LizzyHoy
New Born Pup
Hello, I would welcome any thoughts on this situation.
My female guinea pig Denise is 7.5 years old. A few weeks ago she developed a swollen infected area near her bottom. She also had some bleeding around her bottom. I got antibiotics and it was healing, and the bleeding stopped.
However last Saturday I went in to see her and she had bad problems with her balance. She went to get food and ended up with the front of her body stuck in the food bowl, and later ended up on her back and needed our help to put her the right way up. I have quite a lot of guinea experience (in general, not with this specific issue) and was fairly sure she was dying. I rang the vet and we decided it was best to leave her with her guinea pig friend rather than taking her in to the vet, and I went to pick up painkillers for her.
I was expecting her to have passed away when I got back from picking up the pain killers but she improved a lot by the end of the day and the next day she only seemed to have a limp. Over the past week she has varied between having a limp and occasionally falling over (although never as bad as it was on the first day). Her behaviour hasn't changed - she is eating normally and pooing normally. She doesn't seem sad, or aware that she's ill. She is losing weight though. I stopped the antibiotics after 2 weeks because the problem they were treating was better and I thought it could be causing her to lose weight, but she has been off them for a few days and is still losing weight. She also has a runny nose.
An odd thing that happened is her friend barbered her quite severely - she has a lot of bald patches at the back now - which was odd because this hasn't happened before in 7 years of keeping these two guineas. I briefly separated them but Denise seemed more sad about being on her own than about the barbering, so I put them back together. Denise is usually the submissive pig so I don't think it was to do with a hierarchy change.
From looking around online this loss of balance could be an ear infection but I wouldn't expect that to start whilst she was on antibiotics? So I suspect it is more likely to be a tumour or stroke. Given that those causes can't be fixed at her age, I have taken the approach that it's best to keep giving her pain medication and leave her with her friend (as I say she is behaving and eating normally). But I am starting to wonder if I should take her back to the vet? The vet isn't specialised in guineas - I did look up one that isn't too far from the list on this website but they aren't taking new referrals during the pandemic.
Also she had a hysterectomy for medical reasons many years ago so the cause won't be linked to her reproductive system.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts/experiences relating to this - I appreciate it!
My female guinea pig Denise is 7.5 years old. A few weeks ago she developed a swollen infected area near her bottom. She also had some bleeding around her bottom. I got antibiotics and it was healing, and the bleeding stopped.
However last Saturday I went in to see her and she had bad problems with her balance. She went to get food and ended up with the front of her body stuck in the food bowl, and later ended up on her back and needed our help to put her the right way up. I have quite a lot of guinea experience (in general, not with this specific issue) and was fairly sure she was dying. I rang the vet and we decided it was best to leave her with her guinea pig friend rather than taking her in to the vet, and I went to pick up painkillers for her.
I was expecting her to have passed away when I got back from picking up the pain killers but she improved a lot by the end of the day and the next day she only seemed to have a limp. Over the past week she has varied between having a limp and occasionally falling over (although never as bad as it was on the first day). Her behaviour hasn't changed - she is eating normally and pooing normally. She doesn't seem sad, or aware that she's ill. She is losing weight though. I stopped the antibiotics after 2 weeks because the problem they were treating was better and I thought it could be causing her to lose weight, but she has been off them for a few days and is still losing weight. She also has a runny nose.
An odd thing that happened is her friend barbered her quite severely - she has a lot of bald patches at the back now - which was odd because this hasn't happened before in 7 years of keeping these two guineas. I briefly separated them but Denise seemed more sad about being on her own than about the barbering, so I put them back together. Denise is usually the submissive pig so I don't think it was to do with a hierarchy change.
From looking around online this loss of balance could be an ear infection but I wouldn't expect that to start whilst she was on antibiotics? So I suspect it is more likely to be a tumour or stroke. Given that those causes can't be fixed at her age, I have taken the approach that it's best to keep giving her pain medication and leave her with her friend (as I say she is behaving and eating normally). But I am starting to wonder if I should take her back to the vet? The vet isn't specialised in guineas - I did look up one that isn't too far from the list on this website but they aren't taking new referrals during the pandemic.
Also she had a hysterectomy for medical reasons many years ago so the cause won't be linked to her reproductive system.
Thank you in advance for any thoughts/experiences relating to this - I appreciate it!
