Urgent Care :: help, turtle has not eaten for a week

[SpotsMama]

It is very painful to see. The instructions he came with are almost criminally inadequate.

[sacrilegious]

I'm sorry, that must be hard to watch him suffer, you really have been trying to advocate for the little guy.

thanks, ive been doing more since the last few weeks, but it is hopeless to this point

I really wish you would try baby food:chicken or turkey. It's already pureed so it would be easier to ingest and digest. And you can force feed via syringe, even watering it down a little to start him off with. It pains me to see him so weak and there's something that you haven't tried yet that is a CHEAP alternative. You have nothing to lose but 89 cents.

... read my previous posts in this thread right where you suggested it last time, as i have already done that and it has not worked. it even started at one point to look like throwing up and foaming from its mouth. of course all of this pains me too, what makes you think i would have just left this suggestion off to this point?

It is very painful to see. The instructions he came with are almost criminally inadequate.

it's bad, but i will say it is prolly worse for those who haven't cared as much and did their additional research, but again not much one can do about it, all these places care about is whether you buy them or not...


anyways im at the point where i know i can't do anything else. i talked to my herp expert associate of mine today, and he advised the same thing, as he told me the same thing about a few turtles around taht area of people who purchased them having RI symptoms too, some of a little worse cases. he was actually surprised i went this far and spent the $, whereas most people would prolly not give a damn. but anyway it's to the point where ive done all i can, and the two options i was told by him are to either let it pass on eventually, or to let it back into the wild while the weather is still moderately warm around my area, and bring them into a pond or lake or marsh area around my place. yes ive read the threads here saying it's a bad thing to do this... but to have to let it die and bury it again in my backyard like i did for my last one i really hate to do but would bring a closure to this, or letting it go into the wild where perhaps the natural habitat may give it a chance and it will find a way to survive again (though that would look bleak) and i will always be wondering about the turtle... whats the call?

[sillyleisl]

i dont wanna do anymore extreme or crazy stuff like Sillyleisl suggested even though that sounds cool
edit: ok i just talked to my vet and was suggested what sillyleisl said. attempt to give syringe of baby food, that must contain some meat, and feed a little bit to it.... maybe i will try it... its gettin really a pain to watch it seem weaker everyday...

I see now where you went back and edited your previous post (as opposed to the normal updates you've been doing...), but I still don't see where you mentioned that you tried it with no success. I am backing out of this thread though. Good luck to your turtle.

[SpotsMama]

If you put your sick little one in a wild place and some wild healthy turtle comes into contact with him, what do you think will happen? I'm afraid a whole population of wild turtles could be wiped out. Whatever you do, you must be sure that no other turtles come into contact with your little one.

I do not agree that he might have a chance in the wild. Conditions in the wild would be harsher than what you provide. How would he get food? Fall is coming on and the temperatures are dropping at night.

I'm very sorry it's going badly. You should take comfort in doing what you can for him. It's the right thing to do. He's a living creature after all and had no one else to help him.

[sacrilegious]

I see now where you went back and edited your previous post (as opposed to the normal updates you've been doing...), but I still don't see where you mentioned that you tried it with no success. I am backing out of this thread though. Good luck to your turtle.

... well yes if it was successful i most likely would have stopped with this thread and instead said it works i will nurse it back to health! but instead th is is all quite the opposite

If you put your sick little one in a wild place and some wild healthy turtle comes into contact with him, what do you think will happen? I'm afraid a whole population of wild turtles could be wiped out. Whatever you do, you must be sure that no other turtles come into contact with your little one.

I do not agree that he might have a chance in the wild. Conditions in the wild would be harsher than what you provide. How would he get food? Fall is coming on and the temperatures are dropping at night.

I'm very sorry it's going badly. You should take comfort in doing what you can for him. It's the right thing to do. He's a living creature after all and had no one else to help him.

im almost 100% sure there are no other turtles around where i live in suburban Toronto, even then that is of my last of worries cuz if that was the case the healthy turtle in this tank now may most likely be contagiously sick as well (though not showing any symptoms right now). Im not saying it will have a chance, but rather it's either do that (where it may have slim chance for whatever reason to fight this naturally) or keep witnessing it in the dish i have it in now or on the turtle dock for it to pass on. right now it is doing exactly what the turtle i had before it died. head is laid down, and after a few minutes it rises, crawling around, with its mouth wide open for about 10 seconds... i see absolutely nothing else i can do other than watch it suffer like this or solace of knowing it will pull through at this point... it's too much

and if anyone else knows if the healthy turtle could catch RI from the one i have now? that is my main worry at this point, wondering if i have to totally clean out the tank that both of them were in

edit: i am holding my turtle on my palm as we speak... i think it is as good as gone after a few more episodes of its mouth breathing and then falling its head back down

[steve]

Sorry to hear this. You gave him every shot.

[megcornell]

You need to clean the tank, the sick turtle never should have been kept with the healthy one, especially given just how sick he was.

