Results are in!

Hi all,

As you have probably already seen, the results are in!!
The rescue that had the most votes will be receiving our donation, that was gathered by selling the Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2013.
Here are the results:

Thanks to everyone who voted!
Our donation will be sent to the Palace Piggies rescue in England, who had a whopping 311 votes!
Second in place was t Kuufke with 180 votes, followed by the Critter Connection with 102 votes and Thistle Cavies rescue with 4 votes.

I will of course let you all know about what we are donating, but we still have one calendar order running, before we can make up our final balance! But to give you an indication we now have about 145 euros (about 193 USD or 122 GBP)  to donate!

Congratulations to the winner: Palace piggies rescue!

The Misfits do the Fugly

We are sending in two pics for the Fugly look!

The orange piggie is Agent Prince (Charles)

The patch work piggie is Agent Ada-tudy (Adaline)
She wanted to do the Fugly with her fav veggie on her head! So that is why she has broccoli

The Misfits

P.s. from the Winky team: The results of the Calendar poll will be announced when it is January 23 in all the timezones. So we just have to wait a tiny bit more..

Do the Fugly

In honor of our great leader, we decided to wear our favorite veggie on our head

Sjeuf does it with dignity

Agent Bo Peep

Posting Policy

Some of you might have noticed that sometimes your comment goes online directly, and sometimes you have to wait for a bit. So what's happening?

Knock knock

Well, if you comment within 2 days of the blogpost publication date, you get published directly. After that you need our approval. We still get loads of spam but usually not the first few days, so to make the blog a bit more user-friendly for you (and a bit less work for us) we're trying out this option.

Calendar piggies: January 2013

We have a new calendar and this month's Calendar piggies are Jimmy & Pepper from Heerlen in the south of the Netherlands. We'd like you to know a bit more about our calendar piggies, so in this post Jimmy and Pepper will introduce themselves. The pigtures in this post are also in the wall and desktop calendars.

Pepper: I am a tri-colored Sheltie sow and was born in March 2010. Almost a year later I found myself in the Guinea pig shelter, where I immediately became a well-known piggy, because I refused to be in a pigture. I have been on their website with a pigture in which you could not see my front. Despite that pigture I was matched with Jimmy and moved to Heerlen. Slave D thinks I am a wild little guinea pig. who is not easily tamed. But I also love to relax and excel in executing the Banana (crescent) shaped posture. I was named after the daughter of mister Graham Coxon (that is D's favorite guitar player) and my name suits me well apparently.

Pepper on the left

Jimmy: I am a black haired peruvian boar with a very sweet and docile character. That might be because I ended up in a shelter almost right after my birth in July 2009. There they took really good care of me, but I was even happier when I could move to Heerlen in December 2009. Since February 2011 I live together with Pepper and I sometimes still need to get used to that, she can be so wild. I am very much in love with Daisy of the Guinygirlz and luckily that is mutual. I am also named after someone from the musical world, namely Jimmy Page, the guitar player of Led Zeppelin. And that also explains my 'secret agent' name, Zeppelin. My activities as a 'secret agent' are mostly restricted to sending in pigtures, of which readers are supposed to guess where my front and back side are :-)

Jimmy on the left

Together, we mostly occupy ourselves with the important things in a Guinea pig's life like eating, having a nice nap, poop a bit, nap again, pee and eat again. You know how it is. But that is not all, we are also active on the Internet. We have our own Facebook page and a Twitter account (Search for Gekke Flappies) and in that way we keep in contact with Guinea pigs all around the world. Oh yes, D and mister B, who will move in together soon, they take very good care of us. We are really excited about that, as that will mean we will always have company!

Love from Jimmy and Pepper x

Friday Video Shelters

This week a collection of all the Friday Video's from this blog that featured the importance of having a forever home. You can still vote for shelter donations of the calendar here
 

''Mouse for sale'' - animated short film from Wouter Bongaerts on Vimeo.

Ow and we (still) love the message that these videos are sending:

"A person is the best thing to happen to a shelter pet
Be that person!"

Have a nice Wheekend!

