Cookie is walking in circles

Question
My dumbo rat, Cookie, is walking in circles. She is approx. 6months of age and is coupled with her litter mate, Fudge. Fudge has no issues except her normal self. Cookie is walking in circles, when she gets up to walk, and seems to be confused and at one point I thought she was blind. She's eating and drinking but other than that is just kind of sitting there head down and hunched. It's like she perfers that to actually laying down. My vet won't be open until Monday. I have already given her a .10 dose of Baytril(injectable). I have owned plenty of rats who have come down with various ailments so I have Baytril on hand. Do you have any suggestions on what else I could try until I can bring her in on Monday? Please help.

Answer
Hi Crystal


Sounds like Cookie has an inner ear infection. I see this all the time and in fact have a rat that has been living like this for months (he used to "roll" terribly and could hardly stand up to eat) this was due to a stroke and he has lost his vision in both eyes, although he just walks like he is drunk, he is doing fantastic despite being blind. Rats are so tough. He is also a year older than Cookie which is why I am sure she didn't have a stroke and indeed has an inner ear infection.

She also needs an anti-inflammatory (steroids are preferred) but some vets hold off on the steroids and use metacam at first which usually works to a degree, but prednisone is so much more effective its almost a waste to have to "wait" for the vet to decide if metacam is going to help or not.
If you have childrens motrin on hand you can give her that too...and keep up with the baytril.  This will take more than a few days for her to start to improve. Sometimes it takes a week or two to really get over the walking in circles, rolling and head tilt. In fact, head tilt may take weeks to improve, if it even goes away completely.
What happens with an inner ear infection is the inflammation on the 8th cranial nerve causes the equilibrium to go haywire which in turn causes the major disturbance in motor skills. This is why its vital to add a medication for inflammation. Antibiotics alone will take way to long to help the problem with her motor skills although it will help with the infection that is causing the problem (and often its good old mycoplasmosis that is the culprit!) Myco causes not only respiratory infection but also can infect the inner ear, uterus and urinary tract too which is why in these cases, medication that is used for an organsim with no cell wall (which is what mycoplasma is) is warranted for ear infection or the medication will not work properly and this condition can linger on and on.  

The dose for childrens motrin is as follows:

10 mg to 30 mg every four hours. I would go with the high end dose for inflammation.

Keep her as quiet as you can for the duration of today, be sure she is well hydrated, and of course dont let her climb anything or be in a cage with high shelves that she can fall off of and get hurt.
Continue the baytril too and of course let the vet know you started her on it when you go in tomorrow.

Hope she gets better soon. Dont worry, they do respond to treatment for this pretty well and she is young and strong enough! Hang in there!