Help for an old girl:

[Courtney]

Hey all. This isn't a health emergency, but rather... a call for input. Most of you know of Vette - she's somewhere in the realm of 5 years old and her age is catching up with her. She's still very steady on her feet and she gets the odd urge to wheel, but most of the time, she prefers to hang out in her nice warm bed. For the last few months, I've been leaving kibble in her bed so she doesn't have to go far to eat.

Within the last few months, she's also started to relieve herself in her bag. I've taken her to the vet to rule out any infections (all tests came back clear), and the vet suspects that her body is simply tired and we're on the downward spiral now. From how the vet explains it, her body just can't hold back the urge to urinate and she just goes wherever she is at that particular moment.

So I've been simply changing her bags out and giving her fresh ones daily. What I'm wondering... is there something else I can use to help wick the moisture away from her? Diapers? Pads? She doesn't have any urine burns because I give her a fresh bag whenever she needs one, but I want to keep her completely dry since she's also prone to hibernation. I'll be heading out of town in a few weeks for a couple days, and Vette is very much a one person hedgehog. My mom has great difficulties handling her and my room mate is terrified of her, so it's quite an ordeal to have them change her bag every morning. If I could figure out some way to suck the moisture away from her, perhaps I wouldn't worry so much about burns.

Does anyone have any ideas for me to make things easier on my old girl?

 

[shetland]

Gee Courtney I'm so sorry about our little old Vette. I too wonder if the human pads would work; on the other hand would she shred them? Or does she not do that or take the energy to do that? Would your vet have any ideas?

 

[charlie]

Age does tend to catch up with them. Cedrick is very similar. He needs a new bag every day. If that has been working for you so far, I would likely try to get someone who can change the bag for the few days you are away. I would experiment with thicker and thinner bags to see what is less likely to remain wet (I would have thought thin but sometimes the thick ones do a better job of pulling everything away from their bodies).

 

[Nancy]

You could also try to get her to sleep under a blanket rather than in a bag. The hedgie sitters could pick her up with the blanket and easily replace what she is sleeping on. If you use the pads, use puppy ones just in case she does dig at them or chew on them. The human ones aren't made with the possibility of being eaten but the puppy ones are.

I've had numerous that have needed their bag or sleeping area changed daily because they got incontinent.

 

[Courtney]

I may give the puppy pads a try. Vette is funny... she used to be content with an igloo and a blanket until she got her very first hedgehog bag. Now, she won't sleep in anything but a hedgehog bag. She's particular fond of the ones with corduroy as the inner lining. She's not much of a digger or chewer, so I was considering putting a few layers of paper towel in her bag and seeing if that might help.

My mom can handle Vette... she loves her, it's just that Vette works herself up if she's been handled by anyone else. It's the strangest thing.. I remember handing Vette to mom a while back and she only held her for ten minutes, tops, while I cleaned cages and gave mom a quick run down on care. Mom didn't mistreat her or hurt her, but as soon as Vette was put back in her cage, she had the nastiest bout of green poop I've ever seen (her poop before being held by mom was normal). She didn't eat or drink that night and was "off" the next day. The day after that, it was as if nothing happened. When I actually went out of town, I got a few calls from mom to report that the old gal hadn't eaten anything that day. It worried mom so much that she made hamburger and scrambled eggs for her, just so she wouldn't be hungry.

It's just so odd.

 

[smhufflepuff]

About the urine burns... After Vette's clean and dry, you can coat the area that's most prone to getting burned with vaseline. It'll serve as a protective layer.

I end up needing to do this with Satin because she's a full figured lady who gets her messes trapped in the skin folds around her "private area."

The Alba Botanica Un-petroleum Multi-Purpose Jelly is what we've actually been using. It's what a person ends up with when they walk into a Whole Foods store, stare at all the products feeling completely overwhelmed, and then an employee helps after said person mutters something about "hedgehog" and "vaseline." Not that I've ever been completely befuddled in such a place