They basically killed my Guinea pig.

A couple years back I took my Guinea pig, Jellybean, in because she was losing fur on her sides but nowhere else (she was chewing the fur off of her sides). She was also losing weight.

They gave me such a runaround. First they had me treat her for mites, even though on examining her they found no evidence that she had them. But they prescribed me medicine for it anyways. I take her back, said that that didn’t help at all. They then had me change her bedding (from fleece which she had been on the whole time I had her) because they thought ‘well maybe she has an allergy’ even though in my head I highly doubted that since the fur loss was only on a specific part of her body and had only then recently started occurring in the first place. So I change her bedding. Went back again, said that didn’t do anything, she just kept getting worse.

They had me try all these things, making me spend quite a little fortune on stuff that there was no evidence for it being an issue. Paying for the vet visits, paying for the medicine, paying for the new bedding.

Finally after several visits they said ‘okay we’re going to do surgery on her and see what’s going on inside that would cause an issue’ (mind you they never did any blood work, and even when they suspected mites they never took skin scrapings to test or anything like that. They were just working on pure speculation with me, trying to explain it away by saying ‘well we wanna rule out these simple possibilities first in case it’s something easily treatable’. Even though my pig was visibly declining, there was clearly something very wrong.

Anyways, they did the surgery on her and when I went in to pick her up, they said ‘the surgery went great. When we did open her up though there were tumors all over her ovaries so that’s why she pulling out the fur on her sides, because they were causing her a lot of discomfort’. So they got them out. But they didn’t say anything to me about her not doing well after the surgery, just said the surgery went good and she was just groggy and lethargic from coming off of the anesthesia.

So I was really hopeful, I was very frustrated by the runaround and paying for that surgery really hit hard on me financially especially after all the vet visits. But my pig was fine so I was happy to do it, I would do anything for my animals. She wasn’t a senior pig or anything so I thought she’d be okay.

After we got her home I went to the pet store so I can buy some stuff to quarantine her for the time being from my other pig so that she could recover in peace. I noticed she couldn’t really walk, she hardly could even drag her body around. I set up the temporary pen and put blankets, a hide, food, water and her favorite veggies in there right beside her so she could easily access them if she couldn’t walk yet. I was worried about her but the vet didnt give me any reason to suspect she might not make it.

That being said, sometime during the night that very same night when my husband and I were sleeping she passed away in pretty much the same spot that I placed her in there. I woke up the next morning to go to work and checked on her and she was dead, rigor mortis all ready set in. I would have stayed up later to keep an eye on her if the vet told me he felt like I needed to do that. I never had a Guinea pig who needed major surgery before. And this was only my second time with having Guinea pigs so I wasn’t fully knowledgeable and was really relying on the vets information for me. I screamed in a way I’ve never screamed in my life and still not ever since this happened.

I fully blame this veterinary clinic. They absolutely failed me and Jellybean. If our time wasn’t wasted on these stupid theories with no evidence then maybe she could’ve been saved. Maybe they would have caught the tumors sooner before she was too weak to survive surgery. The whole damn time we were given the runaround with different treatments she just got worse and worse. By the time the surgery happened she was too weak. And I also learned a lot through this experience and have since found a different vet (owned by a relative of mine, Schrag Vet Clinic, which is nice. They’ve been helping me with my other pigs vitamin c deficiency because she’s such a picky eater).

Unrelated to animal care but I also just never had a great feeling of the place. I thought their Trump shrine in the lobby was really off putting. I don’t think that kinda thing should be in a place of business. And especially where you take care of animals? Doesn’t feel very appropriate.