Penny's Med Thread

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Mon Dec 19, 2022 7:01 pm


That is good news! I'm sure you will continue to keep a close eye on her!

Annapox

Post   » Wed Apr 05, 2023 2:27 pm


Penny was doing great until last Sunday. On 3/1 I took her to the vet, who said she was very healthy but suggested I try her on Oxbow's digestive support supplement to help her stay healthy. I started her on that supplement on 3/29, and on 4/2 I discovered that Penny had lost 102 grams since the previous week's weigh-in. The timing was suspicious, and the next day when I took Penny to the vet we agreed I should try taking her off the supplement to see if that was the problem. So she hasn't had the supplement yesterday or today, and on both days when I weighed her I found she had gained weight. She's almost back to her pre-supplement weight. I'm going to keep weighing her daily at least for the rest of this week, but it looks like Penny has some kind of allergy or sensitivity to something in the digestive support supplement. Lesson learned: If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Wed Apr 05, 2023 9:50 pm


That is surprising. It might be helpful to let Oxbow know about this. You can emphasize that it may be unrelated or a coincidence but that you wanted them to know about your experiences. They might want to reevaluate their ingredients.

That said, I sure am glad she is doing well now.

Annapox

Post   » Thu Apr 06, 2023 12:30 pm


That's a good idea; I'll do that. I hope it's rare for guinea pigs not to tolerate the digestive support supplement well, but it would be good for Oxbow to know that something like this is possible.

Annapox

Post   » Thu Apr 13, 2023 2:24 pm


Oxbow has opened a quality insurance investigation. They've sent me a return shipping label so I can send them the bag of supplements for testing at a third-party lab, and an Oxbow vet is going to contact my vet to talk about his observations during Penny's appointment on 4/3.

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu Apr 13, 2023 8:44 pm


I'm am glad they are taking this seriously (hopefully this is not smoke and mirrors and they will actually do the testing and evaluation - you can see I am slightly skeptical but they ARE a reputable company that I believe operates in good faith).

I imagine they will get back to you with their findings. It may also be that the particular bag you got was contaminated.

Glad you contacted them.

Annapox

Post   » Fri Apr 14, 2023 10:56 am


I forgot to mention that an Oxbow representative also called me to get more detailed information about Penny's diet and symptoms and everything. They definitely appear to be taking this seriously, which I appreciate. But you're right that there's always a slight chance it's smoke and mirrors.

Annapox

Post   » Thu May 11, 2023 10:13 am


The results of the investigation are that there was nothing out of the ordinary about the digestive support supplement, so most likely it's just something Penny is sensitive to. I was also told that there have been no other complaints like mine about the digestive support supplement, so hopefully that means it hasn't caused problems for any other piggies. Oxbow is sending me a free bag of the Vitamin C supplement and a free chew toy.

User avatar
Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Thu May 11, 2023 10:48 am


Thanks for the update. I'm glad they seemed to take this seriously and got back to you with what they believed they discovered.

Annapox

Post   » Wed Aug 23, 2023 2:01 pm


Penny's walk has gotten more wobbly, and sometimes her back left leg sort of gives out when she walks, causing her to fall over. She also does a sort of army crawl to try to reach things without moving her back legs more than she needs to. Penny has needed baths on roughly a monthly basis for a while now because she gets poop stains on her butt, but for the last few weeks it's been more of a weekly thing. Conveniently, I first noticed all this (except the more-frequent staining) the night before the pigs' checkups, so I was able to talk to the vet about it the next day (8/14). (I saw a different vet than usual, and I got the impression she's new to treating exotics.) Of course Penny refused to walk during the appointment (we even tried bribing her with veggies), so the vet didn't get a chance to see the problem firsthand. She consulted with one of the more experienced exotics vets and put Penny on meloxicam for 7 days and gabapentin for 14 days.

