Sick falling on her back and squinted eyes

[piggiel0ver]

We got my guinea pig in May of 2018, and she was around 1 month. Her sister passed away last fall, but she has been fine herself. She has always been a more sickly guinea pig, but has seemed to be in great health over the past year. That is until now.

Recently we noticed that although she has a big cage (1/3 of it holds her food with bedding, the rest is fleece and has blankets and a house to hide in) she is hardly ever visiting the fleece side. It used to be her favorite place and she was constantly in it.

In the past few days we noticed she falls on her back quite often and sometimes can’t get back up. She used to always climb up the side of the cage waiting for food, and now she can hardly make it up at all. Her eyes are also very squinted. We don’t know if these are just problems from her being old, or if she is actually sick and there is some medication that may help her. We were trying to wait before bringing her to the vet since usally they prescribe her a medication that doesn’t really have an impact, and we get a $500+ vet bill to pay.

Any advice is greatly appreciated, thank you.

 

[SardonicSmile]

Honestly, to me, she looks like she is in pain.

Are you weighing her? Weight loss is often a really good indicator something is wrong.

Does she get plenty of vitamin c?
With age they sometimes cannot process vitamin c as well anymore and need more of it.

Please do go see a vet asap.

 

[4boipigs]

I agree she looks painful. Being hunched up and her fur being poofy are two indicators. You can always tell the vet you have a budget to stick with and see how it goes.

My past boar Amigo had an issue where he would lose control of back legs, fall and not be able to get up. It was possibly due to arthritis but he had heart failure and severe weight loss from the heart failure.