Neglected Beardie?

[55fingers]

I need advice, I'm really stuck on what to do about this.

So in 2017, my family adopted a bearded dragon from a friend. We were told the beardie was I believe an 8 year old(?) female named Dora. Her care was supposed to be a family matter, but often the responsibilities fell on my mother as she took a lot of ownership of her as her own, and she never asked anyone for help with it. Keep in mind, I was about 14 or 15 years old at the time and didn't know better of the responsibility of owning a bearded dragon. That being said, looking back at photos, Dora was in good condition; bright eyes, bright colors, mostly healthy skin, alert, well-fed, a little overweight from what I can tell, but she was overall pretty healthy.

In 2018 I started keeping snakes and was educated on reptile care for the first time (with much help of the people on here). I quickly realized that Dora was in worse condition than she should be after a year in our family. Her stools were being left for weeks, reptile carpet thrown everywhere, nails long and untrimmed, stuck shed, and her colors were a lot more grey than they had been. I didn't have a job, so I did as much research as I could, and had my mother agree to buy a couple items for her care (new uvb bulb etc). I completely redid her enclosure setup and educated my mother on some of her care.

After that, several times I had to deep clean and redo her enclosure setup a little since I would watch her go weeks without cleaning, and she was rarely ever fed. My mother would barely ever buy live bugs and never bought the right veggies for her. Her UVB bulb was never changed, she was never soaked, her overall condition never changed and only worsened. She was only ever fed snap peas, strawberries, and dandelion leaves from our garden in small amounts, once every few days or so. The only insects she was given were freeze-dried, and were given in excess, without any calcium or other supplements of any kind. I had no money, no job, no way to provide for her. The best way I knew I could help was by giving info and doing my best to deep clean her tank when needed.

In 2019, we went on a month-long trip and had a local reptile hobbyist store board her while we were gone. When we returned and went to pick her up, the owner of the store talked to us about the bad condition she was in, told us what he does to take care of his beardies, basically spelled everything out for us and pointed us in all the right directions. When I got in the car with my mother, I brought up the bad condition Dora was in. My mother, who does NOT take well to anything that even appears to resemble criticism, was extremely offended and defensive, claiming that "there is more than one way to take care of an animal" "she's still alive and doing alright so far" "I don't have the time or money to do everything perfectly" etc. I tried telling her that surviving does NOT equal thriving, but she wouldn't hear any of it. Finally I realized I would have to be straight-forward, so I told her that if she "doesn't have the time or money", to let me take Dora out of the living room and into my bedroom so I could properly take care of her and monitor what she was being fed. Basically I asked her to give her to me. She obviously didn't like this, we argued about it a lot, but finally she let me pretty much take ownership of her.

I spent my first ever wage from my summer job to redo her enclosure properly; replaced old gross reptile carpet with tiles, replaced year-old compact coil uvb light with a Reptisun 10.0, replaced unregulated heat bulb with a CHE on a dimmer, got her on a diet of greens, squash, live insects with supplements, and stressed variety in her diet when I could. Her condition improved, her colors were brighter, stuck shed stopped, stools looked healthier, she was more alert and active.

Let me note that, I am NOT a lizard person. I love lizards, they're adorable, but I have no compulsion to keep them, they are boring to me, I don't like dealing with insects, I am a snake person. There is no way my mother would have let us rehome her, and I still love all reptiles and didn't want to leave her to be neglected when I knew I could do better. During this time, instead of being thankful or happy for the lizard and the fact that her daughter spent her first wage fixing her mom's mistakes, she would continuously berate me for "taking her lizard away" and called me "lizard CPS". Let me also remind you that this lizard was literally just in the other room from her, and I told my mother she could come spend time with Dora whenever she wanted to.


In 2020, several situations led me to moving out of my mother's house and to my father's. I had hope and wanted to give my mother a second chance, so I gave all care of the Dora back to her. I left her with all the proper equipment, supplements, and had explained to her the diet she should be on, what temperatures and humidity she should be etc.

I have taken several visits since then and every time I'm over, I grit my teeth the entire time. She did alright with her for the first few months, but her care has completely gone down the drain since then. I have tried my best to just be passive-aggressive about it, I would ask her about her care and diet, give her pointers of what needs changed, I picked up insects at a reptile show for her and my mother said Dora loved them (which is probably because she hadn't been given insects in months) etc. But this last visit was the last straw for me, my heart breaks every time I see that bearded dragon. We had been quarantined with COVID going around and I hadn't been to my mothers in about 2 or 3 months, I didn't realize how bad her care had gotten and my tolerance has been worn down.

Basically, she is in what looks to be a 40 gallon breeder tank, I would guess she is about 8 inches long from nose to base of tail but I'm not sure. She has the SAME Reptisun 10.0 bulb that I bought in 2019! Which I believe are supposed to be changed every 6-9 months at MOST. They broke her CHE so she has an unregulated heat bulb. She has no thermometer or hygrometer. I have never seen her water bowl full, her food bowl is always empty. There was a bag of spinach sitting unrefrigerated on the top of her tank, no insects anywhere, no supplements. This was one of the rare times her tank was clean, but when I visit it's usually always got stool and old (sometimes moldy) food in spots on the floor. The tiles aren't sealed, I had them sitting on a paper towel and I would clean underneath them. I don't think they have been lifted ONCE since I left. Dora herself is completely grey, pale and dark, her eyes are sunken, she has stuck shed and is VERY wrinkly (dehydrated). I can't tell on her weight but I know it isn't good. She is also very lethargic, but she is also possibly 13(?) years old now so I'm not sure if that has anything to do with it. I'm also almost 100% sure she has MBD.

Needless to say, I'm completely furious. I did all I could to take care of the animal SHE wanted, only ever got berated for it, nursed it back to health then left her with all the resources to take proper care of it, just for her to do this. The poor thing is on its last legs already, it deserves to be taken care of for the small remainder of its life. I am honestly really surprised she is still alive as well, Dora is surprisingly resilient.

All this being said, I'm not sure what to do now and I need advice. Is this neglect enough to intervene and possibly destroy the little bit of civility I have left with my mother? And how do I best go about it? I basically have these couple of options now; Point out the neglect and ask her nicely to give me the bearded dragon (she will likely say no way), offer to BUY the bearded dragon from her (I am really hesitant since I don't want to REWARD her for the neglect), or, possibly call Animal Control (I have reasons to believe her other animals may also be neglected, but Dora is the worst and highest-priority case).

I really want to maintain the tiny bit of civility I have with her, also so I am not cut off from monitoring how she is treating her other animals or my siblings. Once I become aggressive I have less influence to help from the inside. And calling AC would completely throw that out the window, that would be the end of our relationship and would start a LOT of other legal drama.

What do you guys think? I don't think I can just ignore the neglect and suffering of a living creature. What do you think is the best way to go about this? I am not very experienced with lizards, but I am right that this is neglect, correct?