Vote for a piggy shelter!

It is time to vote!
We have 4 nominees, 3 of them have a post about them telling us why you should vote for them.
Until the vote ends  you can still order your calendar, if you want one(!), after closing of the vote we would like to make the donation.
You can vote for a week, and you can only vote once, so think carefully who to vote for!! Voting ends on 22 January, the results will be announce on the 23rd.

These are the nominees, with a link to their post behind it:

• Palace Piggies Rescue, near crawley, south-east England, United Kingdom (link to post)
• t Kuufke, Limbricht, the Netherlands (link to post)
• The Critter Connection/Durham, CT/USA (Link to post)
• Thistle Cavies Rescue in Argyll, Scotland, United Kingdom (website)

Vote for The Critter Connection!

I would like to nominate The Critter Connection/Durham, CT/USA.


Both Joanne and I got our piggies from Cindy, who is head honcho at the rescue. Actually, I only have one piggy left now who was my friend's, as my five from The Critter Connection have passed on. Cindy does a wonderful job caring for the needs of the piggies, many of whom require veterinary attention when they come to her, and some of whom stay for their entire lives as sanctuary piggies. I believe at this point she has mainly senior/special needs piggies staying with her as sanctuary pigs. Her roof caved in two years ago when we had a winter of unusually heavy snow (I believe it was that winter), and she has not been able to take in as many piggies since.


Lately, because of a lack of funding, she has been using her site to advertise for people who are looking for a new home for their piggy/piggies, but the pigs stay with their owners until adopted. Cindy is very conscientious about placing piggies into good homes. I am including a link to their website, and from there you can visit their blog as well.

http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/critter.html

I sincerely hope that folks would consider giving The Critter Connection your vote. Cindy's rescue is small and has struggled to survive in tough economic times. She and her vice president, Whitney, remain very dedicated to the animals in their charge and their "mission," despite discouragement at times. I give them my highest recommendation.

Sincerely,
Ann Sadoian in CT
with Purdy Pig

Friday Video: Massage Tutorial

Dear human staff, are you paying attention? THIS is how you scratch a chin ;-)



Have a nice Wheekend!

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from agents Butterloaf and Cannonball! *carrot wine cheers*

Vote for the Kuufke Shelter!

On behalf of the Dutchies we would like to nominate 't Kuufke for the proceedings of the calendar. Guinea pig shelter 't Kuufke in Limbricht is the only guinea pig shelter in the south of the Netherlands. Kuufke totally depends on donations and the hard work of it's lovely volunteers. Over the last few years Kuufke has suffered a lot of bad luck. All of their computer equipment was stolen and the roof was blown off the shelter. We really think they deserve to have a bit of good luck.

They have a lovely website. They really do a good job showing us pigs at our best to help us find our forever home. Even if you don't speak Dutch, check out their sows, boars and neutered boars. They also have a blog where they post mail from the pigs that have found their forever home and a Facebook page with lots of pigtures.

There are 3 other reasons why you should vote for Kuufke.

1. Igor

Need we say more?

2. Sjeuf

Just like Igor, Sjeuf also found us through Kuufke. Even though we moved to the other side of the country, we still wanted a pig in our herd from Kuufke, just like uncle Igor. We like their southern swagger and we enjoy going to Kuufke. So with the help from Pepper and Jimmy, we went to Kuufke and asked for the sweetest beaux they had and they sent us on a speed date with Sjeuf. He came home with us and has been a gentlepig ever since.

3. Jimmy

Jimmy is maybe better known as agent Zeppelin, from the agent Zeppelin Mysteries. Jimmy has a very sweet and docile character. That might be because he ended up in t Kuufke almost right after his birth in July 2009 and they took really good care of him. Jimmy is currently very happy, living with (a rather lively) Pepper, who also happens to come from Kuufke.


We know Kuufke is not very well known amoung our readers since most of you are not from the Netherlands. But without Kuufke, our Igor, Sjeuf and Jimmy wouldn't have found their forever homes and their voice on this blog. So from the bottom of their big hearts, these boars ask you to give Kuufke your vote.

