Did we do the right thing?

Question
QUESTION: Hi Andy,

I am hoping you can shed some light on what happened to our guinea pig Oreo.

The Back Story:
About a year and a half ago we rescued our guinea pig Oreo from my son's daycare.  Oreo had been at the daycare for at least a year possibly two years prior to our rescuing him.  Oreo was not being cared for properly, was very jumpy, and nippy.  No one liked Oreo.

My son loved Oreo.  The thing that bothered me the most about Oreo's care was that the daycare staff would leave Oreo over the weekend and not feed him.  As far as I am aware they didn't even check on him until the next business day.  Needless to say over a long winter holiday weekend we volunteered to take Oreo home to care for him and he has been with us ever since.

Once Oreo came home with us he settled out nicely and did not bite.  Oreo has always been itchy and we attributed the itch to the wood bedding the daycare used.  We switched Oreo to a recycled paper product bedding and this seemed to help.  The itching never really stopped completely.  

Recently Oreo developed impaction problems and seemed to be itching more than usual, so we took him to his fist vet appointment on 6/27/2007.

The vet informed us that Oreo had lice.  She wanted to do a skin scraping and give him an injection of Ivomec.  Since this seemed consistent with what we had read on Guinea Pig Linx, we agreed to let the vet treat Oreo.  

The vet also told us that Oreo was in perfect health but that we were feeding Oreo the wrong food (Kaytee fiesta) and this was leading to his impaction problems.  She recommended taking him off his current food and giving him 1 CC of mashed pumpkin a day for one week.  Then putting Oreo on timothy hay and at most 1 teaspoon of his original food each day.  We were scheduled to bring Oreo back today for a second injection of Invomec; however, Oreo passed away this afternoon.  

I am left wondering if we did the right thing by taking him to the vet and following their instructions?

Teresa







ANSWER: Hi Teresa

Firstly, I am sorry to hear of the loss of Oreo.

I have the following comments to make.

You did the right thing in consulting the vet of course, but I am concerned by the advice given by the vet on two counts. Firstly, Ivomectin is for the treatment of mites, not lice. Lice can be treated topically by an small animal shampoo and lice comb. However, I have no reason to believe that this had anything to do with Oreo's death.

Secondly, impaction is caused by a lack of strength in the anal muscles to get rid of the poop and is typical in older males. Therefore I doubt very much that the brand of dry food Oreo was eating caused this.

As for giving a pumpkin and a small amount of the old food, this makes little sense to me.

Sadly, many vets have little or no knowledge of small animals like piggies.

I cant be sure what caused Oreo's death but the impaction would certainly cause problems with the digestive system if not treated promptly.

I hope my comments help but I can assure you you did everything right.

andy

---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Yes your comments help quite a bit.  As many pet owners, in hind site, I am asking myself if there is anything that I could have done differently.  

We didn't know anything about guinea pigs when we rescued Oreo.  And in the last 2 months we have learned a great deal about guinea pigs, unfortunately the knowledge we learned may have come too late.

Ultimately Oreo had stopped eating.  We tried to offer him food (hand feeding) but he wouldn't eat.  I am guessing that something made him sick, maybe it was the food change.  Oreo's was not fed well at the daycare and he went for 1-2 days without food quite often.  Maybe his body thought the starvation was happening all over again and just wasn't strong enough to handle it.

Thank you for your help.

Teresa  

Answer
Hi

Yes, you might be right there although appetite is also affected if impaction isnt dealt with.

I hope this experience will not put you off owning these lovely animals in future as there are always many out there in need of a good home and I know you would go out of your way to provide one.

Good luck

andy