I didn't see any change over the next week, and I started observing what looked like a tremor, so I brought her back to the vet (my favorite vet was available this time) yesterday (8/22). He said it was possible that the meloxicam had helped but that the improvement was being "masked" by side effects of the gabapentin (the tremor in particular could be a side effect). He did X-rays and determined that Penny has advanced arthritis in both her back legs, but not more advanced than he would expect of a guinea pig Penny's age (she's almost 7!). He didn't see anything else that would cause the symptoms I'm seeing. He took Penny off the gabapentin and put her back on the meloxicam (which she had finished on 8/20), and he also put her on VetOmega.

In addition to the arthritis, the X-rays showed some gas in Penny's belly (the vet said it was something to monitor but not yet something to be concerned about) and some sludge in her bladder. I am very nervous about the bladder sludge, because when Penny's previous cage mate, Rosie, got very sick and never recovered, it started with a giant, jagged bladder stone. I'm trying to figure out whether there's a way to decrease her calcium intake. Right now I feed her Oxbow Timothy hay (unlimited), Oxbow adult guinea pig pellets (1/8 cup), Oxbow vitamin C supplements (two biscuits), romaine lettuce (one big leaf or the equivalent amount in smaller leaves), cucumber (one slice), bell pepper (1/2 wedge (I cut along the grooves in the pepper to get a wedge and then give each pig half)), and grape tomato (one tiny tomato or half of a slightly bigger tomato). Is anything in this list problematic for a piggy with sludge in her bladder? Is there anything I should try adding?

I'm supposed to let the vet know in a week or two whether I see any changes in Penny's symptoms when she's not on the gabapentin. If I don't see any improvement, we will investigate the possibility of a neurological condition. The vet says Penny will probably always have some trouble walking from now on because of the arthritis. I did notice a tremor once this morning, but she's only been off the gabapentin for one day.

Penny's weight has been pretty stable, and she's still eating all her food and pooping (sometimes her poop is a tad squishier than usual). Her heart and lungs sound good.

User avatar
Sef
I dissent.

Post   » Wed Aug 23, 2023 8:02 pm


Reduced mobility could be making her more prone to sludge. How is her water intake? Her diet sounds reasonable to me, although I will say that some of our guys tended to have gritty urine when fed romaine lettuce. I don't really know why, but I had to stop feeding it. Maybe try switching Penny to green leaf instead and see if it makes any difference. You might also reduce the vitamin C tabs to one per day, unless your vet thinks otherwise, as they do have some added calcium in them.

Pushing fluids might help, too. For my stone- and sludge-prone pigs, I sometimes used multiple water bottles hung at different heights in different areas of their cage. If she's not a big drinker, watering down her veggies may be a good workaround.

I'm not familiar with VetOmega. Is it plant-based?

Annapox

Post   » Wed Aug 23, 2023 8:45 pm


It's difficult to measure her water intake since both pigs use all three water bottles. I can try to keep track of how much she drinks during the parts of the day when the cage is divided, though. Do you know of a good method of doing that? One of the water bottles is hung one square lower on the grid than the other two because I noticed Penny was sometimes struggling to reach the water bottles (she tries to do things lying down when she can, probably also because of the arthritis). I also lowered both hay bags when I saw her trying to eat out of them while lying down.

I can ask my dad (who does the grocery shopping for the family) to look for green leaf lettuce instead of romaine going forward. It was a previous vet (from before I moved to a different state for grad school) who recommended giving my pigs two vitamin C biscuits instead of one, just to be really sure they're getting enough vitamin C. One biscuit is the recommendation on the packaging, so I can go down to one.

I'm not familiar with VetOmega, either, but the ingredients listed on the bottle are: Cold Pressed Flaxseed Oil, Sunflower Oil, Pumpkin Seed Oil, and Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Mixed Tocopherols, Rosemary Extract, Turmeric Extract. Cursory Internet research suggests that Tocopherols are only found in plants and plant-based foods, but I'm not an expert.

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