From absiev at aol.com Fri Jan 1 11:29:54 2010 From: absiev at aol.com (ABCS) Date: Fri, 1 Jan 2010 11:29:54 -0500 Subject: [Stones] Distilled water In-Reply-To: <4B3D0E82.1070009@hintlink.com> References: <4B3D0E82.1070009@hintlink.com> Message-ID: <90DB32B5-6253-4A2A-8F3A-B7AB9512E99A@aol.com> You are really not supposed to give piggies distilled water. My vet is adamant about that. Instead, you can buy a premium bottled water like Penta, or check the mineral content of name-brand bottled water like Poland Spring on their website. As long as you do not buy a "mineral water" it should be much lower than your hard tap water. I have found it helpful to use bottled water for my stones pigs just to avoid the fluoride in our tap water, which remains even after filtering - there are studies that show fluoride can contribute to stone production. I buy Penta water, which is expensive if you have a lot of pigs... On Dec 31, 2009, at 3:50 PM, Ann Evans wrote: > Dear GPDD Family, > > Is it safe to feed cavies distilled water? I have a 5 year old female cavy that had a huge stone removed from her urethra 13 months ago. Ever since the surgery I have given her 50 mg of liquid vitamin C and 0.2 ml of hydrangea root tincture for urinary health every day. On Christmas Day she showed signs of pain when I picked her up. The slightest touch near her urethra caused her to week in pain. I did a urinalysis using a strip reagent and it was positive for blood. I had an xray done and it showed urinary uroliths in the urethra. The uroliths look like gravel. I know cavies have a high alkaline urinary pH that is around 8.5. Cavies excrete excess calcium and phosphorous into the urine. I live in Floria where we have high concentrations of both calcium and phosphorous in the water thus calcium carbonate and triple phosphate uroliths can easily form. Since we have hard water is it safe to give cavies only distilled water? Kinjaroo is scheduled to have surgery on Tuesday. She is currently on Rimadyl 10 mg twice a day and pediatric bactrim 0.5 ml twice a day along with the hydrangea root tincture. She is eating and drinking and acting totally normal except if any pressure is applied to her urethra. I am open to any suggestions. I put all my piggys on distilled water since Christmas Day. > > Cheers, > > Ann and the Rescued Piggys of Piggyville, Tampa Florida USA. > > > _______________________________________________ > Stones mailing list > Stones at gpigs-database.org > http://gpigs-database.org/mailman/listinfo/stones_gpigs-database.org From calliope at geeksnet.com Fri Jan 1 12:50:36 2010 From: calliope at geeksnet.com (Cindy) Date: Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:50:36 -0500 Subject: [Stones] Distilled water In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B3E35EC.4040103@geeksnet.com> Ann, we are sending healing wishes and wheeks to Kinjaroo, and we will especially be thinking about her on Tuesday when she has her surgery. Please do keep us posted. Technically, distilled water is water that has absolutely no minerals in it. Distilled water is used in car batteries because it has no minerals that will contaminate the plates of the battery. If by distilled water, however, you mean *bottled drinking water* from a grocery or health food store, that is fine. We have been giving our piggies bottled drinking water for two years now. As Amy said, that helps avoid the fluoride that is usually in tap water. Hope this helps. Again, best wishes to Kinjaroo. Cindy, Tumbleweed, and Friday Ann wrote: > Is it safe to feed cavies distilled water? I have a 5 year old female > cavy that had a huge stone removed from her urethra 13 months ago. Ever > since the surgery I have given her 50 mg of liquid vitamin C and 0.2 ml > of hydrangea root tincture for urinary health every day. On Christmas > Day she showed signs of pain when I picked her up. The slightest touch > near her urethra caused her to week in pain. I did a urinalysis using a > strip reagent and it was positive for blood. I had an xray done and it > showed urinary uroliths in the urethra. The uroliths look like gravel. I > know cavies have a high alkaline urinary pH that is around 8.5. Cavies > excrete excess calcium and phosphorous into the urine. I live in Floria > where we have high concentrations of both calcium and phosphorous in the > water thus calcium carbonate and triple phosphate uroliths can easily > form. Since we have hard water is it safe to give cavies only distilled > water? Kinjaroo is scheduled to have surgery on Tuesday. She is > currently on Rimadyl 10 mg twice a day and pediatric bactrim 0.5 ml > twice a day along with the hydrangea root tincture. She is eating and > drinking and acting totally normal except if any pressure is applied to > her urethra. I am open to any suggestions. I put all my piggys on > distilled water since Christmas Day. > > Cheers, > > Ann and the Rescued Piggys of Piggyville, Tampa Florida USA. > > From karen840 at earthlink.net Sun Jan 3 12:04:59 2010 From: karen840 at earthlink.net (karen hollister) Date: Sun, 3 Jan 2010 09:04:59 -0800 Subject: [Stones] Distilled Water Message-ID: Hello All, My experience has been the same as Cindy's -- that is, ever since I switched to bottled water for my seven-member herd, I've had no piggies with stones. I don't know if it is coincidental. I've been serving bottled water for about 10 years, have had a herd of piggies for about twenty years. In