[Gpdd] [HEALTH]<Yaya's OD>

[Janneke Staaks]

Hi All,
 
Joan sent me an email with a suggestion concerning yaya's OD. That is when i realised i havent posted about that for quite a while. So I thought i'd do it now, because we have been through quite a lot recently.
 
For those of you who dont know, Yaya is a satin guinea pig. This breed is prone to getting a certain bone disease (http://www.satinguineapigs.co.uk/). 
A few weeks ago i noticed that yaya wasn't looking like her regular self (she just seemed a bit down) i weighed her and she had lost almost 100grams (3.5 ounces or 0.22lbs). I contacted the lady from the shelter and we received a herbal painkiller from her. This painkiller is called spirea willowbark. This sounds worse than it is. Aspirin, as the name suggests, was named after the spirea plant, from which it was originally made. Willowbark also contains a painkiller acetylsalicylic acid, which is also found in aspirin. This worked very well for yaya. She perked up very quickly. I also took her to my own vet and she told me that yaya's lymph node next to her right frontpaw was swollen so this indicated that her joints were probably inflammated. Since she was doing so well on the herbal painkiller (yaya is very prone to side effects) we decided to keep her on it. I did take a bottle of carprofen, for when she needs it in the future.
 
A week ago i couldn't feel the lympf nodes anymore so we stopped the treatment (which is important because they can become 'used' to it, this makes it less effective). I have seen her do the typical wobbly satin gait. But she seems to be doing fine right now. 
 
When I was particularly down about yaya, i started wandering around on the internet, looking for some distraction. Somehow i got it into my head to start looking which breeders have 'bred' yaya and her ancestors. I have her pedigree. What i found was quite a nasty shock for me. Yaya's grandparents (father's parents) were both bred by someone who is a member of the dutch 'healthy satin breeders club'. They claim (quite annoyingly so) that their guinea pigs dont have OD and list several things on their website that you should do as a breeder, and if you do this, your satins wont get OD (for example dont breed full satin with full satin, just carriers with full satins). Since 50% of yaya's dna is from this breeders pigs i put a big question mark around that. Yaya's other half of her dna comes from a breeder who is also very well respected in the satinbreedercommunity (the 'healthy' satin breeder used pigs from her as yaya's grandgrandparents and has other pigs from her in her breedinglines). What is also interesting is that yaya's grandmother (mother's line) is from a very well known european satinbreeder. I think i can safely say that none of these breeders did anything wrong according to the 'healthy satin guidelines', and still my yaya is in pain...
 
So, i emailed all of them. Very polite, just stating that yaya has od and that i wanted them to know that. The 'healthy' satin breeder responded that OD can be caused by too little sunlight, bad hygiene and a bad nutritional diet; it was not 100% certain that OD had a genetic cause. So i responded that i was aware of those factors shortly after i adopted yaya and that i took extra care with that, and that i was quite certain that yaya's cause for OD is a genetic one.
The mother's breeder was nicer. She was very shocked and also stated that she never had any satins with OD. But she told me that she felt very bad about it.
The problem is, i know from the lady who runs the shelter, that she has satin pigs with OD from these breeders; they just dont believe her...
 
I am currently trying to learn more about OD and all the genetic and medical factors involved. I already learned a lot about how to treat the symptoms. But erm..i just had to vent my feelings (sorry this is so long). How can these breeders do this? My own vet told me that at least 85% of the satin pigs get OD. (I dont know if thats specific for the dutch community, i do hope that the US and UK (and all the other) satin pigs have a smaller chance of getting OD).
 
Thank you for listening..
Janneke
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