Piggy A-Z: C for Carrot tops

We love green spaghetti, aka carrot tops!!!

 

Wheeks,

 The Guinygirlz (Tijger & Peaches in the pigtures)

Friday video: Guinygirlz morning feeding ritual

Mom filmed us getting our morning piece of veggie today...



We were pretty well behaved, sometimes we fall over each other, and lean on the others back to be higher up and run against the window to get to the veggies first. Tijger will start doing spins when she gets impatient.. but today we behaved for the video.

How does your morning ritual look? We would love to see little videos of it.

Have great Wheekend,
the Guinygirlz and boar Berke

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day from Agent Popcorn and Dmitri (who should be figuring out his agent name soon)! 

Happy St. Patrick's Day

On behalf of all the Piggyfriends, Angelina ( aka Agent Mouse ) would like to send St. Patrick's Day greetings to all of our readers.

She thinks that the hood of Slave's fleece makes an excellent cavy cosy. Slave hopes that she does not leave any calling cards behind after the photoshoot. Angelina likes everything being green today as that means more lettuce, kale, cucumber, celery and parsley and she hopes that Slave can find some fresh grass, which has been in short supply of late.

Have a lovely day everyone!

Candle lit in the Netherlands

We also lit a candle on 9 March at 20:15 (Mum had to do Pilates till 20:00) and remembered friends lost...

Candle lit for Peter Gurney memorial and my late piggies: Woopy, Daisy, Lily, Chico, Toby, Dunya, Lotje and Guiny, Winky and my childhood piggy Vlekje #guineapigs #memorial #peterGurney

A photo posted by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Mar 9, 2016 at 11:20am PST

Did you light a candle as well? Let us know and we will send your location to Audrey!
 The guinygirlz: Roos, Peaches, Tijger and boar Berke

Peter Gurney memorial candle lighting

We have lots of candles burning here at Piggyfriends. Last year our oldest piggy, Gandalf, did the honours so this year we picked our second oldest, Otto, to help out. Here he is.

"I think that I deserve a reward for lighting all of those candles," says Otto.

We think so too so here he is with a yummy chicory leaf.

Well done Otto!

Did you light a candle this evening? If so, we'd love to see your pigtures. Look for our Contribute button at the top of the page and follow the very easy instructions.

Peter Gurney Memorial: Light a real candle at 9 March at 8 pm (in your timezone)

For those of you that haven't seen the message elsewhere:
"REMINDER: Invitation to light a candle in honor of Peter Gurney and all of the piggies and pets with him at the Rainbow Bridge on March 9th, at or around 8:00 pm, in your particular time zone. This is our 11th candle light memorial in honor of Peter Gurney, who passed away in 2006 in England. He was a tireless advocate for guinea pigs who left the world with a wealth of guinea pig knowledge that we would not have had without him. His books and knowledge has helped all of us. We can share the moment with or without piggies, and all you need to do is light a candle at 8:00 pm. As candles are lit in each time zone, the light will travel around the world for all at the Rainbow Bridge to see and know that we are remembering them on this special day. Afterwards, please tell us where you lit your candle by posting your location to the GPDD, and we will compile a listing of all the places where a candle was lit. This is in memory of any pet you wish to remember, so tell others to light a candle too, and get their location for the list.
Audrey Remembering Gordon, Reese, and Petito"

You can comment on our post to let us know when you lit a candle on the 9th, and we will forward it to Audrey. Please let us know where you lit a candle!

Friday video: A shed full of guinea pigs....

A Piggy A-Z. Casper and Cosmo with Carrots

Here are the Dangermice, Cosmo and Casper again. They both love Carrots.

The above pigture is of Casper, who is the Alpha pig - at least he is the one who rushes out and shouts for food when anyone passes their pen. He is not a cuddle pig and made a lot of fuss about posing for his pigture but, luckily, our pigsitter was on hand to keep him still for a moment.

And this is little Casper, who is shy and reserved but co-operated nicely for his pigture so he was rewarded with the carrot.


