Dental Work But Still Not Eating

[Lynette09]

Hi, I am desperately seeking advice for my 4 and a half year old boy Keiko

Keiko had his teeth burred last Thursday and is still making the same head movements like something is stuck and not eating himself. He shows an interest in food (just went and picked grass and dandelion leaves out our garden which he loves) which he sniffed at but did not attempt to eat.

We have an appointment at a different vet in a couple of hours as I want a second opinion and due to our previous vets no longer having an exotic vet I want a second opinion on what is going on. This is the only exotic vet where we stay and I am hoping he certainly knows his stuff

Keiko has been syringe fed with recovery plus and water for just over a week now and had been on emeprid (but vet said when it ran out that it would be ok : / which I don't believe is right as Keiko is now not having poos and I know this is not a good sign. It is heartbreaking seeing him not himself and just wanting to lay around all day/night and it breaks my heart to think he is suffering still.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[Katherine]

Hi, I don't know whether this will be of any help, but one of our guinea pigs was making funny faces when eating and refusing to eat very much at all, and eventually (it was all rather complicated, due to her having other issues at the same time, so I won't go into the whole story) we discovered that she has something called molar root elongation in the mandible.

She was on 0.4ml of dog metacam twice a day for 2 weeks, and now she has 0.4ml just once a day, and is able to eat totally normally, takes her usual greedy interest in food, and is putting weight on again. The vet has advised us that she may need to be on it for the rest of her life, but apparently some guineas with this condition can learn to manage grinding their food without any pain relief, so we are going to cut the metacam down to every other day and see how she manages on that. The vet said that normally they do need it every other day with this particular problem

The vet took a conscious x-ray of our guinea's head, which was how she spotted what the problem was. We knew the teeth were fine. So it may be worth your vet considering whether there is something going on with the jaw.

I do hope you can get some answers. I know how desperately worrying it is when a guinea pig won't eat. Good luck at the vets, and do keep us updated.

 

[Lynette09]

Thank you so much for sharing your story and that's great to hear your Guinea pig is doing better.

The previous vet had sedated Keiko on Monday to get a good look at his mouth and said all looked OK and gave him Baytril for possible infection. They had found fresh blood at the back of his mouth on Sunday so wanted to look but said there was nothing there!

I took him back Wednesday saying I wanted him to have an X-ray and so they done it Thursday and found his teeth were like a ramp causing his incisors to not meet. She said she burred the front molars and mouth was even and looked healthy. And this time they said he had a wound on the side of his Tongue that was healing so surely that should have been noticed the 1st time.

I just feel that surely that X-ray should have been done when he went in the first time instead of giving antibiotics which is why I have gone elsewhere and hadn't realised the exotic vet had left.

We never had to use them over the years for anything like this and so I assumed he would still be under her care and that's who we had. She probably has done her best to her knowledge but need a more in depth vet for Guinea pigs.

My stomach is in knots for this appointment and what they may say and quite emotional today.