Related
Nominate a 2013 Calender Guinea Pig Shelter

Friday Video: Guinea Pig Speaks Out

We didn't know a guinea pig did the voice of human Ricky Gervais..



Have a nice Wheekend!

Meet Hazelnut Our Contest Winner

Oh my, how exciting! Peanut Butter is sooooo jealous he squealed the whole time I was having my photo shoot! By the way my name is spelt Hazelnut So, here is a pigture of me when I heard the happy news right after this morning's brekkie.





BTW I thought I might include a photo of me as the intrepid space explorer in case it is useful for the sci fi book



Whee think we have managed to spell your name right this time WOL whee is sorry for doing it wrong

Happy New Year 2013

Sassy in New York sent us this lovely New Year pigture and we felt that it should be appreciated by a wider audience. We told her that it might be one to consider for next year's wonderful calendar.

 

From the Piggyfriends Agents.

Pigs, Spies and Statistics

As the end of the year is coming closer, we decided to take a look at the statistics of our blog. Let's start with the pageviews.

On a typical day in december, we got between 200 and 500 pageviews. Before December, we had between 50 and 250 pageviews. As you can see, the traffic to our blog has been rising steadily, with drops when you all go on holiday, and rises in between the holidays. You can also see that December is a bit unusual. In 2012, on average, we had about 3,000 pageviews a month (in 2011 this was about 2,000, so hurray!). But not this December, where we had a whopping 8,000+ pageviews. Although we like to think we are pretty awesome, we suspect that this is mainly due to the increased attention from spammers (which is no fun, especially when you’re a pig..). We now delete quite a lot of spam on a daily basis. So take the rest of this post with a grain of salt. We like overviews but we cannot say for sure how reliable they are. If we suspect messy results because of the spam, we’ll add an *

Most Popular Posts

1. Friday Video: Wink (2,305 views)*
2. Internet memes: LOLpigz (1,989 views)
3. Friday Video: Mouse for Sale (1,043 views)
4. Who should we donate the calendar proceeds (912 views)
5. Friday Video: Talking Guinea Pig Babies (611 views)*
6. The Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar (491 views)
7. Dealing with Bloat (477 views, from 2010)
8. A Surprise for us all (441 views)
9. Can we eat Chinese Leaf? (277 views, from 2011)
10. Guinygirlz DIY cage (231 views, from 2011)

So, what do we get from this? What we really liked was the response we got when it was time to vote for the calendar. We love it when the guinea pig community gets together to help shelters. Makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside. We can also see that you seem to like the Friday Video’s, so we'll keep that up (although I wouldn’t bet any money on the Wink Friday Video, since that one in particular got a lot of spam comments). What also surprised us, is the number of page views from the relatively old bloat-post. It is making us wonder if we should put up more health and DYI posts so that people can look up stuff.

Spies
As undercover pigs, we do like to know who the pigs are that are visiting our blog. Since us editor-piggies met on the GPDD, we already know we are quite an international bunch.

So how do you guys get here? As far as we can tell, you Google us, or type in the web adress directly in the browser or have our blog bookmarked. We also get a lot of traffic from Twitter and the Guinea Pig forum.

When visitors enter our blog because of their search terms, they typically do this with the following search terms:

1.    undercover guinea pigs (177x)
2.    funny guinea pigs (89x)
3.    funny guinea pigs (81x)
4.    FUNNY GUINEA PIGS (76x)
5.    guinea pig funny (47x)
6.    funny guinea pig pictures (36x)
7.    guinea pig hay rack ides (32x)
8.    sleeping guinea pigs (26x)
9.    guinea pig hay rack (24x)
10.    guinea pig bloat (20x)

Who knew? Google thinks we’re funny.

Boring stuff

Back in 2008 when we started our blog (well actually, restarted), Internet Explorer was by far the most popular browser among our visitors. In 2012, Firefox is on top of the list (36%). Followed by Internet Explorer (29%), Chrome (14%) and Safari (12%). Also, mobile use of the blog has risen (not that much, but compared to nothing just a short while ago, it is a lot more (4% is about 3,700 pageviews). You can also see that when you look at the operating system stats.

