[Gpdd] Health: Toby's teeth and Guiny's fur

[Mieke Staaks]

Dear gpdd-ers,

Since monday I noticed that Toby did not want to take his veggies.
On Sunday I cleaned their cages and put the boys in the kitchen for
floortime.
Toby was a bit to eager and jumped out of my arms when i was putting him
down.
He made a thud on the floor (it was about 30 cm) and he ran away after
Chico.
We checked him out, and his legs seemed fine.

When I noticed he did not want to eat his cucumber on monday, I got him from
the cage
and tried to give it to him by hand, but he refused.
I spoke about it with M and I got out to buy some other veggies in case he
stopped liking cucumber all of a sudden.
I tried feeding him chicory and parsley.
Apparently Parsley is scary, I can only guess they have never eaten that
before.
They chicory he took from me, but he seemed to struggle and then dropped it,
it seemed like he could not bite a piece of.
So I tore the chicory into littel edible strip and he ate them all.
So we checked his teeth (actually did that earlier), but did not see
anything wrong with them.
His molars appeared to be fine, because he did eat pellets and he also
drinks from the waterbottle.
He was wheeking this morning when i woke up, as Erwin was feeding them.
I guessed he was wheeking for veggies, but apparently he was wheeking for
his vitamin C tablet.
Apart from this unability to bite things of he's doing just fine.

But it worried me non the less and we decided to take him to the vet.
I took Guiny too because since we've been away for christmas she's been
shedding an awful lot of hair.

At the vet, she (the vet) discovered what was wrong with Toby.
Way at the start of his top front teeth the teeth had broken.
She couldn't remove the teeth since they were still attached to gums.
My question is as follows, what should we do?
If she removes the teeth now it will bleed a lot, doesn't seem like a good
option to me
They can try to repair the teeth under anaestatic, but i'm not fond of the
anaestatic... and seems like an awful lot of trouble (and money) to fix it.
When I'm pretty sure the teeth regrow really fast.
Other option is do nothing and handfeed him strips of chicory and other
veggies, and wait till the teeth grow longer, then go back and have them
clipped.
I've gotten a painkiller for the pain, so far he does not seem to be in a
lot of pain...

Anyone any experiences with this?

Guiny got checked and appeared to have a lot of skin flakes or something and
of course losing a lot of hairs.
The vet suspects mites and I got a round of stronghold for all the piggies.
I think someone just mentioned that guinea pigs might always have a sort of
mite and they only bother them when the guineas are not feeling the well.
I'm pretty sure Guiny was upset for us leaving for christmas....

Sorry this is so long, hope anyone can tell what I should do.
I'm feeling like a bad slave right now....

Mieke

-- 
pandameisje at gmail.com
pandameisje at hotmail.com
m.staaks at pecoma.nl

Blog: http://pandameisje.hyves.nl
kleding: http://mist-clothing.blogspot.com/