tearing/eye wetness

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fluke

fluke

Well-known member
Joined
Feb 2, 2009
Messages
135
Location
huntsville, al
so i haven't posted on here in a while. my boys have been doing great. Buckie, my oldest boy, had to have points on his teeth filed down a while ago...since then, i took him like last summer for a check up and the vet (and i drive 1.5 hrs to see this one vet who is like on the board of vet medicine for exotics in the state and such) said he was fine and since he has such a prominent heart murmur, not to worry about bringing him every 6 months for xrays (they don't want to put him under unless really necessary). anyway, i saw him making the same kind of strange yawning-like motions with his mouth a few weeks ago, but only once. figured id just watch and if there were more, id take him. there haven't been.

the past few days though, well for two days, in the mornings, the fur around one of his eyes is all weird looking like it's been wet. and honestly now i can't tell if it's still wet or if the fur just hasn't fluffed back up yet. I did have my window open thats a few feet from his cage cuz it's cool out, and my neighbor who has severe allergies has been talking about how hers have been going nuts this week. I don't really have allergies like that so I couldn't tell but i closed the window anyway thinking maybe there was just something in the air that irritated his eye. again not sure if it helped cuz the fur has fluffed up.

what i was thinking though was....if it was a problem with the roots of his teeth, wouldn't he be constantly tearing up? not just like in the mornings? thinking about taking him this weekend, but i'd like to avoid stressing him out (and the bill obviously) if possible. he still eats normally and destroys his chew sticks with the quickness.

is it definitely a bad sign or perhaps i'm overreacting?
 
Personally, given the history of tooth problems, I would take the chin for an x-ray. Yes, there are risks with the heart murmur but if there is tooth root elongation which is beginning to push into the eye sockets then you need to know that in order to better plan what to do.
 
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I had a class 5 heart murmur chin who had malo who was filied every 7 weeks for 3 years, there is a risk yes but with the 100s and 100s of filings and I do truely mean that since I have had 9 malo chinchillas, I had only one issue with the gas and it was not the murmur chin, it was a 17 year old.

That said to address the gas issue, whenever a dental chin develops a wet eye-and yes it can be intermittant, its a good idea to have the x-ray done to monitor the length of the roots. AND, if you do get x-rays done, please post them here since vets seem to not be able to read them well and tell owners its all good when there is clear elongation.

And finally, elongation can be a silent killer. It can be tolerated by the chin with no outward symptoms until its too late, this is the worst kind, elongation without malocclusion. Case in point, my 10 year old 1100gm chinchilla elongated his lower molars to the point it broke the jaw. No symptoms one day, eating chewing, playing and drinking to dramatic symptoms the next day and death 45 days later.
 
so basically, the tearing could be intermittent and still an indication of a problem? pretty sure it's stopped. fur seems to be fluffing up. was too late for an appt this weekend, but im gonna call for next weekend. and last time, they didnt give me a copy of his xrays. guess i need to specifically ask for them next time.

sorry dawn, just read ur post again and u'd already answered my question
 
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the doc did however let me look at the xrays there and i'd actually already done alot of research on the root elongation and looked at lots of xrays online. he didn't see that problem and neither did i. but like i said that was a little while ago.
 
If the x-rays are more than 6 months old they are worthless. When I am dealing with a malo chin it gets x-rays every 6 months and its done during a filing. Chin teeth grow 1-3 mm a week, without chewing that means both extraoral and intraoral so things change very fast.

If this chin had no previous oral issues I would say just wait and see, and you can if you want but if it was me I would stress out and want to know all was well were I can't see.
 
yea...i certainly wouldnt want to wait until the signs are so obvious it means its too late to do much. ...i really need to become good friends with a vet....or buy my own xray machine.... :hmm:

by the way dawn, i've been trying to figure out your avatar for a while now. any place you have a larger version of it posted?
 
