Friday video: Agents and the CTU - Cavia Training Unit

We found this video of unknown agents to us, going through the Cavia Training Unit...
We got our own version with a shoebox and chopsticks... not impressed so far.. why go in between the sticks when you can throw it up to go underneath the sticks?

Bosworth visits the vet. BEWARE GRAPHIC CONTENT.

Agent Plantagenet reporting.

You wouldn't know it from this pigture but I had a nasty looking cyst develop on my back just above my grease gland.

Our wonderful Rodentologists have retired and moved away so our Slave took us to see Lyn from Palace Piggies rescue, who has completed the CCT Rodentology course. She decided that my cyst needed to be excised by a vet so we came home again and our Slave made an appointment for me to see Etienne, our lovely vet.

We parked right outside the vet's office and went inside. Rafferty, my best friend, came with me for moral support.

Here we are on the vet's table, hiding in our box of hay. Etienne poked about at my cyst and told Slave that I would have to be sedated for him to remove it. Slave was very worried as she is paranoid about anaesthetics. Etienne was going home to Belgium for a few days at Christmas but as soon as he was back at work, Slave took me in for my operation. He is the only vet in the practice that sees guinea pigs. The others always refer piggies to him as he is a piggy expert.

When she called the vet in the afternoon, the nice nurse said that I was awake and eating hay and could come home straight away. Slave was very relieved and she and her son, our pigsitter, who was staying with us over Christmas came to fetch me home asap.

Below is a pigture of my incision, all sewn up. It doesn't look very nice so don't look if you are squeamish. I couldn't see it but Slave took this pigture. Eeek! I am bald!

I had to be kept on my own in case Rafferty chewed at the stitches and she had to watch that I didn't either. We didn't like this at all and moped so much that Slave put us back together, telling us to be good boars, which we were.

We went back to the vets on Monday for Etienne to remove the stitches but there was still a bit of scab left so he said that we should leave it for a few days and go back this Saturday. My coat is growing back already.

He said that he had never seen a cyst like mine before and looked through all his piggy reference books so that Slave could take a photo to show you. He could not find one so drew a picture instead. He laughed when Slave took a photo of his drawing. Here it is. He is a much better vet than artist!

He said that the cyst was like a honeycomb with each tiny sac filled with pus. It would have been possible to remove the pus from each little sac individually but it was easier to remove the whole thing.

He always used to say that Slave should write a book about guinea pig care but was happy when she said that she contributes to this blog instead.

We have just been to see the vet again and although he was able to remove 4 of my stitches, he decided that we should wait another week to have the rest taken out as there is still quite a large scab.

Here is a pigture of my progress. It does not look very nice but it is only a scab over what our vet said was quite a large hole.


As you can see my coat is growing back over my bald patch. I have to go back to see the vet again next week, when he hopes that the remainder of my stitches can be removed but I thought that I would post this and maybe post another pigture later on when I am all mended. 

Real beetroot...

After seeing that jar of pickled beetroot that no piggy eats, mom remembered we still had a tiny supposed beetroot in the garden. So up I went with my little piggy cam to take a pic of it. It is really small and mom checked for me there is not really a beetroot in the ground attached to it... but it definitely seems more edible than that pickled beetroot!

Signing off,
Agent Bouncy Ball

A Piggy A-Z. B is for Beetroot

Many of the Piggyfriends enjoy beetroot, both the leaves and the root and Slave grows these in the garden for us in the summer.

"Hey, Slave, this is not the sort of beetroot that piggies should have!!" says Susie aka Agent Gemini. " We must only have raw veggies!"

We think that Slave knows this but we are moving on to C in our A-Z next week and this jar of pickled beet was all that she had. She took it from the larder for the humans' salad tonight and thought that it would make a nice photo before they ate it all.

If you feed your piggies beetroot be aware that it will turn our urine bright red - just like it does with humans - so don't be alarmed.

Happy New Year!

This is a little late but Agent Yougie would like to wish everypig a Happy New Year!

Friday video: Presents!

Okay, we know christmas isn't until almost a whole year.

And that the yuletide is over again,

but this is a cute video of piggies

getting their christmas presents...

You always like to watch piggies, right?

We hope you still enjoy this video we found, even though the holiday season is over already...

Double B, for the piggy A-Z: Agent Brave sir Robin aka Bérke

Hi there,

Today we have a double B for our Piggy A-Z: our agent Brave sir Robin, also known as Bérke.

