# Hanging head off of ledge, labored breathing, not eating enough



## Ventiusx (Nov 13, 2016)

My rat, who is almost two years, has always had some issues. Commonly got URIs, began peeing blood from around a year(all the vets we asked had no idea what it was, and decided it wasn't an issue since she wasn't in pain). Despite this she has almost always been energetic and friendly. However, for the two weeks or so she's been hanging her head off of the side of cage and acting lethargic. She's not eating a lot, mostly just a few small bites. She seems to chew a lot more than necessary. She's slightly cold to the touch, especially her. I don't know if she's been drinking any water. She has complete control of her paws, so it's not a PT like her old cagemate had. Her breathing is deep and further down her body than normal. She has an odd gait. 



 heres a clip of her breathing. 
We took her to the vet yesterday to get meds for the bugs on her and her cagemates and the vet said both her heart and lungs sounded clear. 
She's down to skin and bones, and we're hand feeding her liquids in a syringe. I'm afraid that it's more than just 'old age' like the vet suggested. her other cagemates are fine and healthy.


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## Shadow <3 (Jan 25, 2017)

Like you said, it isn't just "old age". "Old age" isn't going to cause things like harsh breathing, it just means your rat is more susceptible to certain issues. Now I haven't dealt with many issues in rats, but something is clearly going on with your girl. When my vets see my rats breathing like this, they call it "abdominal breathing" because the rat is apparently using more muscles than normal to breath (the "hanging head" thing you see is something rats do to breath easier, so thats also another bad sign). I've always been told that this is a critical sign of illness, and when my rats were like this they ended up staying in the vets oxygen tank. However, all my girls who ended up this way had pneumonia, and had various other symptoms as well. They all went off their food, breathed hard (no noisy breathing for two of them, they other chirped as she breathed), puffed up, and because super lethargic. 


Is she on antibiotics right now? If not, as bad as it sounds, you may want to put her on some "preventative" (or hopefully helpful) general antibiotics like Baytril and doxy. I dislike the idea of over-using antibiotics, but in many case my vets simply don't know what's going on inside the rats, and antibiotics are one of the first things we try. When my girls had pneumonia, Baytril and Doxy along with nebulized albuteral were life savers. 


Lungs sounding "good" means little to me, as in my experience most of the time you can't hear lung issues in rats. My vets are the general cat&dog type (so little rodent experience), but they tell me that in smaller animals like rats its hard to hear heart and breathing discrepancies simply because of the rate at which the animals heart/lungs are going at. Considering a rat's heart beats 300-500 times a minute, I imagine it'd be hard to count just using a stethoscope. Same with their respiratory rate, which according to Google is around 85 breaths a minute. 


I've never dealt with heart failure in rats, but apparently symptoms are similar to pneumonia. I guess that's something to consider if your girls doesn't respond to antibiotics, but like I said, I wouldn't know from personal experience.


I'd be concerned about the peeing blood as well, but like you know, it can be very hard to diagnosis the cause in small animals like rats. My previous older girl ended up with blood-flecked pee during the last months of her life, and after she passed I had an autopsy done that showed she had the beginning of kidney failure. Perhaps something along those lines is afflicting your girl, but even so, I'm pretty sure the only thing you can do in that case is diet control.




Sorry I can't be too much help here. I hope your old girl feels better soon


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## Ventiusx (Nov 13, 2016)

We received the prescription for antibiotics today from our small animal vet in case she gets another URI, I hope to get it filled and put her on it as soon as I can.


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