It’s been a very stressful week, share your stories of the most ridiculous things your pets have done!

Sam once got a piece of dill stalk stuck in his mouth between his teeth and his cheek. He couldn’t get it out so it stayed there absorbing more and more water and getting more and more stuck. But he was still eating! Still cramming nuggets into his mouth. I only realised there was a problem because he was eating slower than usual. He was absolutely fine once the dill stalk was removed, my theory is that he got it stuck because he was trying to cram too much food into his mouth at once.

My vet gave me a tip for if your pet isn’t eating before you resort to force feeding (which is distressing for your pet and you). If you have some wet food you can put a little on their paws and hopefully they’ll groom themselves and accidentally eat in the process.

My little squeakheart 🐀💕

I’m not very good at talking about the degus’ health problems while they’re ongoing, I’m generally too busy being stressed and doing everything I can for them to deal with anything else.

On Wednesday I thought Daniel was going to die this week (spoiler: he didn’t). He was in for a dental on Monday, came round well, ate a bit on Tuesday and then refused all food on Wednesday morning. I went through every type of treat we have. We saw a vet (who is not our usual vet) and just got “force feed him. what else can you do?”. He didn’t even address the fact that there must be a cause for Daniel refusing all food (I spoke to my usual vet the next day and got actual veterinary care for Daniel).

The whole thing was strongly resembling Thomas’s last week and I really thought I was going to loose Daniel. He’s eating independently (nothing that’s his usual diet but right now I’m happy that he’s eating anything) and there’s been some improvement.

Unfortunately the rate at which the tumour on his leg is growing means it’s pretty certain that it is cancer. It’s on too much of his leg for removing only the tumour to be an option, there wouldn’t be enough skin to close up the operation site afterwards, so the only option would be to remove the leg. With it being a back leg this would severely affect him, much more so than losing a front leg would.

All I can do for now is wait and see what happens, spend time with him while I can and regularly remind all of you how amazing Daniel is and how much I love him!

Vet bills

This is something I’ve been meaning to make a post about for a while. When I was researching degus back before I got them the advice I found said that with degus it’s best not to bother with insurance and just pay for vet bills as they come up. For degus like Thomas and Tobias who have good genetics and rarely need a vet this works well enough. There was a lot of inbreeding in the situation my four rescue degus came from and they have a lot of health problems, the main one being dental disease. I wouldn’t trade them for anything but a dental costs £60 each time and Daniel currently needs them on a monthly basis. This is a statement of my vet bills for last year:

Except that the actual total is more like £1800 as my usual vet was away in Thomas’s last week so we went to a different surgery where there was another vet who has experience with degus. Thomas’s vet care in his last week alone cost £300.

I’ve got a diary with a page a day and I’ve added tabs to help me keep track of who’s been to see the vet when, this is what the year looks like so far:

Daniel is yellow and three of those trips were dentals, Jack is orange and Scott is green, they’ve had two dentals each. Tobias is blue, he’s had an issue with his eye that’s been going on for a few weeks.

It’s important to consider where you’re getting your pet from – obviously not every rescue pet will have severe problems, if they’re from an accidental litter that’s very different to a situation where continuous inbreeding has been allowed. I don’t mean to put anyone off who wants to get pets, I just want to help people be able to make an informed decision.