Bérke came to join the guinygirlz herd after our Lily left us. The guinygirlz and their slave Mikey had quite some fun looking at the website of the shelter they would visit to find a new friend. The Kuufke shelter in the south of the Netherlands has all their piggies that are up for adoption on their website with a pigture and a little info about them. They already knew quite some weeks before hand that they would go to the shelter, but that also meant they saw quite some nice piggies pass by that were already adopted by the time they got to visit t Kuufke.
Bérke was definetly Mikey's favorite from the pigtures on the site. Our cousins from auntie Janneke also visited the shelter the same day and they arrived before we did. They got to date Bérke first! Mom was rather worried they would get along, leaving us to find another friend... but apparently none of them were interested in each other Phew. Bérke and the guinygirlz at that time (Daisy, Roos and Woopy) did seem to like each other. Woopy was already quite old at that time, so mom worried a bit the excitement would not be good for her. But she seemed fine with him and just was staying calm and relaxed on meeting him. Daisy however was a it more feisty, she probably already took over the role of boss piggy at that time without us realizing that, but Bérke seemed to like that.

Bérke is also featuring in the card game we made.

As you might be able to see, he looks quite a lot like one of our slaves first piggies: Guiny. She joined Lotje a nice happy redhead as a little piggy. She soon became boss and ruled the cage. She often seemed to need to determine with dad who was boss, she always found she should be the boss of them, but she never won from the human. Slaves would say she was a boar in a sows skin, sometimes we wonder if Bérke is Guiny's reincarnatio and she did really get back as a boar ;)

So if you are still interested in getting an undercover guinea pigs card game, you can still order them! They are 12,50 euro each, plus shipping costs. The good thing is they fit in an envelope easily, which means shipping is not that expensive. Sending a game to the US is 3,45 euro. For current exchange rates google ' eur in usd' for example ' 12.50 eur in usd' and google will tell you what it would cost in us dollars. Mikey likes to use paypal for the payments. If you have no paypal account, we think you can do a one time payment without having to get an account.
If you want to order on or more games, please fill out the form here.
Also know that once the first batch is sold, the proceeds will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world. You can nominate a shelter and that we will vote on a shelter to determine which one gets the proceeds... We hope you will join in the fun!

The Guinygirlz and Boar Bérke

Christmas Presents

Agent Mystery reporting.

We thought that we should post a pigture of our Christmas presents......

........but, as you can see, we... er... ate them all.

Slave brought home a huge pile of Christmas veggies with special treats like parsley and chicory, which are not always available in our local shop at this time of year and her son, our pigsitter, came home for the holidays and he gave us a big bag of cos lettuce and chicory but it has all gone. How did that happen? Now we are down to iron rations until Slave goes to the supermarket this afternoon.

We would love to see your pigtures of presents ( if you have any left to show ). Please send them into us. Find the Contribute button at the top of our page and follow the instructions. It is so easy.

Merry Pigmas!

Merry Pigmas from Agent Yougie, Apollo, and Dmitri!

Ethan (AKA Agent Peruke, AKA Agent Sheep) and Eddie (AKA Agent Confetti) posed for their holiday card this week.  They send best wishes to all!

B (Piggy A-Z): Introducing Agent Boo

Peaches has been on Agent weight (aka 1000 grammes / 1 kg) on and off during this year, but she has never been introduced as an agent. First time she reached Agent weight was already in march this year, and she went down in weight and reached agent weight again in April, June, July and November... So she as been going up and down, but it did not seem to affect her, and it never got really low, or high for that matter.

Anyway, she deserves an introduction as an Agent, as this has been long overdue, especially when looking at the first time she reached Agent weight.

So without much further ado I would like to introduce to you: Agent Boo!

Why Agent Boo? Well, I guess you are all not hardcore gamers, as I am also not, so it's a bit harder to explain. My boyfriend E referenced to Boo, the giant miniature space hamster, when talking about Peaches when we first got her. She was really hard to set up with the other piggies, as she would go from nice to psycho piggy in about a minute. Boo was the companion of a computer character (back in the old days) called Minsc in game the Baldur's Gate. Minsc would talk to Boo in the game, and shout things like 'Go for the eyes, Boo!' If you want to read more about Boo see this link.
Next to Peaches looking like a giant Hamster, the description Minsc would give Boo, did sound a bit like the ferocious Peaches we had at first.
Luckily nowadays Peaches a rather nice piggy, and she loves to cuddle with Roos, her biggest enemy at first.

