what is this

Question
hi,
I have a 4 year old guinea pig sow. I have relized in the past few weeks that she is loosing hair under her belly. as soon as i saw this i treated  her for parasites. This did not work, then i used some conditioning shampoo, reccomended by a vet. This did not help. The hair loss does not look inflames, swollen, itch or flaky. It just looks like it is thinning!. Then just this morning i rlized that all the water( which i filled up the night before) had all been consumed. I found this highly odd, because this is a BIG mount franklim water bottle. I refilled it and as soon as i put it back in she drank half of it in 1/2 an hour. and it was all gone by the time i got home from school. We have never brought her to the vet but we are planning to bring her first thihg tomorrow morning. ( as soon as i get home from work). What could this be. My mum is a doctor and she thinks it is diabeties. If it is diabeties, there will not much we can do becuase she is so old. And if she does have it, mum thinks we should put her out of her misery. please help.
maddy

Answer
Well your Mum could be very right. Apparently guinea pigs can get diabetes spontaneously.  It is not uncommon at all and it is treatable.

You will have to be willing to give her injections and follow a very strict diet for her.

She could also just be losing hair due to age. Some females have a genetic disposition to lose hair after breeding.

Here are some links I found about diabetes in guinea pigs. You should read these so you can discuss this with the vet tomorrow.

http://www.guinealynx.info/links.html#diabetes

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/178557

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1539852&blobtype=pdf

http://members.shaw.ca/patriciasimon/diabetes.htm

Be patient and calm about it even if your Mum suggests the unthinkable. You sound old enough to be treating your little friend at home, so I see no reason to treat her and make her comfortable. Your Mum being a doctor should make it all that much easier on both of you.

I hope this helps. Please let me know what you find out tomorrow.