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Dario and Barnaby's trip to the vet
May. 28th, 2016 05:01 pmI took my rat boys, Dario and Barnaby, along to see Dr Jo at Rat Medicine this morning. This is part of a specialist very-small-animal surgery, i.e. rabbits, guinea pigs, rats. Getting there was a slog; two trains and taxi for the last leg as even the buses weren't *that* close and I didn't know my way around the area. Just me, I'll do it, but not carting along two rats.
https://www.facebook.com/Rat-Medicine-WA-440158586090078/
I'd managed to find a carrier that would hold both of them. It's actually a "customised" humane rat trap, because I can't trust the boys to stay inside my backpack without restraints and my regular carrier won't hold two. Dario was the main patient, with mycoplasmosis and a resistance to some antibiotics, but I took Barnaby along as his brother's moral support and to have a quick look-over himself. ["Gee thanks," from Barnaby].
The people at the practice are very friendly and fond of small creatures. You don't always get that for rats, even at a vet, though the staff at Subi Vets are very good as well. And no room full of loud and inopportune dogs! I'd been warned about the prices, which was a good thing, since this place is not cheap. But these vets are using a new treatment (last six months) involving the treatment of inflammation that develops with entrenched myco - if I remember correctly, which I hope I do - with a drug that's used in the making of Viagra. I say this carefully. They are not giving rats Viagra.
Dario was not judged serious enough for this and given Baytril to be taken concurrently with Vibravet, a doxycycline. With Subi, I had been prescribed these two drugs separately and found that the first did not work, and then the second also. The effect is stronger when they're taken together. So far not anything I did not know. It's customary to try Baytril alone first, and indeed, so far that had worked with Dario. So I can't say there was anything earthshatteringly different in the treatment he was given here, as opposed to Subi. But both the boys are now recorded as patients and it'll be possible for me to snag the new drug, if either need it, without hauling very sick rats back out to Booragoon. Method in the madness.
Also, now is when I've been doing heaps of overtime at work and I knew I could afford it at the moment. I'll also add that the boys were happy in the surgery. The table was covered with material, which rats much prefer to a cold hard surface, and the main patient actually wanted to trot off and inspect the instruments nearby. They took the whole thing better than I thought, given that the journey each way took about an hour. I was the one who flaked out when we got home, since I was still tired from a very heavy week at work and had not really wanted to get up at my work time on the Saturday.
The taxi centre operator caused some eye-rolling from me and Rat Medicine's staff when she asked whether I was travelling with an animal. She had asked if the address was a house and I said a vet. "We just have to tell the taxi driver so they don't freak out." I passed this on to said driver while chatting with her on the way back to Bull Creek train station. "I'm from Bosnia," she said. "I don't freak out easy." She also said she had once had a Great Dane in her cab, sitting in the back seat and breathing down her neck. Compared to that, two little rats in a carrier must have been a breeze.
I'm not sure whether these vets are in fact better than the vets at Subi Vets. My rats have received mostly good treatment from Subi. But they are more traditional, I think, and so less willing to experiment. Dr Jo was careful to tell me that the treatment *was* new and used only as last ditch, but with the increasing resistance of all creatures to antibiotics and especially rats, in whom the respiratory illness mycoplasmosis is endemic, another last ditch is a good thing.
https://www.facebook.com/Rat-Medicine-WA-440158586090078/
I'd managed to find a carrier that would hold both of them. It's actually a "customised" humane rat trap, because I can't trust the boys to stay inside my backpack without restraints and my regular carrier won't hold two. Dario was the main patient, with mycoplasmosis and a resistance to some antibiotics, but I took Barnaby along as his brother's moral support and to have a quick look-over himself. ["Gee thanks," from Barnaby].
The people at the practice are very friendly and fond of small creatures. You don't always get that for rats, even at a vet, though the staff at Subi Vets are very good as well. And no room full of loud and inopportune dogs! I'd been warned about the prices, which was a good thing, since this place is not cheap. But these vets are using a new treatment (last six months) involving the treatment of inflammation that develops with entrenched myco - if I remember correctly, which I hope I do - with a drug that's used in the making of Viagra. I say this carefully. They are not giving rats Viagra.
Dario was not judged serious enough for this and given Baytril to be taken concurrently with Vibravet, a doxycycline. With Subi, I had been prescribed these two drugs separately and found that the first did not work, and then the second also. The effect is stronger when they're taken together. So far not anything I did not know. It's customary to try Baytril alone first, and indeed, so far that had worked with Dario. So I can't say there was anything earthshatteringly different in the treatment he was given here, as opposed to Subi. But both the boys are now recorded as patients and it'll be possible for me to snag the new drug, if either need it, without hauling very sick rats back out to Booragoon. Method in the madness.
Also, now is when I've been doing heaps of overtime at work and I knew I could afford it at the moment. I'll also add that the boys were happy in the surgery. The table was covered with material, which rats much prefer to a cold hard surface, and the main patient actually wanted to trot off and inspect the instruments nearby. They took the whole thing better than I thought, given that the journey each way took about an hour. I was the one who flaked out when we got home, since I was still tired from a very heavy week at work and had not really wanted to get up at my work time on the Saturday.
The taxi centre operator caused some eye-rolling from me and Rat Medicine's staff when she asked whether I was travelling with an animal. She had asked if the address was a house and I said a vet. "We just have to tell the taxi driver so they don't freak out." I passed this on to said driver while chatting with her on the way back to Bull Creek train station. "I'm from Bosnia," she said. "I don't freak out easy." She also said she had once had a Great Dane in her cab, sitting in the back seat and breathing down her neck. Compared to that, two little rats in a carrier must have been a breeze.
I'm not sure whether these vets are in fact better than the vets at Subi Vets. My rats have received mostly good treatment from Subi. But they are more traditional, I think, and so less willing to experiment. Dr Jo was careful to tell me that the treatment *was* new and used only as last ditch, but with the increasing resistance of all creatures to antibiotics and especially rats, in whom the respiratory illness mycoplasmosis is endemic, another last ditch is a good thing.