the past, almost every female I adopted would get stones, just a few males, and sadly they all had to be euthanized after many surgeries and much suffering. Fortunately, I no longer listen for pain noises or have to watch for the dreaded pink pee. I live in a rural area with well water that turns new sinks orange within weeks. When I decided to not drink the stuff, I decided to also provide it for the dogs and for my piggies. The "bottled water" I use is from a local "Pure Water" store, is super filtered, costs about 30 cents a gallon. I imagine that it is equivalent to the the water machines outside and inside grocery stores. Parsley and carrots to all, Karen Sebastopol, CA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From calliope at geeksnet.com Sun Jan 10 13:43:32 2010 From: calliope at geeksnet.com (Cindy) Date: Sun, 10 Jan 2010 13:43:32 -0500 Subject: [Stones] HEALTH: Kinjaroo In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B4A1FD4.7080700@geeksnet.com> Ann, how did Kinjaroo's surgery go? We hope she is doing well and progressing nicely. Best wishes to her. Cindy From ann.evans at hintlink.com Mon Jan 11 16:32:00 2010 From: ann.evans at hintlink.com (Ann Evans) Date: Mon, 11 Jan 2010 16:32:00 -0500 Subject: [Stones] Health: Kinjaroo, stones and drinking water Message-ID: <4B4B98D0.4000703@hintlink.com> Kinjaroo?s stone surgery went very well. Kinjaroo is 5.5 years old. She had a large stone removed from her urethra 13 months ago. On Christmas Day she weeked in pain when I picked her up. She had pain at the exit to her urethra. I took her to Dr. Frank Bonsack DVM for an x-ray on the 26 of December 2009. The x-ray showed urinary calculi that looked like gravel in the lower segment of her urethra. She was scheduled for surgery on the 29 of December. However, since I was sick and assist at all cavy surgeries, the surgery did not take place until the 6 of January 2010. While awaiting surgery I gave her orally 10 mg of Rimadyl twice a day for pain and 0.5 ml of pediatric Bactrim also twice a day. In addition, she was given 0.2 ml of hydrangea root tincture mixed with 0.3 ml of liquid vitamin C (50 mg) once a day. The hydrangea is beneficial in healing the urinary tract. I had done urinalysis at home using Siemens Multistix reagent strips for urinalysis. She tested positive for blood, which can be an indication that the crystal structure of the calculi was damaging the urethral tissue. She tested negative for leucocytes and nitrite indicating that she did not have an infection. The pediatric Bactrim was administered prophylactically because she was going to have surgery. On the day of surgery my job was to do the anesthesia. Pre-anesthetic was 10 mg Rimadyl orally 2 hours prior to surgery. I took away her food 1 hour prior to surgery but not water. I gave her 1 ml of honey and 5 ml of diluted juice. The purpose of the honey is that cavies store very little glycogen in their liver so the honey acts as an energy source. The diluted juice was to wash the honey down and any food in her mouth. Bland ophthalmic ointment was placed in her eyes. Induction was with 3.0% Isoflurane using a large nose cone in which her entire head and front legs fit into. The surgical table was heated to 38.0 C. It took 7 minutes for induction. I then removed her from the nose cone, opened her mouth and aspirated any fluid using a 1 ml syringe. She was then placed on her back on a microwaveable heating pad, which had been heated for 1 minute and then was put on a thoracic positioner. I placed a small nose cone over her nose and mouth. It was held in place with Velcro straps. Isoflurane was decreased to 2.5%. She was shaved and her skin was cleaned. Dr. Bonsack used a small stainless steel spoon to scoop out the urinary calculi. Then he injected 0.3 ml of 2.0% Lidocaine along the midline skin above the urethra. Isoflurane was reduced to 2.0%. Using small scissors a 1.0 cm incision was made in the distal urethra and overlying skin. The urethra and bladder were flushed with warm lactated Ringer?s solution followed by sterile water. While the urethra and skin were still open the nose cone was removed and she was taken to the next room while still on the heating pad and an x-ray was taken to make sure that all of the calculi had been removed. It took less than a minute to take the x-ray. I replaced the nose cone and the Isoflurane was reduced to 1.5%. The x-ray showed that all the calculi were removed. Her outer skin was sutured with Vicryl 3.0. She has 5 sutures. Immediately after she was sutured the Isoflurane was turned off, the system was purged with oxygen and she breathed oxygen for approximately 5 minutes. I then took off the nose cone and put a dab a Vicks on her nose. She woke up immediately. The entire surgery took 50 minutes. She was placed in a large box that contained Vet bedding along with her heating pad and she began to immediately eat romaine lettuce. She has been eating, drinking, defecating and urinating normally since 15 minutes after the surgery. She is still the loudest weeker of all of our cavies. Today is 5 days post surgery. It is her last day on Rimadyl and pediatric Bactrim and the hydrangea. I am now giving all of my cavies spring water, which contains 0.03 mg/L of calcium and no fluoride or chlorine. In a couple of weeks I will do urine sedimentation tests to see if it was our hard filtered water that caused the stones. Or it may be due to the fact