[sacrilegious]

You need to clean the tank, the sick turtle never should have been kept with the healthy one, especially given just how sick he was.

i already spent the whole day changing everything. for the record i had nothing else to keep one or the other in a different tank or container without most likely compromising its health further more during the 3 week span, as in either no additional heater or filter or lighting

ok this is it, im sad to say after 3 weeks of all this, it's over. this afternoon i took the turtle to a lake area 5 mins away from my house, and placed it in a marshy area leading into the lake, with some baby food and i put a earth worm or 2 which prolly have already burrowed. i crouched there for 10 minutes looking on and yes i'll admit i was a bit teary... but at that point i had no choice as if it stayed in my white plastic dish either way it would have suffered thru this sickness either way. if i did the wrong thing, then please ask yourselves if you can look at another turtle in a plastic dish waiting for the inevitable again. it's almost a damned if you do damned if you don't situation. but the worse thing i can learn from all this, is the fact that uprooting them from their natural habitat and transporting them all the way from the U.S to Canada or somewhere far is what truly made them ill. but yet everyday this is going on, and not just turtles but many other exotic species are handled the same way, or you can say other shops not just around my area but all over the world they are mishandled, all for the sake of $. unfortunately today i find most of this world full of negativity, and something like this is no different. but in the end i guess the most positive thing i can get out of this was picking up all this info, and perhaps giving the turtle the best few months it could have had before falling ill to the stupid RI.... and hopefully it will be at peace once again with nature instead of its unnatural environment on my desk, and that no other species around the lake area will be affected significantly

whoever is in charge of closing threads, if you would like to do so for this one, go right ahead. maybe the healthy one that is living, hopefully i won't have to open up another thread in this section again, and just ask more general questions if i require. thanks again all

[megcornell]

I cannot believe you would put an ILL animal in the wild where it will come into contact with healthy ones. I have tried to be very understanding of you throughout this post, but that is just stupid. Just stupid. Don't give me that b.s about all the turtles, it's a sad fate that many of them meet, but that doesn't change a thing about what you did to YOUR turtle, which for the record is where you have control, that's the one turtle you could have changed, unlike the thousands being sold everyday. You (or anyone else for that matter) can't save all the damn turtles, but you could have at least let yours die in peace.

I really have been disgusted with the entire post. From your initial hesitance to take your turtle to the vets, which for the record was a mistake, to your dumping of his half dead body in some lake where the best possible outcome is that something will eat it before it infects any other reptiles around.

Pets die. Sometimes they are too sick to treat. That's life. You don't just dump a dying dog on a roadside to become a wild wolf. You just don't dump life anywhere.

[SpotsMama]

I'm very disappointed to hear that you left the turtle out in the wild after all. Even though RES are not indiginous to Canada other species of turtles are. It would be tragic if a whole population caught something from your turtle and died. Can you go back and get him?

The sad truth is that, even though leaving him out there keeps him out of your line of sight, it doesn't do anything to help the turtle. He's still experiencing the same thing even if you can't see it. The best thing, of course, for a turtle that is too ill to survive is to have him humanely euthanized. However, at this stage I doubt your little one will even survive long enough for that.

Please do try to go back and get him. I do understand how awful it is to watch him struggle but you've got to think about the risk to other turtles. You've done so well in taking him to the vet and trying to nurse him though this, please please go ahead and do this one last thing.

[DavidY]

SpotsMama tried to warn you earlier about the irresponsibility and the dangers of releasing a sick animal into the wild, but still you went and did it anyway. Why?? I don't understand why you come on this forum with questions, flagrantly reject wise advise and then come back and flaunt it. There is a very real danger of introducing a foreign pathogen into a local population that could potentially wipe out an entire species in that area. A simple example of this is what the european settlers did to some of the local natives with the common cold virus when they came to this country. Hopefully your mistake will not have that devastating effect, but how could you take such a risk like that??

[sacrilegious]

wow.. you know what lemme start by saying megcornell you are really !@#!, ok i get flamed initially ONLY BY YOU in this thread for apparently not doing the right thing and spending a tonne of $ (by hundreds i call a tonne) sounding as if clearly 100% of this is my fault, and not the constant mistreatment of thes turtles from the time they were uprooted from their habitat down in whereever your states have them, or whether the crap petshop owners get terrible husbandry conditions for them. so what i did to my turtle? yea im sorry i only spent the last 3-4 weeks after it got sick, my time, energy, $, just to try and save it. When can you honestly ask anyone else outside of this forum for that matter if they would have done the same? you know nothing about me, my personality, or how much i care whether it's for pets, my family, friends, other life, and if you were going to base it based on this thread, then you are full of it. let my turtle die in peace? so leaving it on a plastic dish in front of me while i type, letting it croak, and then occasionally crawl around for about 10 secs while it is gasping for air, you call that peaceful? you're calling putting a sick dog on the road comparable to a sick turtle on the most natural habitat there could be? that is some BS analogy... not even close. Hey guess what the last week i've been taking worms from a baitshop and cutting it in half, feeding pieces to my healthy turtle and throwing the other half in my garden (cuz there was too much)... so i guess that makes me a bad person cuz i have no regards for earthworms. Your flames basically from the start have been against me more because i did this to my "cute widdly tuurtle", and while ill take partial responsibility for a lot of this, why don't you look outside the box and at the real picture of why these turtles truly developed the sickness, instead of flaming me hardcore for doing the most i can

