Tiger the chinchilla Diary of tooth spur operations 2004

Teeth

Tiger page 4

2004

April 2004 Tiger's weight steadily increased until we managed to conquer the 400g barrier, he has continued to need spur ops now every 3 to 4 weeks. His symptoms vary, sometimes his eye becomes mucky, sometimes he fur sucks (fur chewing but without the ability to actually off the hair!) sometimes his paraphamorsis occurs again. He can show any one or more of these symptoms and always has a tooth spur to be dealt with. He continues to receive Supreme Science Recovery along with his pellets and timothy hay. He is truly an amazing chin and takes it all in his stride.

August 2004 Things have improved slightly, we got to the stage where I automatically booked him in every three weeks, then in June his teeth barely needed attention so he went 5 weeks, they did need doing then so we tried 4 weeks and only his incisors needed trimming so now we are waiting for symptoms :)

Very shortly after writing the above he had to go back for another spur op. Unfortunately they caught his tongue with the machine and he needed to be brought round before all his teeth had been burred. He came home with antibiotics and for the first time drooling. He continued to drool until he could go back 10 days later for the rest of his molars to be burred. The drooling meant he was damp most of the time and obviously uncomfortable. When he came home after the second op still drooling I decided if that continued over the weekend we needed to call it a day. Thankfully he stopped within 24 hours.

September 2004 Tiger now had bald little legs which I assumed were from the wet fur but then I suddenly panicked 'could this be fur fungus' a check up at the vets revealed he needed another spur op, thankfully caught quickly as the night before his op was due he started to drool again. So 4 weeks after his 'first' August op he went back for another. All well this time

October 2004 Sadly Tiger's health deteriorated after my last update. We don't know what the cause of his problems were, he seemed to be losing strength in his front legs, he couldn't roll in his bath he stopped jumping up onto things and at times he seemed confused. Because of his ongoing molar problems it was felt fairer to put him to sleep than to make him endure tests. Tiger's last day

July 28th 1991 - October 11th 2004
Tiger - A very special little chinchilla

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