I am crossposting this around, because I am basically at my wits' end. Since around the first week of July, my female glider Danni's weight has been fluctuating. The vet I have been taking her to said it was due to a respiratory infection and prescribed an antibiotic, and she seemed to get better. But as of today, Danni has lost ten grams in about two weeks. I am taking her back to the vet today. She still seems to be eating, if not as much as before, and she is not showing any outward signs of illness, but the sudden rapid weight loss worries me, because this was how we lost Laurie, their other cagemate, in 2014. Laurie's necropsy showed she had severe anemia.
Danni's eating habits have changed over the past few months - at first, she was eating her HPW and ignoring her fruits and veggies, then she started ignoring her HPW and eating just the fruits and veggies she liked. I thought their batch might be bad - it smelled a little off - so I switched back to HPW +. Sometimes she eats it and sometimes she doesn't, but neither she nor her cagemate seem very fond of it, and there are some nights they don't touch it at all.
Danni had a blood smear done on 7/22 that showed her iron was a little on the low side, but she was not anemic, and I have been giving them things like spinach and collard greens. During that visit, the vet said she was constipated and gave her some pain meds, which seemed to help, but she is still not eating as well as she was. I've also been giving Danni a little ensure and Knudsons Mega Green juice over the past week (about a fourth a teaspoon at a time via oral syringe) to make up for the vitamins lost on days she doesn't touch her HPW.
At first I chalked all of this to the stress of a changing work schedule...I got a new job after about eight weeks of being unemployed, and management has changed my schedule three times since I started. I still have pouch time with my two fur babies a lot, but we don't do tent time as much as we used to, and I am worried this is a contributing factor.
Danni kept coming down with a UTI all last year, and we finally got that resolved, but other things keep cropping up. Her cagemate Rory is as chubby as ever despite being bouncy and active, but he's started to overgroom his eyebrows.
I am sorry for the rambling nature of this post, but I am worried that after six years I have dropped the ball bigtime with these guys, and I am letting them down.