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back from the dead? what happened to Bella?

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Spishkey

Spishkey

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for the past 6 months we've had to little girls living with us, Bella and Banshee. a local independant petshop was closing down and asked me could i give these 2 girls a home or they'd have been put to sleep due to being unable to find a home for them. they'd been at the shop a long time (at least 8 months, nobody wanted them as 'the coat colours were too short and boring,everyone wants longer haired piggies these days')
so anyhow they came to us and all has been great, up until this morning, when i went to feed them i only heard one wheeking piggy, i peered under the houses and found Bella on her side, neck outstretched, eyes cloudy and wide open, i picked her up and she was cold and floppy.....and very 'dead' looking. i saw no breathing movements. she was the picture of health yesterday and it broke my heart to think id missed something wrong with her.

we were running a bit late this morning so i placed Bella on a bed of hay in a shoebox and put her in the garage ready for burial when i got home from work.


fast forward 6 hours, i come home from work and find the box upside on the floor, no sign of Bella. i though one of the pesky cats had somehow gotten in and took the body for a snack, then i heard a raspy wheeking coming from under the workbench of my hubby. there was bella...hunched up, not looking so great but very much alive! ive got her inside with me now where its nice and warm (the garage was freezing cold!) and she seems to be warming up, ive brought banshee out of the piggy room to join her and they're both munching on carrots at the moment......


so thats what happened today......now the question........what on earth could cause a piggy to look and feel dead? but not actually be dead? dont get me wrong I'm overjoyed that shes alive but am feeling rather freaked out by the whole thing..I'm 99% positive she had left us this morning...could she have had a fit? was seriously 'out of it.dazed?' or? has anyone experienced it before?
 
How well insulated and winter proof is their hutch? I am so glad she is ok, still worth a vet visit though i;d say.
 
That is a miracle. How wonderful she is alive. I think you should take her to the vet to give her a check up.
 
great news! but at the same time very freaky!
thank goodness your little girl is still with you!

i agree though, and would take her to the vets just to be safe :D
 
do you think she could have had something stuck in her throat maybe and its dislodged when you moved her.

maybe she was playing a game?

Whatever happened...welcome back miracle piggy Bella :))
 
thanks goodness you were running late and didn't bury her straight away.
I hope she's ok, she really is a miracle piggy.
I wonder if she was suffering from hypothermia, but not sure how putting her in a freezing garage would have revived her. Probably was something stuck in her throat and she couldn't breathe.
Poor little piggy x
 
the hutch is kept inside in my back kitchen so dont think it was too cold....I'm gonna go with the something stuck in her throat theory for now.....i cant think of any other explanation..... but then wouldnt she have at least been twitching or so? gonna get her down to the vets in the morning,
 
The only thing I can think of is a transient ischaemic attack (basically a stroke that resolves itself within a few hours). Perhaps she had severe weakness from it, and so couldn't move? She must have just been breathing very shallow. I agree with the other posters, definetly requires a vet trip! After all, we are all simply guessing...
 
Ohh-err! Thats bizarre, I've never heard of a piggie coming back to life (I have heard of stories about people buring their tortises when their in hibanation...) hope little Bella is okay I'm glad shes on her feet, hope the vet visit goes well!
 
How strange! I am glad she is ok though! :)
The same happened with a piglet at work, he went all cold and floppy in a childs arms and his heart wasn't beating. I panicked and ran out to the back with him to lay him on some hay and go and grab our animal manager. and after about 5 minutes he got up, grunted, and started walking around likenothing had happened!
 
Maybe she has a heart condition and when you picked her up, you some how jolted it back into rhythm?
 
This is brilliant news but now I'm worried in case I have buried piggies alive in the past :...
 
Can guineas get the same thing that Rabbits do thats called bunny flop? - only heard of bunny flop the other day from a girl who works a couple of doors down from us- she says its very hard for vets to diagnose .
 
my OH has worked with a lot of animals and he just said he's heard of hamsters doing the same, digging themselves out of shallow graves, but never piggies.

Weird, let us know what the vets opinion is spishkey x
 
I had a mouse that this used to happen to... we thought she was dead several times. She would be stiff and cold to touch. The only way you could tell she was alive was that if you stared at her you could see her breathing very, very, VERY slowly! We did take her to the vet and although there's not a whole lot of testing that they could run on a mouse, the vet's opinion was that she had some sort of seizure disorder. It happened repeatedly throughout her whole life, but she lived to be about three, which is a normal age for a mouse. We used to warm her up in our hands, and then when she got a bit more alert we would give her something sugary to eat. She would come around but it would take an hour or longer for her to be more of less back to normal.
 
I've occasion had an animal fit on me when very stressed. Marmaduke did it once after I split up a fight between him and Guiness and one of my chinchillas with a heart murmor did it a couple of times when I first had him when he got scared. They kind of twist their head to one side and slowly keel over - it's quite scary when it happens and they do look dead. But they have done it in response to something stressful and come round quite quickly.

Really glad little Bella is ok though.
 
How very strange. Would love to know what your vet says, have never heard of that happening before. What a little miracle she is.
 
I hope it wasn't the same with Barty, he had exactly the same symptoms and I had him cremated! :aLJFBQ00151070111C:
 
They don't cremate them straight away so if he'd of woken up they'd of called you. This sounds like a very unlikely event to happen to every pig so it really could be a little piggy miracal, keep an eye on her for a while. xxxxx
 
I had a similar experience with my gerbil Choey. I think she must have jumped on to the roof of her cage (they had a tank with mesh roof) then fallen and gone into shock cos she went floppy and very dead looking, i really thought Id lost her. But my mum wrapped her in a towel and warmed her on a heat pack and a few minutes later she was back to normal. No problems afterwards and she lived about another year after this incident and died at a good age for a gerbil.
Hope your piggy has no further problems.
 
This has really freaked me out, I am terrified I buried my beautiful Meg and she wasn't dead now. Please can you let us know what the vet says
 
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