My avatar is of my chin Gino, he is actually wearing the costumes


017.jpg


As a biker chick


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As a Vegas show girl


047.jpg
 
holy mother of god!! How the **** did you get your chin to 1) let you put clothes on her and 2)pose for pictures like that afterwards!!!
LMAO oh my god though, those are hilarious!!!


quick Buckie update: i let him out for a bit yesterday (hadn't since his eye was tearing just in case ya know to keep like dust from getting in it). Again im wondering if it only happened once because before, his fur was still kinda slicked down and stuff so kinda look wet but after a dust bath, dust didn't stick to it (like it would if it was indeed wet) and it fluffed right up like normal. gonna wait til tomorrow before i schedule an appt just to see how it goes from here.
 
Do you have a scale? If you want to wait and see keep a eye on his weight, weight loss is the very 1st indicator there is a oral issue going on.
 
hmmm ok i'll do that. i dont have a scale but I've been meaning to get one just for my peace of mind. i mean i know i wouldnt be able to feel a slight difference if there was one. I might try that first. I just didnt realize that was like a first sign, kinda was thinking that happened as things got to the point where it'd be hard to fix.
 
i do know he is eating as much as ever. i don't fill up his bowl. only put enough to cover the bottom..that way i can tell roughly if somethings off. free hay of course though. but again, i put in about the amount they'll eat in a day. he's picky as **** with it (which is just frustrating...tossing out hay that seems perfectly good just not up to his 'standards') but that's nothing new. but yea...im gonna get a scale.
 
You can also weigh the bowl before your bedtime and then weigh in the morning to also get a idea of what he is eating. Dental chins who after a filing that actually start eating again get themselves and their bowls weighed daily-when I see a few grams loss every day over the course of a week for a total of more than 20grams the appointment is made for the next filing.
 
hmmm. yea see i didn't weigh him before when he had the issue. What i noticed was him making this weird sort of yawning thing. He had the points of the sides of his molars that were irritating his tongue. He didn't seem to eat less then but guess its hard to tell without a scale. thanks a bunch dawn
 
so i've been looking for scales. i've been to a few stores and only seem to find them in pounds, not accurate enough to monitor weight changes in grams. do you have any suggestions on like what scale would be the best for a reasonable price?
 
Had this problem

Buckie sounds like he's having a similar deal to what my Penny has gone through. Her only outward symptom of malo has been what started as a watery eye. I first noticed it almost 2 years ago. I took her to the vet and the vet didn't think anything other than an eye infection and gave me antibiotics. I did those with Penny on and off for about 3 months. The "infection" would go away and come back if I stopped doing the eye drops for too long. When I finished the bottle and her eye was watery again I took her back into the vet.

The vet still thought it was only an infection but said the only way to know for sure would be xrays. So, since Penny was already there and we were both stressed I said to just do the xrays to get them over with. Xrays came back showing she had malo. Even at this point her only outward symptom was a watery eye on occasion (it wasn't even all the time like you're talking about). So, the vet gave me some more eye drops and said I should bring her back on occasion. Well, then when those ran out they were suddenly insisting I come back in (and pay them $100 just for walking in the door). I got really upset with that kind of treatment so I needed to figure something else out.

After doing lots of research I saw Vitamin C and Calcium keep coming up as things to help slow the whole thing down. But my biggest concern was still Penny's eye. It was only watery occasionally but if I left it too long it turned into an infection. And with the vet not being helpful I knew I needed to do something.

While picking up the Vitamin C from Walgreens I spent over an hour looking at eye drops and reading every single label until I found and eye wash that contains 99.9% purified water and that's it. No mystery ingredients or salt. I started giving Penny eye drops each night with a small sterelized syringe. It has been almost 2 years and she has never had another eye infection and the occasional watery eye has still been Penny's only outward symptom of her malo.

My point in all of this is that my vet was no help about this and probably would have kept believing there was no cause for the eye infections. Xrays are really the only way to know. Even with Penny I caught it Very early on when it was literally just starting but most vets don't even seem to consider it until the outward symptoms are overwhelming. Also, do your own reseach with anything because they don't always have all the answers. At this point if I had hadn't thought of an alternative to the vet I would porbably have spent thousands on needless vet bills and Penny would have continued to get eye infections every couple of months. For Buckie's occasional watery eye you could try finding eye drops that are just purified water and rinse his eye when it's a problem. With Penny if I left it took long she would get a little white discharge around it and before long I would have another infection to deal with. But like I said, I haven't had to deal with one since I started doing the eye drops myself.
 
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