Marozia
New Born Pup
Hey, I'm so sorry if this is a novel, I'm new to the forum and quite worried and that's never good for my word count.
We recently acquired, from a small independent pet store with a *stellar* reputation, two "baby" (I think they said ~2 mos.?) guinea pigs to keep an older piggie company after her companion passed away at age 5. Everything went fine for the first week and then one afternoon, with no preceding falls, injuries, or illnesses, Gunther (she's a girl, my kids have a weird sense of humor) lost coordination of her body. When walking, she would sway her head back and forth like she was sweeping for mines or something, it was very strange, and she'd stumble, seem to lose her sense of orientation, when you set her down she'd flop and roll over, but otherwise didn't show any signs of being in distress -- she was eating, drinking, scampering about as well as she could, making happy noises when we fed her bell peppers, the works. It took three days to get a vet appointment, during which time she improved somewhat, falling over much less at least.
The vet confirmed that she did indeed seem to be a happy pig, and otherwise healthy, and he had no clue as to what the problem could be, ruling out the scary rabbit parasite and ear infection. He pointed out that her left eye would bulge out sort of, showing a lot of conjunctiva, but it would come and go; basically he said he was stumped and asked us to keep him updated because he was super curious about how it would play out. He gave us Baytril in case it might be something bacterial, but told us to hold off on giving it to her as long as she seemed to be improving, and otherwise just do what we could for her at home.
We got her home and for the next day all was well. Yesterday she took a turn for the worse, very quickly, and we got her out of the community habitat and into a smaller one, snuggled into a fleece and a bed and started giving antibiotics on schedule, hand-feeding and trying to give her water with the syringe at least once an hour.
At one point she didn't seem to be able to move her front legs at all, and for most of the past day she's had one back leg stuck out, occasionally jerking spasmodically. We were not optimistic; I didn't expect her to make it through the night. She did, but over the course of the day today she stopped taking water or eating or moving at all.
Until about an hour ago, that is, when she ate a fair amount of lettuce, half a vitamin C tab, some of the seed heads off her hay, and took water for the first time today. She was moving around more -- nothing spectacular, but she did hold a piece of hay in her back toes while she ate it! The stiff jerking leg is gone. We think she stopped eating not because she wasn't hungry but because chewing was wearing her out, so we're going to look into syringe feeding her.
I'm still not super hopeful, but I'm kind of surprised at the seeming recovery -- in my experience with animals that's not how the downward slide usually goes. I'm wondering if she might actually have a slim chance of pulling through? And does anyone recognize *anything* about the weird progression of symptoms poor Gunther has had?
We recently acquired, from a small independent pet store with a *stellar* reputation, two "baby" (I think they said ~2 mos.?) guinea pigs to keep an older piggie company after her companion passed away at age 5. Everything went fine for the first week and then one afternoon, with no preceding falls, injuries, or illnesses, Gunther (she's a girl, my kids have a weird sense of humor) lost coordination of her body. When walking, she would sway her head back and forth like she was sweeping for mines or something, it was very strange, and she'd stumble, seem to lose her sense of orientation, when you set her down she'd flop and roll over, but otherwise didn't show any signs of being in distress -- she was eating, drinking, scampering about as well as she could, making happy noises when we fed her bell peppers, the works. It took three days to get a vet appointment, during which time she improved somewhat, falling over much less at least.
The vet confirmed that she did indeed seem to be a happy pig, and otherwise healthy, and he had no clue as to what the problem could be, ruling out the scary rabbit parasite and ear infection. He pointed out that her left eye would bulge out sort of, showing a lot of conjunctiva, but it would come and go; basically he said he was stumped and asked us to keep him updated because he was super curious about how it would play out. He gave us Baytril in case it might be something bacterial, but told us to hold off on giving it to her as long as she seemed to be improving, and otherwise just do what we could for her at home.
We got her home and for the next day all was well. Yesterday she took a turn for the worse, very quickly, and we got her out of the community habitat and into a smaller one, snuggled into a fleece and a bed and started giving antibiotics on schedule, hand-feeding and trying to give her water with the syringe at least once an hour.
At one point she didn't seem to be able to move her front legs at all, and for most of the past day she's had one back leg stuck out, occasionally jerking spasmodically. We were not optimistic; I didn't expect her to make it through the night. She did, but over the course of the day today she stopped taking water or eating or moving at all.
Until about an hour ago, that is, when she ate a fair amount of lettuce, half a vitamin C tab, some of the seed heads off her hay, and took water for the first time today. She was moving around more -- nothing spectacular, but she did hold a piece of hay in her back toes while she ate it! The stiff jerking leg is gone. We think she stopped eating not because she wasn't hungry but because chewing was wearing her out, so we're going to look into syringe feeding her.
I'm still not super hopeful, but I'm kind of surprised at the seeming recovery -- in my experience with animals that's not how the downward slide usually goes. I'm wondering if she might actually have a slim chance of pulling through? And does anyone recognize *anything* about the weird progression of symptoms poor Gunther has had?
