Hi, We've got an older female guinea pig. Sadly her friend died last year, and we've been dithering about whether or not to buy her another companion or just to make lots of fuss of her. She is 6 and a half.
She had a successful removal of a huge bladder stone about 15 months ago, has been healthy since until just before Christmas where she had an eye infection. We took her to the vets who gave her the once over, checked teeth etc, said she was in excellent condition generally and gave us eye drops. Eye infection cleared up quickly with drops.
A week or so ago, her eye became weepy, exactly as it had last time, so as I still had some of the drops, I started putting them in her eye again, but without much improvement. A few days after this, DD noticed bright red blood in her cage, just over one night. So red, it was almost as though she'd cut something, not just bloody urine. We took her to the vet immediately, but around her vulva etc was completely clean and healthy, vet was baffled, even suggested maybe we had confused red dye from newspaper (we hadn't!).
The vet also looked at her eye and said this time, it looked like she had an ulcer in her eye from a hayseed or suchlike. (This is not visible to the naked eye; the vet could see it when she put dye in the eye.) Anyhow, the vet gave us a fresh bottle of the same eye drops and antibios for the 'urine infection' even though there were no obvious signs of a urine infection by then - no more blood, no soreness etc.
Gosh, sorry this is so long. Four days later, and the eye is pretty much the same. I am cleaning round it with saltwater and putting in eye drops twice a day, and doing the antibios twice a day. Meanwhile, her wee has gone dark brown. Absolutely no signs of blood, and clean undercarriage still, but this weird dark brown colour. My mum (medical, but no guinea expert!) says in humans that's a sign of renal failure.
So, she is in no obvious discomfort, munching away on the first of the spring grass and her hay etc. I will take her to the vet if she worsens, or if there is no improvement in either eye or wee by Friday.
I just wondered if any of you experienced folk had seen anything like this at all, and whether our old girl is grievously ill, or if she will get over it? I imagine the eye and bladder things are completely unrelated. The vet's parting shot to us (DD and me) as we left was 'I'm not sure what we do if that ulcer doesn't clear...' and she sort of left it hanging.
Sigh, sorry this is so epic. BTW I have namechanged, not because I am a guinea troll, but because this is so detailed, and I don't want it linked to my usual name.