Hello, I’m Pippin, and I’m a guinea pig. Today I’m going to tell you about Antibiotics, which I had never experienced until this week, and arthritis, which I have. I’ve done some research by looking through the stories here from pigs who have had them, like the legendary George himself, and Roscoe, and Ludo, who I knew.

We’re helping out our Mummy, Jemima Pett, who is doing the A2Z this year by putting together all the posts we’ve done here on George’s Guinea Pig World, to make a book on Guinea Pig Care from A to Z. You can see her posts here: jemimapett.com/blog/.

Antibiotics and Probiotics

Everyone who has had some sort of infection seems to have to take antibiotics, most of which taste horrid. Some of them are okay, though. Mummy tries to disguise the bad taste with fruit juice. Some are for things involving surgery, and others are things inside our bodies, most commonly for URIs and UTIs.

• URI are Upper Respiratory Infections, which make breathing difficult and noisy. Antibiotics help to kill the infections that cause them.
• UTIs are Urinary Tract Infections, which make weeing painful. Bladder stones also make weeing painful, and they don’t need antibiotics unless they scratch you inside and make you catch an infection.

The antibiotics kill the infection, but unfortunately they also kill the good biotics inside us that help us digest our food properly. So if we have to take antibiotics we also have to have probiotics. Hugo used to love his probiotics. Apparently they are the equivalent of a dose of ale. They smell yeasty, anyway. I don’t think I’d like them myself, but apparently they are much nicer than antibiotics so anything that takes their taste away is good.

George used to have to take antibiotics because his bad teeth caused infections in his neck. That meant he had horrible lumps called abscesses. He also had to have operations to remove them. Roscoe had to have an operation to remove a lump too, as did Ludo. They were not abscesses, but they both had antibiotics. I had an operation to remove a lump, but it didn’t have an infection with it, and I didn’t have antibiotics. So the rule is, if the vet says you need antibiotics, take them, and take probiotics as well, which often vets forget to remind you (Mummy says).

Arthritis

Arthritis is a thing that affects our joints. Apparently humans get it too. Mostly it affects us when we get older… about my age now, which is four. It makes your hips and shoulders ache, and hurts if you are lifted up without support. When it gets worse it can make it difficult to move about, but most pigs just keep going because we hide things like that. I started showing signs of arthritis last autumn, so I have Metacam (also known as meloxicam and other names), which is a painkiller, and has been used for years very safely. It tastes okay, too. Not nice, but okay. Dogs and cats have it too, but we need more for our bodyweight than they do, which seems funny, but it’s true. 1.3 mls per kg, is the dose for guinea pigs, they know now. Poor George used to have only the same dose as cats, which wouldn’t have taken his pain away hardly at all.

Some people say Metacam leads to other problems if used long-term, but Dr Rebekah says that if you are in pain now, you need pain relief. If you develop complications in five years time, you’ve had five years when you would have been in pain without it. I think she must be right. She discovered Victor had pain from arthritis when he was only a year old, and he was happy to take his Metacam all the time we lived here together. Then he died of cancer when he was four and a half years old. So he only hurt in his last two months, and it wasn’t from the arthritis then.

Asparagus

As far as I know we don’t like asparagus, although there’s no reason why we can’t eat it. Mummy loves it, and wishes she could still get it fresh from the farm. Every time she drove past the asparagus farm in Norfolk (three times a week!) during the asparagus season, she would stop to get some. Then she’d make things with it and eat some and put the rest in the freezer for the winter. I just thought I’d end on a happier note.

Apparently there’s going to be a section on food on every letter page of the Guide to Guinea Pig Care. Yummy!

See you tomorrow

Pippin xxx