Agent Boo, together with Agent Tortoise on the right

Hope you all have some lovely Christmas days,

Mieke

p.s. You can still order the Undercover guinea pigs card game, the first have been send already. More info in this post. All proceeds will go to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world, which you can nominate and vote for yourselves

Season's Greetings from the Piggyfriends

On the first day of Christmas, our Slave she gave to me....a stocking full of veggies, which I shared with all of the other Piggyfriends.

Here I am, Gandalf, aka Agent Wizard, in my Christmas hat. I am enjoying this bean but I don't think that I want those candy canes. However, I know someone who will.

Here is Algernon Rat, who has come to visit us. He is in party mood too with a very silly Christmas hat and an armful of candy canes. He can take some home with him and share them with Sandy.

And here is a pigture of us both, wishing all of our readers a very Happy Christmas, Holiday, Yuletide, Hannukah or, if this is not a time of celebration for you - have a good time anyway. Good health to everyone and peace to all pigs. ( and slaves too of course ).

"And a partridge in a pear tree, tra la!" "What! Who brought that partridge in here?" " There is no call for a partridge in this post!" " No partridges! This is for piggies and rats only"........CUT............." er... what happened to the peace to all pigs?" "Ho!Ho!Ho!"

B is for Brownie

Our current herd has no piggies who's names begin with B.

But we did have a Brownie once - she was sweet as could be! 

She'd snuggle and kiss and never would miss

A chance to show off her great piggy lips!

Brownie was a pig we had for only a short while but she was awesome!  

One of our piggies died unexpectedly and the two remaining pigs were very sad.  Brownie's friend had also died the same day as ours, and she was so sad she stopped eating.  Her family was looking to find a home where Brownie could live the rest of her days with other piggies, as they weren't able to add more furry family members at the time (brownie was 5.5 years old at this point).  

She integrated very easily into our small herd and was loved dearly.  Sadly Brownie had a heart condition and she passed away as a result of it just two short months later.  We didn't have her for long but she made a big imprint on our hearts!  She was so sweet and outgoing and had the cutest bum we'd ever seen!  One tuft of brown fur curved left and one tuft of orange fur curved right, giving her the perfect heart-shaped bum!  We could never get enough of it.  Don't you think it's cute?! 

A Piggy A-Z. B is for Banana

Not all piggies enjoy bananas. Of our current herd, less than half like banana but Lola Piggyfriend loves it.

"Please peel a banana for me. I only have about an inch at a time but banana is yummy!" says Lola.

Some of the Piggyfriends like the peel too but it needs a wash first and the sticky label removed.

Slave says that banana is like Marmite - one either detests it or loves it - she hates both. Her deputy Slave loves both and takes a banana to work with him every day.

Piggies that would normally run and hide from a banana will often enjoy it as part of a syringe feeding regime. It is easy to mash and draw up into a 1ml. syringe. Bananas are especially useful for a piggy suffering with diarrhoea as they are an important source of potassium, which is quickly lost at this time.

Do any piggies reading this like banana?

We are still hoping that a piggy whose name begins with a B will send in his/her pigture. Slave is always sneaking up on us with her camera but we love to see other piggies too.

B (Piggy A-Z): Introducing Agent Bouncy ball

Hi all,

Here another post for B in the piggy A-Z series.
My name is Tijger (this means Tiger in Dutch) and since a week or two I have reached agent weight, which means I am now a 1000 grammes or one kilo(gram)! *Proud* I am now 9 months old...

So slave decided I will be agent Bouncy ball, because I can be really active and bouncing through the cage. Also when sitting on slave's lap, I cannot sit still. Have you ever seen the video slaves made of me? I wasn't freaking out or anything I am just that hyperactive ;)

Tijger is not a #lap piggy, she will not sit still, she gets that from her dad ;) #adventurous #guineapig

A video posted by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Aug 2, 2015 at 4:49am PDT

So in my new role as an actual undercover agent Bouncy ball(!) I will give a little report on what just happened this evening...

This is me, enjoying one of my favorite activities:
Eating

Mommy was loudly playing something called 'Christmas songs', singing and dancing along, as dad brought some big green thing down. They have a plastic one due to dad being allergic to practically anything (plants and animals). Luckily one of the few things he did not test as allergic for are us piggies :)

Then mom started to put lights in the green thing she calls a tree. They are quite pretty, she is happy that this year she finally has colored LED lights. Roos tells me she is happy with these new lights as well, which are either on or off, as the old one had 7 settings, mostly flashing the lights in different sequences or speeds...