Even though Windows is still the most popular operating system. A huge chunk of it’s competition is taken by the iPhones and the Androids. Why is this interesting? Well, this way we know that when we put something on the blog, it would be nice if it works on smartphones too.

Personal favorites
Most of you visit this blog frequently and then read the most recent posts. We are really happy with these type of visits, but it also means that we cannot see which posts you liked most since those visits add to the general stats (don’t feel bad, we don’t mind ;-) ). Also, numbers don’t equal a giggle or an ‘awww’.

We love sleeping.. err blogposts

That is why we wanted to highlight our favorite posts. For us, it were the blogposts that featured sleeping piggies both the Sleep Research and the Olympigs Fifty Yard Nap.

So.. which blogposts were your favorite?

Friday Video: Starcraft

A starcraft guinea pig parody




Have a nice Wheekend!

Friday Video: 12 Days of Christmas

Yes. We know it is not a friday, but it is Christmas, and with those 12 days, there must be a friday in there somewhere.



Merry Pigmas!

p.s. If you haven't checked the blog today, be sure to scroll down and check the lovely pigtures from agent Schilling

Merry Christmas from Agent Schilling!

Agent Schilling is happy to report she had a great Christmas!  She received a comfy cave to snuggle in, and a big stack of hay tubes just perfect for munching! 

Agent Schilling sends lots of love to all of her piggy friends around the world. 

Happy Holidays!

Merry Pigamus from Agents Butterloaf and Cannonball!

Season's Greetings from the Piggyfriends

Slave chose Susie and Sally aka Agents Gemini to pose 
for our holiday pigtures this year as she thought
that they would sit nicely and not run off across the room.
First of all she picked this one from the photoshoot.

Then she changed the scenery and tempted them to stay
 in place with a stocking full of delicious carrots. 

After a while even Sally and Susie's patience was exhausted
 and they trashed the set. Never mind.
They did get an extra carrot each for pigticipating.

Wishing everypig and every Slave a wonderful Yuletide, Christmas, Holiday, Hannukah or whatever you celebrate.

Glasses of carrot wine all round. Cheers.

From the Piggyfriends with Slave Penny - Nollag Shona. (Slave is Irish and knows all kinds of strange words and, in case you are wondering, this means Merry Christmas).

Vote for the Christmas Mouse - Puppy love jewelry

Our Guinea friend Puppy is taking part in a Christmas mouse voting again this year,

with all his guinea pig pals dressing up for christmas. You can also follow him (@puppyaguineapig) and his friends: @HoodwintheGpig, @Gideon_Shmeegle, @DobbieJonesGpig, @GabrielleGPig
on twitter

You can vote for him, or any of the other gorgeous piggies here
(or copy paste this link: http://stores.ebay.com/Puppy-Love-Jewelry/Vote-for-The-2012-Christmas-Mouse.html)

Friday Video; Talking Guinea Pig Babies

Thes little monsters are so cute..


Have a nice Wheekend!

All we want for christmas..

is foooood!!!

hugs,

The starving winky team

p.s. J, if you're reading this, yes this is a hint to get off the couch and into the fridge!

p.p.s. a clean cage wouldn't hurt either..

When Pigs Fly & Calendar orders

We know we have seen this shop somewhere before,
but just wanted to share, they have supercute christmas art now!

When pigs fly on etsy

---

I received the first prints of both desk and wall calendar yesterday and they are both supercute!
I have changed/added the holiday dates you sugested, and added last agent names, I am now ready to order the calendars for you!
I also wanted to let you know you can still order the undercover guinea pigs 2013 Calendar by going to the order calendar tab at the top of this page.
Today I have send out payment requests to everyone who ordered a calendar so far!
Please let me know if you want faster of slower shipping, I indicated the prices of that between brackets. If available slower takes 21 days, faster takes 7 days. Or is something else is not correct.

