regular Vets Exams

[piggy smile]

I was wondering if I have to take my guinea pig to the Vet for a
Yearly exaqmination. so far he has had no problems, but I am not
always so sure.

[kelvyn]

Of course we should provide as much care for our pets as possible,
and a regular vet check-up could be part of that. However in my
experience, guinea pigs fall ill so fast (overnight) and unfortunately
expire equally as fast a vet checkup wont guarantee 12 months ahead.
It would pick up things like mites,mange etc and perhaps a nail clip
would be good....but nails need to be clipped more often than yearly.
This is just my view....but i would save that vets fee money and use
it to get my piggy to the vet at the first sign of illness. You can
probably achieve just as much by reading up on diet for piggys etc and
providing the best you can that way. A healthy diet and a clean
enviroment/cage is about all guinea pigs respond to.....they dont seem
to have that deep, meaningful experience of life we humans do !!!
It's obvious you care very much for your pet guinea pig.....what name
do you have for him/her?
kelvyn.

[Michel Oosterbeek]

kelvyn schreef:

> However in my experience, guinea pigs fall ill so fast (overnight)
> and unfortunately expire equally as fast a vet checkup wont
> guarantee 12 months ahead.

I agree, but nontheless, we do a yearly checkup anyway. Among other
things, our vet allways checks the teeth / molars because there are so
many bad things that can happen to a piggy because of bad teeth
(overgrown, not aligned, etc).

We also keep track of the weight of each of our piggies. Every week we
write down the weight, and compare it with the previous measurements.
This also enables you to act fast before the piggy turns ill. I'm not
saying it's the holy grail, but when a pig starts losing weight for some
unknown reason, take it to the vet. It might indicate something is wrong.
A few weeks ago, our little guy Dribbels started losing weight. We took
him to the vet, she did an x-ray and found a small kidneystone. We could
not tell this from his behaviour, so if it were not for this simple
weekly "weight-check", he could have been in serious trouble by now...

Michel

[kelvyn]

I agree with you there Michel, with what you are doing, monitoring
your piggies weight etc. My point was pigs fall sick so fast you could
take it to the vet for a check up, let us say tomorrow...2 days later
it could fall ill and be gone overnight such is the speed of some of
their illnesses. I agree with you 100% ....watching the weight,
watching what it eats, is it suddenly not wanting food, its behaviour,
is it hiding away. I think regular monitoring of piggy behaviour can
pick up problems much faster than a vet visit. There are exceptions of
course where your vet picked up the kidney stone problem.
bet wishes....kelvyn