Hi, our guinea pig started having some eating difficulties around the start of June, just eating slowly and opening her mouth wide, almost looking like she was yawning and clearly having something irritating her in her mouth.
We took her to the vet, who advised us that it was likely her back teeth and did a quick filing and told us to see how she got on. She improved a bit and then all of a sudden got much worse, would struggle to eat anything and was trying to scratch at her mouth each time she ate something, like she couldn't chew and then food was getting stuck in her throat.
Anyway we took her back to the vet who said they'd need to anaesthetise her to do some more serious dental work. We were told that the back teeth were not meshing properly and were glancing off into her cheeks, causing the discomfort, these were filed down. Sure enough once done she got better very quickly and put on a good bit of weight in the next weeks until suddenly over the weekend, we noticed she was struggling slightly again, which has got progressively worse until today when again, she basically can't eat at all. We've been hand feeding the last couple of days and syringe feeding her some vitamin powder.
My question is, how can this happen? She's around 2 and a half years old and never had eating problems until around the end of May this year (our other pig has no problems at all). She was then absolutely fine for 4/5 weeks after her dental work and eating plenty, a good mix of hay, dried food and fresh fruit/veg and grass as usual. She's kept indoors and we spend a lot of time with her and she's not done anything differently the last 2 months that we can tell, would suddenly bring this on.
Has anyone else had this, where a perfectly healthy pig suddenly has dental problems which then recur? Can we expect this to continue to be a problem that needs fixing every month to six weeks? If she needs to have dental work so often under anaesthetic, then I'm worried she's not going to last long as this procedure is risky and stressful for such a small animal.
Thanks for any help in advance.
We took her to the vet, who advised us that it was likely her back teeth and did a quick filing and told us to see how she got on. She improved a bit and then all of a sudden got much worse, would struggle to eat anything and was trying to scratch at her mouth each time she ate something, like she couldn't chew and then food was getting stuck in her throat.
Anyway we took her back to the vet who said they'd need to anaesthetise her to do some more serious dental work. We were told that the back teeth were not meshing properly and were glancing off into her cheeks, causing the discomfort, these were filed down. Sure enough once done she got better very quickly and put on a good bit of weight in the next weeks until suddenly over the weekend, we noticed she was struggling slightly again, which has got progressively worse until today when again, she basically can't eat at all. We've been hand feeding the last couple of days and syringe feeding her some vitamin powder.
My question is, how can this happen? She's around 2 and a half years old and never had eating problems until around the end of May this year (our other pig has no problems at all). She was then absolutely fine for 4/5 weeks after her dental work and eating plenty, a good mix of hay, dried food and fresh fruit/veg and grass as usual. She's kept indoors and we spend a lot of time with her and she's not done anything differently the last 2 months that we can tell, would suddenly bring this on.
Has anyone else had this, where a perfectly healthy pig suddenly has dental problems which then recur? Can we expect this to continue to be a problem that needs fixing every month to six weeks? If she needs to have dental work so often under anaesthetic, then I'm worried she's not going to last long as this procedure is risky and stressful for such a small animal.
Thanks for any help in advance.
I am sorry to hear your little one is having problems. What is her name?
