Any guinea pig owners out there? I need some advice. Other pet owners are welcome to chime in as well.
We have a guinea pig who will be 6 years old around Thanksgiving. Around the middle of July I noticed she was losing hair in a few places around her rear end and hind legs, and her skin in the bare spots was looking sort of rashy or patchy.
Doing some investigation online, it looked an awful lot like the pictures I saw of a mite infestation, except for the fact that she didn’t seem to be scratching at all. I thought it might have been some kind of irritation from a new brand of aspen bedding I was using, so I switched back to what I had used in the past and waited a couple of weeks to see if it went away.
When I didn’t see any improvement I made an appointment to see the vet. The vet put some medicine on her head behind the ears for mites (just in case, even though she also agreed that the no scratching was a good sign). She also gave me some antiseptic mousse to put on the affected area daily, thinking it might be something like a staph infection, and told me to check back in a week.
I called back after a week to report no improvement, and she decided to refer me to another vet with more experience with guinea pigs. Second vet did a thorough exam and decided that it was either an endocrine/hormonal issue (she said she sees this sometimes in older piggies that have not been spayed) or possibly some sort of lymphoma of the skin. After doing a sonogram and seeing a cyst on the ovaries she confirmed it was hormonal and recommended having her spayed.
My wife and I discussed it and so far have been leaning against having her spayed. For one thing, she doesn’t seem to be in any discomfort from the condition. Also, her being almost 6 years old, she probably has less than a year left anyway, and we worried about her having to deal with the surgery and even the possibility of not coming out of the anesthesia. And of course the cost (around $200) is also a factor.
The problem is, piggy is losing more and more hair. It has spread to the stomach and also creeping up her sides. I’m afraid in a few more months we’re going to wind up with a completely hairless guinea pig. So now I am starting to second guess the decision not to have her spayed.
I guess I could learn how to knit and make a little piggy-sized sweater for the coming winter!
Sounds like you’ve done all the right things, kudos for being a good pet owner!
Personally, I probably wouldn’t opt for surgery. Rodents don’t do well under general anesthesia, and, as you said, six years is a fairly advanced age for this species. If she’s otherwise healthy and happy, being bald isn’t that big a deal, IMHO.
And: the skinny pig is a hairless breed of guinea pig, so there are certainly bald piggies out there! I think their care is the same, apart from providing soft bedding and maybe feeding a little more to help them maintain body temperature. Obviously, yours isn’t bald for the same reasons, but their care needs would certainly apply to your pet.
I wouldn’t do the surgery. It sounds like she doesn’t mind her condition. And with her age, there’s a very real chance of serious complications. Does she have companions? If so, are they treating her okay?
The vet did do an ultrasound and found the ovarian cyst(s), so I’m pretty sure that is the issue.
Another thing that concerns me is something I saw on the ovarian cyst page (http://www.guinealynx.info/ovarian_cysts.html) which says that cysts can grow to be extremely large and can possibly burst. Which is another reason I’m reconsidering having her spayed. But I kind of feel like I’m in a damned-if-I-do, damned-if-I-don’t situation here.
Side note - I love the Guinea Lynx site. I’ve had it bookmarked for years. Lots of good information there.
filmore, she is our last surviving piggy, no cage mates. Her mama died back in January.
I once had a young and healthy guinea pig die shortly after surgery to remove a growth, probably anesthesia-related.
At your rodent’s age, I wonder if the risk of surgery outweighs the potential benefit. A knit sweater sounds nice, especially if we get to see pictures.
Part of it, ironically, is because I was setting up a cage for our new guinea pig, whom we adopted yesterday evening. His name is Tyson, which is short for Eat DeGrasse Tyson.
I thought the picture posting rule only applied to cat threads.
Here is an older picture of mama piggy on the left and baby piggy (the one who is losing her hair) on the right. Yeah, we’ve been really creative with the names.
As I mentioned upthread, mama piggy died back in January so baby piggy is our only one now.
Bumping with an update, although not a very happy one.
So, my wife and dithered for about a week trying to decide what to do. Meanwhile the hair loss was getting worse, and the stuff about the cysts bursting sounded extremely unpleasant, and we decided maybe it was best to risk the surgery. After the Labor Day weekend I called the vet to make an appointment. The soonest they could get her in was Wednesday 9/16.
Unfortunately over the weekend she took a turn for the worse. She seemed OK on Saturday afternoon – I had taken her out of her cage so I could clean it, and had given her some leaf lettuce to snack on, and she chowed down on it like she always does. After dinner Saturday I tossed in a small baby carrot for her to gnaw on. Sunday morning, when I went to feed her her morning lettuce, the baby carrot was still in the cage with just a couple nibble marks on it, and she just sniffed at the lettuce and turned away. That’s when I figured the end was near. I tried to give her some food and water several times during the day but no luck. I honestly didn’t expect her to make it through the day or overnight, but she was still with us this morning. We decided the best thing to do was to take her to the vet and have her put to sleep, so that’s how my Monday morning started.
The vet checked her out before euthanizing her and noticed she had fluid coming out of her nose and she said it sounded like she had pneumonia or a respiratory infection. So we agreed it was pointless to try to save her.
Almost six is a pretty good age for a guinea pig to get to. I’d like to think she had a good life with us. When I get home from work tonight I will dig a hole in our flower garden and put her next to our other two piggies that have gone before her. RIP Baby Piggy.
I’m so sorry. But you sound like a great parent and gave her the best life she could ever have. I’m sure she’s going to think heaven is just ho-hum after being with you.
n/m, shoulda read the whole thread before posting. She had a wonderful life with you.
They’re prey animals and used to hiding discomfort, so when they go downhill, they can really do it quickly :(.
Our first pig had gone downhill and died when they tried sedating her to check some things out. Our second, we did have euthanized after several trips to the vet, and hand feeding, failed to help. That pig had never liked me, but I still got sniffly holding him in the waiting room. Allergies, I tell ya, allergies.
The other 3 passed peacefully in their cages at home.
Yeah this one was the hardest of the three. Our first one just died overnight one night (of old age I guess). I found her in the morning when I went to feed them. (That was the same day as the Sandy Hook shootings, so just a crappy day all around.) The second one died somewhat unexpectedly during a visit to the vet, right in the middle of the exam. But this one, watching her quickly decline and feeling pretty damned helpless about it, that was rough. But she’s better off now, hanging out with Big Piggy and Mama Piggy in piggy heaven.