Then mom put all kinds and sizes of colored balls in the tree, she looked proud after having put all the christmas ornaments we own in the tree. Apparently she never managed to do that before...

Then she found out she had one unused chain of lights, well, next to the flashing one, and she decided to decorate our cage as well...

What do you guys think? At first we were a bit apprehensive, but we are fine with them now. She also added some tinsel, and a few ornaments. Quite some years ago, the year Woopy was born, that was back in 2007, mom got a few wooden guinea pig ornaments from Tammy of Cavymadness as part of a secret santa gift exchange.

Here you can see Berke with the piggy ornament looking into our cage

Berke stuffing his face,
with the wooden ornament observing him

Well, I hope you liked my report, we would love to see how your cages look!

Signing off,
Agent Bouncy ball

A Piggy A-Z. B is for Bosworth Piggyfriend

We think that we have exhausted "A" so we are moving onto B in our Piggy A-Z.

This is me, Bosworth aka Agent Plantagenet. I am a silver/grey Ridgeback boar with ruby eyes. Slave has a thing for piggies with red or ruby eyes ( although she loves us all equally ). As you can see, I enjoy tearing up a box with my friend, Rafferty.

Here I am again. Slave tried to take a photo showing my ridge but, because I am a self coloured piggy, it doesn't show up very well. Never mind. I know that Jim, Agent F1, has the same problem. Show Ridgebacks have a much more pronounced ridge along their backs so I would never win a prize but who cares? I'd rather eat than be taken to a show.

And here I am again with my best friend, Rafferty. He is a Peruvian so has a long time to wait until we get to "P" or "R" so he is getting a preview here. He is a pure bred Peruvian but Slave cuts his coat so that he see and play. We both love grass, parsley and dandelions.

Are you a piggy whose name begins with "B"? If so, we'd love to see your pigture and you can add a story too if you wish. It is as easy as sending an email with an attachment. Find the Contribute button at the top of our page, click on it and follow the very easy instructions. Later on we will post other piggy related topics beginning with B.

A Piggy A - Z. A is for Antibiotics

Sometimes piggies get sick and we need to be given Antibiotics to make us well again. At Piggyfriends, we use what is called Septrin in England but this is known by other names as you can see on our bottle, which was sent to us from the US and has the name Sulfamethoxazole and Trimethoprim on the label. That's a lot for a piggy to type and spell right! This is very safe for piggies and has a nice flavour too. This one is grape but we usually have banana. It is a suspension and needs to be shaken vigorously to mix the ingredients. We are given 1ml. twice a day. That's a 1ml syringe in our photo so we have a full one for each dose.

Our vet keeps baytril, tribrissen and marbocyl and these are piggy safe but baytril can cause an upset tum so Slave sticks to our Septrin.

Some antibiotics are deadly for piggies. We must never be given penicillin. Our Slave knows only too well how dangerous this is as she was given it as a child in hospital and suffered anaphylactic shock.

Slave decided it was too risky for one of us to sit on the shiny kitchen counter for this photo so we have used stand-ins. These piggies were a present from Slave's son on her birthday. We love them as they don't eat our veggies.

Go Fish! Card Game: 11 sets of guinea pigs

Hi all,

As mentioned before we are planning to have a game with pigtures of all our lovely guinea pigs for sale, instead of the Calendar we have done before.
Mieke just recently received the try-out print of our card game, and she is thrilled to show it to you!

Here you can see all 11 sets of Guinea Pigs. The categories are:
Smooth-hairs, (Indiana) Smoothhairs, Smoothhair Piggyfriend,
Smoothhair Guinygirlz, Smooth-haired Agents, White Smoothhairs,
Rex or US Teddy, Rexes or US Teddies, Flower Rexes and Teddies,
Crested piggies, Abbies & Alpacas

Spooky, our late spokespig of the piggypals,
can be admired on the back of the cards

As we did before we want to sell as many of these sets as possible, and all the 'profit' that is made will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world. You can nominate shelters and vote for your favorite as usual.

So if you are interested, you can sign up now!