Wheekz to all piggies out there,
Mieke of the Undercover guinea pigs blog.

p.s. You can still enter the space hopper competition to donate 1 pound to the Potters Guinea Pig Rescue, and a chance for you guinea pig to be a character in Jane Bartholemew's new book!
See the info in the side bar -->

Friday Video: Wink

We do not particularly find this video funny, but hey..  it's a commercial with guinea pigs in it.


Have a nice Wheekend!

p.s. thanx to Vegan Wheekers for tweeting the video

The Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2013 is ready to be ordered!!

Hi piggy lovers,

I am proud to announce we have finished up the design of the Undercover Guinea pigs Calendar 2013!

A few points of attention:

• The calendar starts the week on mondays, not on sundays as some people are used to. I mailed the printer, but this cannot be changed. 
• This year I found out I can change the standard Dutch holiday names, so I will add all the holidays I have on another English calendar, and translate but leave some of the Dutch holidays in. 
• The Wall calendar sometimes has more than one pigture on the month, because that enabled us to also put lower resolution pigtures in the calendar. The desktop version has one pigture per month. 

Prices
12,50 euro (around 16 USD) for the desk calendar
15 - max 20 euros for the wall calendar (it actually costs almost 20 euros, but the company usually gives discounts)
plus postage and package (from the Netherlands, Europe or the USA for our friends there)

All people who ordered so far have received an email from Mieke, to check of their order is correct, and upcoming week payment requests will be sent using paypal.

Ordering the calendar
Have you not ordered the calendar yet? You still can! There is no set deadline for ordering the calendar, but do keep in mind it will take a few days to weeks for you to receive the calendar.You can choose a wall or desktop version, or buy both, and buy as many as you like.Order the calendar from the order calendar tab above, or visit our order form.

Support a guinea pig shelter
With buying this calendar you will not only get a Desk/wall calendar featuring some of our agents, but you will also support a Guinea pig shelter, which will be chosen through voting on the blog!

Nominate a shelter
You can still nominate a shelter, by commenting on this post, and do tell us why you think they deserve our donation!

Previews
Please notice that we have changed the first pigture to Fugly and his romaine hat!

Desktop version of the Calendar
(click to enlarge)

Wall version of the Calendar (click to enlarge)

Thanks for everyone supplying their gorgeous piggy pics, and everyone ordering a calendar, thus making it possible for us to do the Calendar and donation again this year!

Wheekz,
Mieke

Friday Video: Mouse for Sale

We love this cute video. Just watch it.


''Mouse for sale'' - animated short film from Wouter Bongaerts on Vimeo.

Have a nice Wheekend!

Calendar Photo

Agent Shyness here with a pigture of me for Fourth of July!

  Agent Shyness out

A Pigture for 2013 Calendar

Agent Shyness (Larry)when reporting with a  Christmas photo of us with Santa!

   Did he know he used to wear a green suit?

  Agent Shyness and Agent Pellets out

Picture for 2013 Guinea Pig Agents Calendar

This is Agent Pellets (Mo) reporting.Here's a picture of me and Agent Shyness (Larry) when we were 6 months old.We're ten months now.

  Do you think we could be in the calendar?

   Agent Pellets and Agent Shyness out

Calendar 2013: Another Cute contest

Hi guys,

Again we received some pretty pigtures to use for the calendar, and we can't choose which one we like better!! So help is needed, which one do you like best, A or B?

For the month of March we have Diarmuid celebrating Saint Patrick's day (March 17) and Agent wizard celebrating Easter at the end of March

A. Diarmuid
(due to lower resolution Diarmuid, can only be combined with Gandalf on the wall calendar...)

B. Agent Wizard (Gandalf)

p.s. We could still use one or 2 more pigtures for the 2013 Calendar, so all you gorgeous Agents, put your slave to work!

Friday Video: two Hamsters

What happens when you give two hamsters just one wheel:


Have a nice Wheekend!

p.s. we recommend that you keep hamsters just by themselves (no matter what the pet shop says) they are not herd animals like us guinea pigs.

Introducing Agent Schilling!

