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Sisters Stick Together…In sickness and in health Some time ago a woman and her very pleasant daughter came to see me with their two guinea pigs. The guinea pigs were sisters and had developed identical signs. Both pigs had started to lose their hair down both their flanks and were losing weight despite eating quite well and seeming fine to all intents and purposes. Most of the time we see hair loss in guinea pigs it tends to be because they are scratching because of mites. However, in this case the hair was just falling out in exactly the same places and leaving behind baby smooth, undamaged skin. On examination I found that they both had large, hard masses in the region of their kidneys and one of them was enormous. The two most likely causes of this were ovarian cysts or ovarian cancer. Both these things could produce stark hormonal changes that could lead to hair loss and hormonal hair loss is not itchy and tends to be symmetrical on the flanks. Without removing them and sending a sample away we couldn’t be sure but it wasn’t looking very good for the pair. After some discussion about possible surgery and likely outcome we decided to give the pigs a week and have a recheck to see if the masses were changing rapidly and give us an idea of what would likely happen. It also gave their young owner a chance to decide whether to opt for surgery or not. We often recommend spaying female rabbits and guinea pigs because they can be very prone to uterine, ovarian and hormonal problems. In this case I was a little hesitant because the guinea pigs had lost a lot of body condition and were not great candidates for surgery. A week later they were still bright and eating but the masses were much more prominent and their muscle mass was still disappearing. I didn’t feel they were suffering and after much discussion we decided that it would be wisest to do nothing and that we would put them to sleep when their condition had gone too far but in the meantime they would be treated like royalty. Months had passed and I have to admit that the two sisters had gone out of my mind when one day I saw their owner in the waiting room buying some food. To my amazement she broadly smiled and revealed that the pair of them had completely recovered, fully grown back their hair and gained weight. They must have had cysts not cancer which pleased me greatly but after ten years in practice I’ve never seen such identical sibling disease. It just goes to show; you learn something new every day.
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