"All I Want For Christmas is My Two Front Teeth..."

I can't remember if I've posted about Penny before or not, but Penny is my guinea pig. While I am at school, she has been living at home with my parents but she used to live with me during undergrad.

So anyhow, I've had Penny in my life for a few years now and she has been the sweetest, best little pig I could ever ask for. She's also spoiled rotten, but I'll save that for another post haha. I got her from a local vet when I moved off campus during undergrad. She was supposed to just be a practice spay, but she ended up getting a home out of it all, and I think she's pretty pleased with her accommodations.

She's been perfectly happy and healthy the whole time I've had her, but a couple of weeks before I came home, my mother noticed that she suddenly stopped eating carrots. Penny LOVES carrots and lettuce, so that was a little flag in her mind. Wondering if perhaps she was just tired of carrots, they gave her a break from them and tried again. Same result-untouched carrots. She also had been leaving the stem of her romaine leaves behind at night (also unusual because she happens to think the whole romaine head is solid gold). Since she still seemed to be otherwise happy and healthy and eating all of her other food, my mom let it go until I got home.

Moments before we're pulling into the neighborhood on Saturday night, my mother says "oh yeah, Penny won't eat carrots anymore unless I shave them or cut them into disks. I'm not sure what that's about." At first I figured Penny had figured out a way to get my mother to work even harder, but then began to wonder about the possibility of dental issues.

I tried feeding her some carrots that night and found that although she ate them for me, she was much slower at it and taking smaller bites. She only ate 2 of the 4 carrots as well but readily gulped down a third when i broke it into pieces.

Later and the next day I noticed that she made a weird noise when grinding her teeth, and that she was just freely grinding them. Usually She grinds them when she's mad at me for something, but this noise was coming when she was just contentedly sitting somewhere. It was a more metallic sound too, and she would sort of lift her head and extend her neck while doing it. I also noticed that she seemed to drink more gingerly from the water bottle.

Concerned about dental disease, I made an appointment with our local exotics specialist. We went in today and had a nice little evaluation, and then opted for further diagnostics since awake piggies are not the most cooperative! Although she was able to get a quick peek at the teeth, we anesthetized her to get a more thorough look.

Once she was knocked out, we propped her mouth open and took a good look at all of her back premolars and molars. We were both pleased to see that they looked to be in perfect working order with no malocclusion or pointy parts. We turned our attention back to the incisors. During the awake exam, the intern had noted that one of the top incisors looked potentially twisted, so we investigated the top teeth to see if the one was loose. They both turned out to be wiggly! Some how Penny managed to fracture both of her top incisors! Both were broken above the gum line too. She was able to extract the broken parts of both teeth and now it's just a waiting game for Penny. They should grow back and hopefully they'll grow back nice and straight with no further complications.

Penny is on two oral medications. One is for pain-meloxicam, and the other is for infection control-enrofloxicin. (For kicks, spell checker thinks that pain-meloxicam should be Camelopardalis and that control-enrofloxicin should be control-microfloppies haha). We went with injectable meloxicam this afternoon so that drug isn't due orally until tomorrow, but Penny is currently not a fan of her oral antibiotics. Which is really quite disappointing (they smell delicious!) because it means that twice a day for 2 weeks I will  be forcing them down her throat. I have my fingers crossed that she likes the meloxicam better (because otherwise I get to shove 3 doses of drugs down her throat daily yayyy). She liked it just fine when she was spayed a few years ago so we'll see!

Once she woke up from anesthesia, she seemed to being doing just fine. She came home and has been chowing down on all food placed in front of her face since then. I was worried she wouldn't want to eat, but she was more than happy to stuff her face full of bite sized goodies. Unfortunately for her, it has to already be appropriately sized for her molars to grind it up in order for her to eat it. This means finely shredding lettuce, shaving carrots, and cubing apple pieces. I am going to be a master chopper by the end of this. I am also happy to provide her favorite treats in a bite sized format because I love her so much :). Lucky for her the pellets are already appropriately sized and she can still stuff hay in her mouth!

All in all pig is doing very well. It was an expensive day, but I love her and she needed the medical care. I am more than happy to provide her with anything to help her live a long, happy and healthy life. She deserves it. All companion animals do in my opinion. My mother and brother shook their heads at the bill, but I asked them if they would want to have broken front teeth. Human or animal, if we take responsibility for a life (pet, person, or child), then we are agreeing to be there through thick and thin. For Penny that happens to be broken teeth.