With me, it is the moment of pick up that says a lot. Here I do not go out and play with the torts a lot during the day...I go in their space and offer any food supplements that I may have for them, I swish out their water bowls every couple of days (every day in the summer heat) and refill, I do stuff in their yards and also walk by them a few times each day....but the one thing that I do just about each day is the pick up..just a non invasive little lift up and right back down...if the tort makes me think, ah yeah...you feel heavy then he is all good, if there is even a moment where the thought of not heavy happens, I will offer up some wet type foods and offer up a drop into their water dish and gently run the hose over their shell and they usually will kinda just stay there while I walk away....then next lift check usually all heavy lifting (well, in relation to their size that is)...
I would imagine that tortoise has ingested some of that sand and that is never a good thing....eating some dirt or nibbling on a small rock and such is not the same as being housed on sand...sand gets stuck to everything eventually...I have had a California Desert Tortoise fully sand impacted, the prior person who hosted him finally gave me full access and control of what went on with the tort and I remember when I picked him up the first time, I thought something is completely wrong here...to look at the tort and to feel the tort did not match, he was only full of sand, and likely very little water intake because he had stopped moving, stopped basking, stopped participating in life..
