Carrotyd
Junior Guinea Pig
Hello all. We've had our rescue piggie Bruce for about 18 months now, and he is four years old. Within three months of us coming to live with us, he started to suffer dental issues, which I posted about here. Our vet diagnosed overgrowth of the back molars, and he was treated promptly and made a full recovery. So much so, his weight rebounded to 1.3kg.
The problem, however, re-occurred recently (13 months exactly to the day), after we tracked a steady, not-quite-weekly- decline in his body weight, from 1.3kg to 1.238kg. So he underwent a GA and had his back teeth trimmed again, as well as his front incisors too (which he didn't last time). The vet diagnosed him with a mis-aligned jaw during the course of this procedure, which is what she thinks is behind his recurring dental issues.
In the immediate aftermath of the operation, he seemed to be bouncing back as before, but struggling a little bit with his newly-trimmed front teeth. We compensated by stepping in with syringe feeds and chopping his vegetables into long spaghetti type strips, which he seemed to find easier to deal with. We gradually scaled back the syringe feeds when we noticed he was maintaining his weight at around the 1.240kg with relative ease all by himself.
He has still been struggling with picking things up; particularly his dry food, and over the last couple of days seems to have been finding it increasingly difficult to pick up his veggie strips too. He has also been hiding in his tunnel during meal times, so I've been coaxing him out. He'll have a sniff about before attempting to eat some bits but soon gives up again. His weight, consequently, has dropped down to 1.185kg, yesterday (as per his weekly weigh-in), and I've started up the syringe feeds again accordingly.
I had a look at his front teeth this morning and one of the top two is longer than the other, so not sure if that's behind it or if they trimmed them so far back last time he's still waiting from them to grow back in fully so they can be 100% operational and of use to him again. Any advice or experience gratefully received.
Needless to say, he is - of course - booked into see the vet first thing tomorrow morning, but - yeah - interested to hear from people far more experienced in the ways of guinea pig dentistry than me about what they think.
The problem, however, re-occurred recently (13 months exactly to the day), after we tracked a steady, not-quite-weekly- decline in his body weight, from 1.3kg to 1.238kg. So he underwent a GA and had his back teeth trimmed again, as well as his front incisors too (which he didn't last time). The vet diagnosed him with a mis-aligned jaw during the course of this procedure, which is what she thinks is behind his recurring dental issues.
In the immediate aftermath of the operation, he seemed to be bouncing back as before, but struggling a little bit with his newly-trimmed front teeth. We compensated by stepping in with syringe feeds and chopping his vegetables into long spaghetti type strips, which he seemed to find easier to deal with. We gradually scaled back the syringe feeds when we noticed he was maintaining his weight at around the 1.240kg with relative ease all by himself.
He has still been struggling with picking things up; particularly his dry food, and over the last couple of days seems to have been finding it increasingly difficult to pick up his veggie strips too. He has also been hiding in his tunnel during meal times, so I've been coaxing him out. He'll have a sniff about before attempting to eat some bits but soon gives up again. His weight, consequently, has dropped down to 1.185kg, yesterday (as per his weekly weigh-in), and I've started up the syringe feeds again accordingly.
I had a look at his front teeth this morning and one of the top two is longer than the other, so not sure if that's behind it or if they trimmed them so far back last time he's still waiting from them to grow back in fully so they can be 100% operational and of use to him again. Any advice or experience gratefully received.
Needless to say, he is - of course - booked into see the vet first thing tomorrow morning, but - yeah - interested to hear from people far more experienced in the ways of guinea pig dentistry than me about what they think.