Saturday, March 10, 2012

To live or not to live

Ruffles wasn't eating and I had to force feed her the liquid food and her pain meds and constantly clean her poo because she would not be able to eliminate properly because her butt is always on the floor. That Monday I heard the news I didn't want to hear, Ruffles is paraplegic and she cannot feel any deep pain anywhere below her injury. I felt like it was all my fault. The doctor said if she's not happy and her quality of life isn't good then it would be more humane to put her down. My boyfriend and I were heartbroken, we didn't want her to lose her life that quickly because we knew she had so many more years ahead of her. We mentioned to the doctor that I noticed that she began eating more when she would hear Nibbles eating and she recommended to try to keep them near by but not together until a couple of days just so we can continue to supervise her. After leaving the vet we did just that.

Coming home, I began setting up the cage to be two parts of one cage to allow Ruffles and Nibbles to see, hear and smell each other without being in the same cage and sure enough Ruffles ran around, was eating, drinking and pooping like nothing ever happened. She seemed happy. Since it was our first guinea pig we had no idea what was a happy guinea pig (she was really quiet). I signed up to the forum guineapigcages.com and asked people there and gave them the scenario and the description of her behavior and everyone agreed she sounded happy!


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