Showing my age with this one.
Over the course of 30 years, I have kept 16 bearded dragons. Some were breeding animals, some were rescues, and the others were beloved pets.
Gorbash was one of those beloved pets.
He was a stonking great, bright-red, hypo-something-or-other male bearded dragon. He was big, beautiful and named after a character from the animated film The Flight of Dragons.
The film took inspiration from Peter Dickinson’s 1979 book of the same name. It wasn’t a traditional narrative, but a work of speculative natural history presenting the wonderfully pseudo-scientific argument that dragons might once have existed. It explained their biology, their flight through hydrogen-filled gasbags, the chemistry behind breathing fire and even their behaviour, using an entertaining mixture of logic, science and mythology.
The animated classic arrived in 1982—showing exactly how old I am—and turned those ideas into a sword-and-sorcery clash between science and magic.
With dragons.
My favourite of those dragons was Gorbash. And so, many years later, one of my favourite dragons was named after one of my favourite dragons.
Bash, as he affectionately became known, was quite a character. He was one of the largest bearded dragons I had ever personally seen, yet remained remarkably even-tempered—even when other dragons were within view.
When I adopted him, he was already two years old and fully grown. He had no development left in him, and that wasn’t a negative. What I saw was what I was getting: an enormous red dragon with the build of a small paving slab and an expression suggesting that he had already formed several opinions about me.
He was slightly chunky. Not so overweight that he had developed additional chins, but not so lean that you could clearly see his hip joints either. More exercise and a few decent climbing opportunities should, I thought, set him straight.
I also set about training him because, despite being accustomed to the presence of people, Bash had very little experience of actually interacting with them. He had been pretty to look at, so he had mostly stayed inside his vivarium and been fed periodically.
With me—and particularly with the children—there was very little chance of that continuing.
He would be handled, spoken to, carried around and inevitably recruited into some entirely invented game devised by my two youngest children. Within reason, that was fine. Interaction was encouraged, particularly with bearded dragons, because they are among the more observant and responsive reptiles commonly kept as pets.
People often describe this responsiveness as bonding. Whether a bearded dragon experiences a bond in the same emotional way that a dog or a human does is far more difficult to prove. Reptiles have spent considerably less time being studied than mammals, and we should be careful not to turn every calm behaviour into a declaration of undying love.
What bearded dragons can certainly do is learn.
Research has shown that they are capable of social learning, remembering routines and solving surprisingly complicated problems. Through repeated, positive interactions, they can become familiar with a particular person’s appearance, scent, movements and voice. They can learn that one human brings food, another offers warmth and another has an irritating habit of examining the contents of his nose.
Over time, fear can be replaced by familiarity. Familiarity can become trust, and trust changes behaviour. A dragon that once flattened itself, darkened its beard or fled from an approaching hand may eventually remain relaxed, climb willingly onto that same hand or actively approach when the enclosure door opens.
Is that love?
I don’t know.
But it is recognition, choice and trust—and when those things have been earned from an animal that has absolutely no obligation to give them, “bond” seems as reasonable a word as any.
Training Bash
The training I undertook with Bash was, initially, quite straightforward. I would perch him on my shoulder, offer him a wiggly treat to reinforce the aforementioned perching, and then wander around with him for a while.
It seemed to do the trick.
He learned faster than any other dragon I’d ever kept. This was promising.
Next came some simple out-of-the-vivarium work. I would open his vivarium door and offer him another wiggly treat. Bash was fantastically food-driven, like most beardies, and food was always the win.
The wigglier, the better.
Bash quickly came to realise that when his vivarium door stayed open, he was free to wander out. He would spend a couple of hours tottering around the room or being carried about by me or the kids before eventually returning to somewhere warm.
One evening, after a particularly trying day at work, I opened Bash’s vivarium so he could have his usual wander. He would probably inspect the floor for any wigglers that might have miraculously materialised, climb onto the sofa and then fall asleep there.
I carried on with the housework—washing up and the like—and then I had a thought.
Many years earlier, I had read about a bearded dragon that would come when her name was called. Ironically, I can’t remember what her name was.
Bash was a quick study. He certainly wasn’t as dim as some of the other dragons I’d kept over the years.
Could I teach him to do it too?
Or was the whole thing merely an anecdotal story invented by the same people who dress their dragons in tiny wings and insist that the dragons love it?
How to Train Your Dragon
I started simply.
I would kneel on the floor with Bash a short distance away, call his name and show him a wiggly treat at the same time. I repeated this consistently over the next two weeks, gradually moving farther away until there were approximately two metres between us.
Then it was time to put the whole thing into practice.
I knelt about a metre away and called his name—this time without producing any food.
Bash responded.
He looked at me suspiciously and wandered off in the opposite direction.
Not discouraged by this entirely unexpected turn of events, I continued the training for another four weeks.
It amounted to absolutely nothing.
As sharp as I believed Bash to be compared with some of my other dragons, he apparently neither understood nor cared what I was trying to teach him.
Every time I called his name, he looked for my hand. If no wiggler was forthcoming, neither was he.
Damn.
Foiled again.
What’s the Point?
That question is really the point in itself.
What was the point of trying? Was the point simply to try? Or does it lead us towards a much bigger question:
Why do we keep these animals at all?
The answer depends entirely on whom you ask.
Breeders? Some do it for the money. Others do it to preserve a species, develop a particular bloodline or simply discover whether something can be achieved.
Rescues and charities? They give unwanted animals a second chance. There are few nobler reasons than that.
Children? Many lose interest once the novelty wears off. A smaller number become completely captivated and remain reptile keepers for the rest of their lives.
The naturally inquisitive? Almost always hooked.
Often obsessively so.
Most people simply want to give a strange and beautiful animal a good home for life.
People like me?
For us, it’s probably a bit of everything.
Penny and I have rescues. We have animals we’ve rehabilitated, animals nobody else wanted and animals that are simply beloved pets. We also have breeding animals that help to pay their own way.
Whatever brought us into reptile keeping, the responsibility remains the same: we should offer every animal the best life we possibly can.
Good breeders take exceptional care of their animals. So do responsible rescues and rehabilitators. Then there are the children who never lost interest, the relentlessly inquisitive and people like Penny and me.
Different beginnings. Different motivations.
The same goal:
To see the animals in our care thrive.
And Bash?
My Gorbash lived to the grand old age of 11. He passed quietly in his sleep on the evening of 12 September 2022.
For the nine years he lived with me, he was as healthy, contented and magnificently stubborn as I could possibly have hoped.
I’ll finish this article in the same way I honoured Bash when he died:
“Blade with whom I have lived, blade with whom I now die, serve right and justice one last time. Seek one last heart of evil; still one last life of pain. Cut well, old friend, and then farewell.”
If you know, you know.
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