Real Name?  Fergie
Secret Agent Name?  Agent Schilling.  My dad named me this after Curt Schilling, a famous baseball pitcher, because I am great at throwing things!  Mostly I just throw my poop over the edge of the cage to get my humans' attention, but sometimes I throw other things, too.  Piles of hay, pellets….my entire pellet bowl.  Throwing things is fun!
Where do you live?  I live in California with my 2 piggy slaves and 2 piggy sisters, Agent Peanut and Agent Kelly.  
Favourite Food?  I only eat healthy food – I can be kind of a snob.  I love my KMS pellets and fresh hay, along with various lettuce types.  But don't stick junk food in my face like apples or fruit – no way! 
Favourite Hobby?  I like to harass my sisters and throw poop.  Sometimes mom calls me an "angry little nugget" when I harass my sisters or give my slaves The Stink Eye. 
Favourite Toy?  Poop?  I sure do love to throw that stuff!  Mom says this is not a good habit for a princess like me to have, but I just can't help myself!

Introducing Agent Kelly!

Real Name?  Wendy
Secret Agent Name?  Agent Kelly, which is short for Machine Gun Kelly.  I LOVE to machine gun rumble around the cage and act angry!
Where do you live?  I live in California with 2 piggy slaves and my 2 piggy sisters, Agent Peanut and Agent Schilling. 
Favourite Food?  I like to eat lots of fresh hay and I sneak Oxbow vitamins as often as I can.  Crunchy food is the best, I don't really like soft stuff like red leaf lettuce. 
Favourite Hobby?  Rumbling!
Favourite Toy?  I love my hay tube.  I carry it around the cage and snuggle with it, and I even use it as a pillow.   Fresh hay tubes are the best. 

Introducing Agent Peanut!

Real Name?  Jaina (pronounced Jay-nuh; I am named after a beautiful princess in World of Warcraft!)
Secret Agent Name?  Agent Peanut, thanks to my colors and how cute and little I am….er, was, once upon a time, before all this extra chub showed up!
Where do you live?  I live with 2 piggy slaves and 2 piggy sisters (Agent Schilling and Agent Kelly) in California. 
Favourite Food?  What food isn't good food?!  I love pellets, fresh hay, lettuce, carrots, and especially fresh peppers from the garden.  I will eat anything…I especially love when my mom lets me sneak a piece of apple or lets me lick banana off her fingers – YUM!
Favourite Hobby?  Sleeping and looking cute. 
Favourite Toy?  My cuddle cups.  They are comfy to sleep in, and fun to hide under!

More pigtures needed!

Hi all,

As you probably know we are working on compiling a calendar of some of our agent piggies, which we will be selling. The small profit we will make with this, will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world ;)

So far we got one nomination for a Guinea pig shelter:
- Wind Whistle Warren in Gloucestershire, UK (nominated by Elizabeth)
Of course we wouldn't mind more nominees, so send in the shelter names you think we should donate to

The Calendar is half filled, 6 months covered, 6 more to go, so we need more pigtures, and we are sure you all have some gorgeous piggies that would love to make the calendar at home!

As I know not all of you have cameras that take pigtures that are of a high resolution, and got some lower resolution pigtures send in, I decided to allow two lower quality pigtures for the wall calendar. I think it would be a shame if we cannot let everyone enter, due to low resolution pigtures the printer wont accept! So be informed that in the wall calendar you might find 2 pigtures on one month.
The desk calendar is smaller and this usually fits one lower res pigture, plus it's too small to show two pigtures on one month, so on that one you will see only one pigture per month.

Here are the entries so far:

I have mailed all the people that ordered a calendar so far, if you have ordered but did not get an email, let me know!

Mieke of the Undercover guinea pigs blog

Friday Video: How to make an apple pie

Since it is getting colder outside, something warm out of the oven would be really nice. The Gekke Flappies sent us this video on how to make an apple pie. Yum!



Have a nice Wheekend!!

p.s. the Burrow Bunch has made lots of video's starring Petal and Roket. We really like the cute sets and the clever way they are making pigs 'do' stuff. Make sure you check them out on their website or their Youtube channel

Happy Peegsgiving!

Happy Peegsgiving from Agents Cannonball and Butterloaf!