[Gpdd] HEALTH: Donald is not able to eat

[dinah]

We've just been through a similar story, with a happy ending!  One day we noticed one of our  g.pigs was not eating or drinking - so off to the vets, who could find nothing wrong. So we started syringe feeding/watering, and realised how much weight he'd lost, and how when we thought about it, we realised he'd been more and more picky over what he would eat in the month previously.  

No change as the weeks went by, so we took him to another vet - still nothing wrong/teeth fine.  And so I sent for a chin-strap, which the g.pig did not like one bit.  We tried it a couple of times, but as we weren't sure whether this  was what he needed anyway, we put it to one side.

Weeks were passing, and I was reading up on the internet for ideas.  In the end I contacted Vedra at the Cambridge
 Cavy Trust,  who told me who my nearest rodentologist was, and suggested I tried a particular oral thrush gel, as sometimes g.pigs won't eat because they've got a sore throat, which we did, but it didn't make any difference.

So off he went to stay with the rodentologist, who rang that evening to say it WAS his teeth, they were all overgrown, and she clipped them in a few minutes.  She then kept him for four weeks, to get him used to eating again, and to make sure nothing else was wrong with him, as well as to see if his teeth started to overgrow in that time.  They didn't.  And now he's home, good as new.  

It seems 'ordinary' vets are just not trained to understand how guinea pig teeth are supposed to be, or to recognise where there's a problem.