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enismirdalToday I visited our local vet. With me came Rubisco and Sucrose.
Rubisco has had this on-off not-quite-diarrhoea for a couple of weeks. She's a good weight, perky, eating normally, drinking normally, active and pink-nosed, so aside from making a complete mess of her bed, she's fine. But as she was a little bit stained around the bottom and seemed to be doing fewer normal poos, I popped her along.
Sucrose is also perfectly cheerful, happy, hungry and active. But in the last week or so she's started making this weird twittery noise. The odd thing is that she mostly does it when she knows I'm watching her, so I'm not sure if it's partly just attention-seeking. But I found a hamster on YouTube making a similar noise, and the video received a large number of comments saying, "Your hamster has a chest infection! Take her to the vet!" Obviously, YouTube comments don't really count as a source of reliable knowledge, but I figured it was better to take her to the vet and be laughed at for being an overreacting fool than ignore it until she goes downhill.
So I showed them both to the vet. He listened to Sucrose's chest (at least as well as one can when the end of the stethoscope is the same size as the hamster). She was very good and didn't try and take a chunk out of his finger at all. He agreed that there was a noise, but decided since she is otherwise happy, he is reluctant to stick her on antibiotics. So I just have to keep an eye on her. He also, very amusingly, tried to weigh her on the dog scales. These are accurate to 0.1kg. A typical Russian dwarf hamster might be 75g. A typical underweight, poorly dwarf hamster might be 55g. I'm still not entirely sure what he was expecting to find out from a scale that flickered between 0.0kg and 0.1kg before settling on 0.1kg...
He also listened to Rubisco's chest - which was if anything even harder because she might be bigger but she doesn't do staying still. She just doesn't. He didn't weigh her. But he poked at her bottom a little bit. He was reluctant to give her antibiotics too, for similar reasons - she's happy and eating. So instead he opted for probiotics, which seems like a nice idea, and agreed with me that cutting back on her veg for a while is a good idea. However, the dose of probiotics is 25ml of solution a day (it's a rabbit one, so he halved it) and I'm still wondering how to persuade her to drink that much! Milk or custard, yes, she'd put away no trouble. I guess it depends on what she thinks of the taste of this stuff! We'll see!
Both of them are very annoyed with me now as I had to wake them both up to take them to the vets and they were SO not impressed. Rubisco especially as her attitude to early risers is about the same as mine!
Still, I'm glad that I got them checked over, and glad that he's not really concerned. I guess we'll see how they go!
Oh yes...and the bill. £35. I got a bit too used to my parents' local vet, which basically didn't really charge us for small animal consultations or much more than they needed to cover the costs of the medications. Ah, well. Businesses have to make money somehow, I suppose!
Rubisco has had this on-off not-quite-diarrhoea for a couple of weeks. She's a good weight, perky, eating normally, drinking normally, active and pink-nosed, so aside from making a complete mess of her bed, she's fine. But as she was a little bit stained around the bottom and seemed to be doing fewer normal poos, I popped her along.
Sucrose is also perfectly cheerful, happy, hungry and active. But in the last week or so she's started making this weird twittery noise. The odd thing is that she mostly does it when she knows I'm watching her, so I'm not sure if it's partly just attention-seeking. But I found a hamster on YouTube making a similar noise, and the video received a large number of comments saying, "Your hamster has a chest infection! Take her to the vet!" Obviously, YouTube comments don't really count as a source of reliable knowledge, but I figured it was better to take her to the vet and be laughed at for being an overreacting fool than ignore it until she goes downhill.
So I showed them both to the vet. He listened to Sucrose's chest (at least as well as one can when the end of the stethoscope is the same size as the hamster). She was very good and didn't try and take a chunk out of his finger at all. He agreed that there was a noise, but decided since she is otherwise happy, he is reluctant to stick her on antibiotics. So I just have to keep an eye on her. He also, very amusingly, tried to weigh her on the dog scales. These are accurate to 0.1kg. A typical Russian dwarf hamster might be 75g. A typical underweight, poorly dwarf hamster might be 55g. I'm still not entirely sure what he was expecting to find out from a scale that flickered between 0.0kg and 0.1kg before settling on 0.1kg...
He also listened to Rubisco's chest - which was if anything even harder because she might be bigger but she doesn't do staying still. She just doesn't. He didn't weigh her. But he poked at her bottom a little bit. He was reluctant to give her antibiotics too, for similar reasons - she's happy and eating. So instead he opted for probiotics, which seems like a nice idea, and agreed with me that cutting back on her veg for a while is a good idea. However, the dose of probiotics is 25ml of solution a day (it's a rabbit one, so he halved it) and I'm still wondering how to persuade her to drink that much! Milk or custard, yes, she'd put away no trouble. I guess it depends on what she thinks of the taste of this stuff! We'll see!
Both of them are very annoyed with me now as I had to wake them both up to take them to the vets and they were SO not impressed. Rubisco especially as her attitude to early risers is about the same as mine!
Still, I'm glad that I got them checked over, and glad that he's not really concerned. I guess we'll see how they go!
Oh yes...and the bill. £35. I got a bit too used to my parents' local vet, which basically didn't really charge us for small animal consultations or much more than they needed to cover the costs of the medications. Ah, well. Businesses have to make money somehow, I suppose!
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Date: 8 Dec 2008 21:34 (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 Dec 2008 21:41 (UTC)Rubisco is kind of hyperactive this evening after all the earlier excitement!
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Date: 8 Dec 2008 21:46 (UTC)no subject
Date: 8 Dec 2008 21:49 (UTC)Rubisco took a tiny taste of her new probiotic and turned her nose up at it. I'm going to have to borrow a syringe from the lab and try and coax her to drink some! (I tasted some and I can understand her distate - it's disgusting, and her tastes in food are roughly the same as mine!)