My guinea pig is freaking out and running when touched

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VanillaNinja

Post   » Sun Apr 08, 2018 10:59 pm


Hello everyone,

I'm new to posting although I have been reading this forum for awhile. I have 3 guinea pigs and one, Rolo, hasn't been doing that well lately. About a week ago he started not eating or drinking on his own, so I took him to the vet and got some xrays done on his stomach. He had gastric stasis so he was treated with SQ fluids, a pain med (shot), motility med, and I had to feed him critical care. His stasis has been treated and he is now pooping and doing better, although I have to continue to feed him critical care multiple times daily because he has little interest in food and water, and struggles eating on his own because of teeth issues (which likely caused the stasis). He is also on Meloxicam for pain once daily. In the past couple days, a new problem has arisen and I'm not sure what exactly it is: whenever I touch him (pick him up, pet him, feed him) he jumps (looks similar to popcorning but in a bad way), twitches, and starts frantically running in a random direction. I am unsure if this is because he is scared/traumatized and from the force feeding, thinks I'm going to administer another shot to him, or if he is in some sort of pain. The only possible things I have been able to find that it could be are trauma, mites (but he has no hair loss or itching), or symptoms from a stroke (but he is not drooping on one side). I will be taking him back to the vet but there are no exotic animal specialists in town so I thought I'd ask you all if you knew what this could be before going.

Thank you for your time!

bpatters
And got the T-shirt

Post   » Sun Apr 08, 2018 11:15 pm


He's probably not wild about being hand fed and is tired of being handled, so I wouldn't attach too much importance to that.

What is important, and vitally so, is his tooth problem if he has one. If he can't eat because of tooth problem, then his prognosis is really dire. You need to find a vet with experience in rodent dentistry, and get skull x-rays to see whether he has abscessed teeth, or elongated roots, or overgrown molars. Tooth problems like that never resolve themselves, and the pig will die of lack of food. If the problem is overgrown molars, they'll eventually trap his tongue and he'll be unable to swallow.

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Lynx
Celebrate!!!

Post   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 10:02 am


Did the xrays also show the rest of the body? Like the skull and urinary tract system? Is he on any antibiotics?

Some things don't quite add up. I second finding a vet skilled in guinea pig dentistry if this is the issue.

Many things can cause a guinea pig to stop eating. Sometimes teeth overgrow as a result of not eating.

Read over some of these pages to see if anything rings a bell:
stones.html
malocclusion.html

And if he's on antibiotics:
antibiotic_advice.html

VanillaNinja

Post   » Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:14 pm


They didn't get any X-rays of the skull because they said he would have to undergo sedation for it and that it was very risky for him in the state that he's in... he lost a lot of weight in a short period of time. To get his teeth fixed I would have to travel about 16 hours away, and I am weighing the options accordingly with the risks. He isn't on any antibiotics and his urinary tract looked alright on the X-ray that he got previously.

An update as well: it seems as if he is freaking out when touched in a particular spot now, and then after being touched there he just freaks out in general while being touched. It's a spot on his back where he received the SQ fluids, so I'm thinking maybe he's getting an infection at the sight possibly that's painful? Either way I'm about to call the vet to make an appointment.

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