From http://www.vetmed.ufl.edu/college/departments/sacs/research/InclusionBodyDiseaseVirus.html:

Recently, we have isolated inclusions (Figure 10) from a boa constrictor with IBD and, using hybridoma technology, have produced a new anti-IBDP MAB that stains inclusions in paraffin-embedded tissues (Figures 11). This MAB is currently going through rigid testing and validation. We are also validating a blood based test using IHC staining.
Click to expand...

This new prelimenary test will show quickly if IBD is present in the snake's system. If the test does not show the IBD pathogen, then he recommended doing the biopsy. The blood test through Dr. Jacobson's lab is $100. I said $150 since you'd still have to get a vet visit to have the blood drawn, so I estimated $50 for the vet visit. I misunderstood the biopsy test then. I thought it was only liver tissue, I stand corrected.
 
Just thought I should let everyone know that I received a cashier's check from Ashley today.
 
Almost a year later ... kay.

What is it for though?

Can you get some of your animals tested?

Did she compensate you for the animals she has ruined?

Is it for the animal she lost?

Just curious. When you have to twist someone's arm until its out of the socket to get them to do something, it should be something worthwhile.
 
Yes, this payment is in compensation for my snakes that were potentially contaminated, and investments unrecoverable. As far as I am concerned the matter between Ashley and I will continue to be resolved in private from here on out since an agreeable arrangement has been reached for both parties. Thanks

I still don't see where "a year later" keeps coming from. I learned of the positive IBD results on the BCI same as everyone else in December 2010. Now it's June 2011, that's only 6 months.
 
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