We hope to be able to sell them at a price of 12,50-15 euros plus costs for shipping form our home in the Netherlands. The game includes a full colour card game with 11 sets of 4 guinea pigs. The card are nice and firm and a normal card game card size. You also get a box to put the game in with the logo of the printer (Gozi) on it, unless we get to order 50 or more sets at once then we can have Spooky on the box...

The size of the cardgame allows Mieke to send the games in an envelope, so costs should be around 5- 6 euro to the US, UK, around 3 euros for neighbouring countries like Belgium and Germany.

As Mieke hasn't given you the exact price of the game yet (depends on how many orders we get), you can sign up conditionally. If the eventual price is too high, let us know and you will not be bound to taking the order. You can find the sign up form here

A Piggy A-Z - A is for Agent

A is for Agent, without whom this blog would not be written as we depend on our Undercover Piggies to bring us all of these stories and pigtures.

We would like to introduce two new Agents, Cosmo and Casper Piggyfriend. We are not sure if they have actually reached Agent weight as they do not sit on the scale long enough for our Slave to read it but they certainly put away the veggies and they have grown a lot since they arrived here as little piglets.

Here is Cosmo, doing what he does best - eating.

And here is his close-up.

Below is his best friend, Casper. They are not brothers, all though they look almost identical but were part of a huge rescue and are probably related somehow.

"What?" says Casper. "You do not expect me to come out in the open to have my photo taken!" This is the best that we could do.....

He wanted to stay under his pigloo! How do we tell them apart? Other than that Cosmo is the brave one and Casper is the scaredy-pig, Cosmo has a grey nose and Casper's is pink.

They have chosen the joint name of the Dangermice as their Agent name. For overseas readers, Dangermouse is a secret agent cartoon mouse and he is white as well. He is a lot braver than our Casper but Cosmo reckons that he is tough enough for both of them.

When they were little, Slave called them her sugar mice, after the candies that she loved as a child and the name stuck.

A piggy A-Z: more Agouti's (& US Teddies for Go fish! game)

Hi all,

As promised quite some time ago for the Go Fish! game, mom would still send in a nice pigture of me, Roos. I have taken things in my own paws, as she still hasn't done it!
Plus I am an Agouti, which makes me fit in the A category of the piggy A-Z. And one of our late beauties Lily also was an agouti, and we had more like Woopy, Toby & Daisy. Let's just say our slaves have a weakness for agouti rexes and US teddies...

This is me, Roos. I am named after a flower (Rose, only in Dutch), as were my predecessors Lily and Daisy. Mum really likes this pigture because you can really see my color very well. I am what we think is called a golden Agouti. My hairs are red (sort of orangy rusty red) with black tipping. I think you can also see that very well in this pigture. You can see under my chin (and on my tummy) that I have the red colour underneath, just like Angelina has a solid color underneath.
I was once a present for my human dad, which was now 3 years ago, in a few weeks I will turn 4 years old! I am a very sweet piggy, but since the passing of Daisy, I have become the boss of my herd. I like to be petted and puddle by my humans, even when I am in the cage I won't run away and usually lay down, and get really flat and wide as a puddle of goo would (only much cuter of course!)
When the humans stop petting me, I usually look up as if to say 'Hey, don't stop!'.

This was Lily, she was a silver agouti with some white. Here she just had a bath and she is smiling... she liked baths. She was one of the first to like baths, she grew up on a farm and they had an outside run, with a warm hutch. She was probably used to getting her paws wet when walking outside into the grass with morning dew. Silveragouti's have silver colored hairs with black tips. She was sweet like me and totally adored our boar Chico then. Funny story. Chico would eat pellets (called SuperTrio, not sure if it is sold across the border) which were rather big. As Lily adored him she would of course also try to eat the pellets Chico ate, but she always looked funny when trying and did not seem to manage as a young piggy. Only later when mum saw a baby-sized variety of the supertrio she understood why Lily had always looked so funny when trying to eat the SuperTrio pellets... they were just to big for her little mouth! Luckily they did have other pellets she could eat, so she grew up to be a healthy piggy. Another small story (mum's at it now) Lily would love to sleep on Chico's back (so really on top of him) and Chico would be just fine with that. But at some point Chico thought 'hey, I want to sleep on top of Lily'. Well, Lily was not amused (not so strange knowing Chico was a hefty boar and Lily wasn't fully grown at that time) and ran away from him with a lot of complaining noises...

So if there are any more Agouti's out there, do join in the fun and send in pigtures (see the contribute tab above)!

Roos