Do you have a piggy whose name begins with a C? If so, we'd love to see him/her. Find the Contribute button at the top of our page and follow the instructions. It is very easy.

Friday video: New hutch tour: the hayloft (pt2)

Part 2 of the hutch tour of our friend @Bertieguineapig, showing their hayloft. This is the sequel to the video we had last friday.

Another video (that cannot wait till Friday) Happy Valentine's day!

Happy Valentine's Day

Lola Piggyfriend has a secret admirer and he has sent her a Valentine's Day gift box of veggies. " I am a lucky piggy," says Lola, " as our Slave only got a box of chocolates!"

Happy Valentine's Day to all of our readers. Choccies for the Slaves and veggies for the piggies.

Friday video: New hutch tour (pt1)

One of the piggies we are following on twitter (@bertieguineapig) has a new hutch. So to open the wheekend (at least here in the Netherlands it's almost wheekend) here's a cage tour of their new hutch



Have a great wheekend, and give some kisses to your slaves on valentine's day this sunday!
The guinygirlz: Roos, Peaches, Berke and Tijger

A Piggy A-Z C is for Card Game.

Look what our Slave has made using the Card Game.

She hobbled around the local Hobbycraft shop and bought a frame, some backing paper and two packs of stickers with stars and hearts. Then she assembled all the cards in their sets with Spooky in the middle, glued them to the green paper and fastened the acrylic sheet over the top to hold everything in place. This will keep all the cards nice and clean for us to admire forever. For those of you who have not yet bought a pack, Spooky is on the back of each card.

Our pigture is hanging above Cosmo and Casper's pen. The pegs in the pigture attach cards to the top of the pen.

Here is the centre showing Spooky's pigture.

The camera flash kept reflecting on the acrylic sheet so here is a sideways pigture without no reflection so that you can see it better.

Maybe one of our readers would like to make one of these. What do you think of Slave's pigture?

Friday video & Piggy A-Z: C for card game

Hi,

My name is Peaches, also known as Agent Boo.

I want to tell you something about what my slave, with a lot of help from our readers here, has made.
Our readers have send in pigtures of all kinds of lovely and handsome piggies, which slave bundled in one card game.

You(r slave) can order this card game! If they want to order it right now, have a look here.

The dutch game 'Kwartet', also know as 'Quartets', was used as a basis. The goal of the game is to collect as many kwartetten / quartets as you can. Every player starts of with 7 cards in their hards. On the table the rest of the cards are kept on a stack with the pictures facing down, so no one can see what the next card on the stack is.
The game has 11 different categories, most categories are piggy breeds, like smooth-haired piggies, US teddies and Rexes and so on. Other categories include some members of one herds, like the Piggyfriends, Indiana piggies or my herd, the Guinygirlz. There are also other themes like piggies with Flower names and white piggies.

Mom still has 7 games in stock, and hopes to sell those too. So please buy one (or more)! Once those are sold we can make another donation to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world. Everyone can suggest shelters and then vote for their favorite shelter. So next to getting a cool game you also get to support a shelter!
Read a bit about the price and order here, send us an email for shipping, but Mikey will contact you with the pric for the game plus shipping before sending the game to you. If you have doubt after ordering and hearing the total price just let her know. Great thing about the card games is though, that they are quite small and fit in an envelope quite easily making them less expensive to send by mail.

Slave was looking for a nice video about playing the 'Kwartet' game, but apparently this is a really dutch game, it is similar to Go Fish! But mum thinks it is slightly different from what she understood from the videos explaining how to play Go Fish!!
But she did find this rather nice very stereo typical dutch/english video for the dutch airline KLM. This game has dutch historical houses, but the idea is the same with our guinea pig game...

Hope we get to sell the last 7 games, and possibly even more...

Agent Boo aka Peaches

P.s. all buyers of the game so far, maybe you can comment below what you think of your game? Hope you are all enjoying it.

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