that Kinjaroo and Trix another of our cavies that had a large stone removed in April 2009 tend to excrete higher than normal amounts of calcium into their urine. If that is the case, Vedra Stanley-Spatcher has advised me to put any cavy that is prone to stone formation on Rowatinex, one gel cap/day plus 20 minutes/day on a Niagara Cyclo massage pad. I already have the Rowatinex that I bought online from www.smallflower.com. I also bought a used Niagara Cyclo massage pad from Ebay. You can purchase a used one from http://www.niagaracyclomassage.com/. The Rowatinex and the massage therapy must be continued for the life of the cavy. I want to thank everyone that gave me information on the right type of spring water to give our piggys. I have always given them filtered water that removes the fluoride and chlorine. Vedra has told me that it is calcium in hard water that is the major contributor to urinary calculi. In fact all of the scientific papers that I have read over the past 2 weeks regarding the composition of urinary calculi in cavies has shown that 80% of them are calcium carbonate. I must admit that I feel like a very stupid scientist who did not put my cavies on low calcium spring water after the first stone surgery. I have always thought that fluoride had more to do with stone formation than calcium since it is totally natural for cavies to excrete excess calcium, phosphate and oxalate into their urine. I have had over 100 rescued cavies at Piggyville. Only Trix and Kinjaroo ever developed stones. In the weeks to come I will keep you posted on how they are doing. Cheers, Ann and the Rescued Piggys of Piggyville, Tampa Florida USA. From calliope at geeksnet.com Sun Jan 17 20:48:38 2010 From: calliope at geeksnet.com (Cindy) Date: Sun, 17 Jan 2010 20:48:38 -0500 Subject: [Stones] Health: Kinjaroo, stones and drinking water In-Reply-To: <4B4B98D0.4000703@hintlink.com> References: <4B4B98D0.4000703@hintlink.com> Message-ID: <4B53BDF6.7080302@geeksnet.com> Ann, thank you for the update on Kinjaroo. We are so glad that her surgery went so well. Thanks so much for all of the helpful details about the surgery, and pre and after care. She is lucky to have you taking such wonderful care of her. Healing wheeks and best wishes are coming her way. Cindy, Tumbleweed, and Friday From ann.evans at hintlink.com Mon Jan 18 18:24:13 2010 From: ann.evans at hintlink.com (Ann Evans) Date: Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:24:13 -0500 Subject: [Stones] Health: Kinjaroo, stones, gastric stasis and massage Message-ID: <4B54ED9D.8070204@hintlink.com> Dear GPDD Family, Kinjaroo who underwent stone removal surgery on the 6 of January 2010 is doing just fine. She still has two sutures that need to dissolve before she can rejoin her friends in the caviary. I have been very fortunate that throughout her ordeal she has never stopped eating or drinking or weeking for treats every time we pass by her C&C pen. Since my last post I have been asked several questions regarding the use of the Niagara Cyclo Massage pad. I was asked if the Niagara Cyclo massage therapy pad could be used for gastric stasis or bloat. I presented this question to Vedra Stanley-Spatcher of the Cambridge Cavy Trust and British Association of Rodentologists who has operated a cavy hospital for over 30 years. http://www.britishassociationofrodentologists.co.uk/index.html She said that yes it can be used for cavies suffering from gastric stasis or bloat in conjunction with simethicone, metoclopramide and in severe cases a stomach tube may be needed to release the trapped gas. Vedra said that the cavy should be put on the Cyclo massage pad starting at the lowest speed and working up to the highest speed and back down to the lowest speed over 20 minutes. This can be repeated 3 to 4 times a day if needed. The massage pad is the size of a standard bed pillow. I use the pad daily to help prevent the formation of bladder stones. I put Kinjaroo in a snuggle sack and place her on the massage pad. I then operate it as described above. Kinjaroo calmly sits throughout her daily massage sessions. Once again I must emphasize that a Niagara Cyclo massage pad be used. Reconditioned ones with a warranty can be purchased from http://www.niagaracyclomassage.com/. I have also seen them for sale on the USA, UK and Australian Ebay sites. I bought mine on Ebay. Vedra does not have any experience in using the massage pad to prevent stasis or bloat since patients arrive at the Guinea Pig Hospital already with these conditions. However, she did mention that cavy patients that are hospitalized for a long time are routinely placed on a Cyclo massage pad. This treatment helps sick cavies heal faster and have a reduced need for medication. I hope you find this information helpful. Cheers, Ann and the Rescued Piggys of Piggyville, Tampa Florida USA. From calliope at geeksnet.com Tue Jan 19 22:55:52 2010 From: calliope at geeksnet.com (Cindy) Date: Tue, 19 Jan 2010 22:55:52 -0500 Subject: [Stones] Health: Kinjaroo, stones, gastric stasis and massage In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4B567EC8.1030905@geeksnet.com> Thanks, Ann, for the update on Kinjaroo -- wonderful news. Please tell her to keep up the good work. Thanks also for the info on the massage pad, both regarding its use to prevent bladder stones as well as gastric stasis and bloat. Continued healing wheeks to Kinjaroo. Cindy, Tumbleweed, and Friday