Floppy paws

Question
Hi,
I recently discovered a problem with my male gerbil Meep, who's a year old.
He has very large front and back paws, which over the past month have become very floppy. As far as i can remember his paws havn't always been as big as they are. He's eating and drinking as normal, although is very wobbly when he moves around and hunches alot. He isn't able to hold cardboard when he chews it, tends to slide around whenever he's handled as he has very poor grip, and he can't move around if we put him in a ball to run around the room in. Earliar today i saw him fall off one of the decks in his tank after completly losing his balance.
I've kept gerbils for ten years, but i've never encountered a problem quite like this before. Any advice or help you can give would be very much appreciated =]

Answer
Hi Liz,

It sounds as though he he is having a problem with balance and control, this could be caused by something like a middle ear infection which would need medical treatment of antibotics to clear. It may be a stroke (don't panic gerbils are amazing at recovering from these), or a very rare cause could be a tumour. However, it may be none of these which is why i would advise going to the vets to have this checked out!! I hope he is ok, let me know how he gets on.

Charlie