as for the other 2 posts above. like i said i've searched many threads here about the releasing of RES in wild and the bad things. but you people are not my only sources of whom ive dealt with RES before. first off as i've mentioned a million times here, i befriended a herp distributor associate of mine, who has dealt with reptiles (INCLUDING RES) for 10+... i repeat 10+ years. it was he who first suggested that at this point there was nothing i could do, and the choice was either to let it croak on my dish as i can't put in back into my tank, or release it around a lake area and let it go in peace with nature. if he were truly an idiot, do you think i would have taken his advice or even considered it? lemme ask how many years you guys above have dealt with reptiles, let alone turtles or RES? Have him euthanized? with what? an overdose of my Vit A solution i got from my vet? as far as risk to other turtles in the lake, my area as far as i know has no other known species of turtles, although my other point of knowing a friend whos had an RES long time ago, had 2 and 1 passed away. he ended up releasing it in the lake, and well down the months and years we were biking he said he recognized and saw it basking on a log. so whether thats truly a bad thing for other species around the lake, or unethical to that turtle, who am i to say at that time or now what is right or wrong. again if you wanna blame people, how about starting it with the smugglers and those crap pet stores like the chinese ones around my city that deal with these? i dont see many active threads pursuing the shut down of those places, where clearly that is the problem. DavidY since when did i reject any advice? i've done everything eventually what is suggested minus the releasing into lake area which apparently spotsmama only replied to.

anyway seeing as your 2 posts are of grave concern, i will check back at the lake area tomorrow, and if i find anything i will see if i can bring it back (dead or alive), and let it go hopefully for good, and unfortunately bury another one in my backyard... because apparently as megcornell suggests all of this is my fault *notice the small amount of sarcasm there

but as far as posting again here to let you know, im not even going to bother so you can assume whether i've 'done the right thing or not'. Like i said in my previous last posts i thank you all for concerns, and advice, for first timer with RES... WHO ACTUALLY CARED... despite what some of you believe or not. Admin seriously please close this thread this time, before i might be tempted to direct more crap at megcornell if she ever replies to this thread again.

[SpotsMama]

Sacrilegious, emotions tend to run high when such a painful thing is happening. I believe you truely cared and you went further than many people would have in trying to save your turtle. I'm so sorry it's turned out the way it has. I do hope you'll retrieve the turtle tomorrow and, after time has passed and emotions have cooled, think about it some more. Megcornell cares deeply about animals (she's chosen to be a vet for her lifes work), so it especially pains her when she sees something happen that isn't right.

Again, I'm sorry it's all turned out the way it has.

[megcornell]

Excuse you for your incredible ignorant and childish post, sac.
I did not blame you for the turtle's death entirely. I said your hesitance to seek medical attention was a costly mistake. It was. That was time that the antibiotics could have been working while your turtle was stronger and better able to launch a response. If you read my post, you'd see I said sometimes animals are too sick to recover, that's what happened here, given how things played out.
And as for attacking me personally. That was a mistake. I'll leave it at that. If you notice, not only did I offer you advice, and later condolences, but when I initially got fed up with your refusal to take your turtle to get medical help, I simply stopped posting because I had nothing constructive to say. I don't come here to fight, I come to give and take advice. Why don't you do the same?
My previous post indicated that I thought you made a mistake in putting the turtle in a lake to die. And I admit, I get tired of your tirade about all the poor turtles in the world, when you didn't even treat the one situation you could affect, properly ( I don't care what you say, what you did was WRONG, putting foreign germs in that ecosystem was risky, stupid, and what a wimp you are for not being able to let your turtle die at home where at least it was warm). I think you have seen others agree with me about it being wrong to release him, perhaps they don't feel as strongly as me or vocalize things similarly, but I'm not alone. If you want to justify your actions by saying that turtle was doomed due to it's upbringing, so be it, whatever helps you sleep at night. And do go ahead and attack me, it reconfirms my already poor feelings towards you. I never thought you were a bad person based on your care for the turtle once you decided to get care for it, but based on your responses to this thread, I have a hard time thinking you're a decent person.

And on that note, I'm done with you and this thread.

[Tenodera]

I'm with meg on this one.

I've been reading this thread and I really wanted to say some certain things, but I thought better and stopped.


You do realize you made mistakes, right? I'm not trying to overly criticize you but along as you realized the mistake you made, there's no need for any more fighting.