New Piggyfriends!

Have a look at these two dear little fellows!

Pooh Piglets Rescue had some baby boars needing homes but when our Slave called Pauline, who runs the rescue, they had already been rehomed but she had these two slightly older teddy brothers needing a home.

They had been fostered by one of her helpers and she took this photo of them. Slave immediately said that she would love them and Pauline replied that she needed to get there as soon as possible or they would be gone. Pauline does not reserve piggies so early the next morning, Slave set out for Pooh Piglets and they were still there.

A very socially distanced handover with Slave standing at the piggy shed door and Pauline holding them out at arm's length took place and they were on their way home to Piggyfriends.

They are five months old and the foster lady called them Kenneth and Keith. Slave does not like these names plus she knows someone called Keith and it would seem a bit odd to name a piggy after him. A long debate ensued between us and her and she finally came up with Oscar for one of them, having run out of the usual Irish names that newcomers are likely to be given.

They are almost identical but you can see that the one of the left has a tiny patch of white hair above his nose and between his eyes amongst the orange. Brush it the wrong way and it disappears! He is Oscar.

Slave likes alliterative names for pairs of piggies but, having had piggies for more years than we can count, she has run out of names beginning with O. She was planting some achimenes, which are pretty houseplants, of which she has even more than she has piggies, and one of them has the varietal name of Ambrose Verschaffeltii ( we had to look up how to spell that ) named after the man who first grew it and she thought that Ambrose was a nice piggy name ( without that long name after it ).

So Oscar's brother is now called Ambrose. We suspect that they will get mixed up and she will call them the orange boys instead but we all have cards on our pens with our names.

Here they are again. As you can see, the both love carrots. Slave says that is why they are so orange. They really do have red eyes. That is not Slave being useless with the camera.

So please welcome Oscar and Ambrose, our newest friends. They are very loud when it is mealtime but Fionn is our loudest piggy by far.

Happy Easter from the Piggyfriends

 

All of the Piggyfriends want to wish our readers a very Happy Easter. This is Picchu being our representative. He is a very good piggy, who will sit still for a photo without trashing the props. He was rewarded with a carrot afterwards. A real one not one of those artificial raffia ones in the pigture.

Mothers' Day 2021. Piggyfriend Mamas.

In England we celebrate Mothers' Day today. Our Slave likes to have a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates. She loves carnations.

Here at Piggyfriends, we have three girls who are mothers and they would prefer to have some nice grass or a pile of tasty leaves. Flowers are not much use for us guineas unless they are dandelion flowers and it is too early in the year for those.

 

Above you can see Mama Bonbon on the left with her daughters, Bella and Miss Marple, enjoying some grass. Mama seems to be wearing it as well.

 

Ebony ( right ) is a mum too. She was collected from a piggy show by the lovely lady at Pooh Piglets rescue and came to us the following day. She had babes although we do not know where they are but she has the company of her best friend, Saffron.

And, lastly, we have Caoimhe ( on the right ). She had babes when she was at Pooh Piglets but when our Slave went there looking for some more Piggyfriends, they had already been adopted so she came home with a new friend, little Orla, who is camera shy and is hiding under their little stool.

The Piggyville Girls lit a candle too.

 

The Piggyville Girls of North Carolina lit a candle in memory of Peter Gurney, who taught so many people how to care for piggies.

Long before there was social media, he brought piggy lovers together so that they could share knowledge and friendship. He taught us that every piggy's life is valuable and that what we do for our piggies is small compared to what they give to us.

At this time we remember the lives of our lost loved ones and we have piggies to kiss our tears away.

New Piggyfriends! Please welcome them into their new home.

 In England, we have been in various lockdowns and restrictions for months on end. Slave thought that our nearest dedicated guinea pig rescue must have had to be closed but, during the summer, after the first lockdown, people were allowed to have six people in their gardens so the lovely lady that runs Pooh Piglets had prospective adopters sitting around her lawn and she would hold up a piggy needing a home rather like a piggy auction. Many lucky piggies were taken home and without this, it might not have been possible to keep the rescue going.

Now it is too cold to do this but Slave and her son were allowed to peek in the piggy shed door whilst Pauline help up a piggy for them to see. Slave knew that she had two Rex ladies so she asked to see them.

First of all she was shown this lovely lady.

Slave thought that she was the image of our Daisy from years ago. Long time GPDD readers might remember her as President of the LAPS. The Large and Ample Piggy Society.

She came into the rescue pregnant and her babes have all been adopted out so Pauline put another little Rex lady in with her for company. They are the best of friends.

She is pure white and does not have red eyes. That is just Slave being rubbish with her camera. Sean was sent back to the car for our carrier and they were both put in it with a pile of veggies to eat on the journey home.

All the food had gone by the time they got here and they were shown to their new home. Neither of these little ladies had names so Slave called the white one Orla. Here she is below.

 

And again so that you can see her dear little piggy nose.

Slave decided to call the grey girl Caoimhe. She does not expect anyone to know how to pronounce Irish names with the exception of the Surrey Squeakers' family and Pat of the Prairie Piggies, who is learning. You say it Keeva. Here she is again with Orla exiting stage right.

 

And both girls together.

They have settled in really well and eat everything in sight. Typical Rexes. We wonder if they will grow as big as Daisy and her brother Roscoe? They came here as tiny babes so had good food right from the start.

Of course, there were many more piggies wanting homes at Pooh Piglets and Orla and Caoimhe did not come home alone but that is a story for another day.

Footnote....Pooh Piglets has been involved in a rescue of hundreds of piggies from a breeder in Chichester who died. Many of them are pregnant. Many in a sorry condition, poor little poppets. When they are all recovered and the mums have weaned their babes, there will be countless piggies needing loving homes so if any of our readers live in the SE of England please think of them in the future if you have room for some more little friends.

Piggy lips? Ears... Laundry baskets..?

Piggy lips?

an ear?

Hello there!

It's me 'little' Linn, with Cookie (to the left) and Binky (in the back)

I'm watching you mom...

The piggies came to visit me in the laundry basket, while dad cleaned the cage

I haven't really been able to go down the stairs much after hip surgery, so they came to visit me in the, (in their opinion!) much too small, laundry basket.

Still watching you mom, do you have anything good there... Like veggies?

We hope every pig (and their owners) are doing well!

The guinygirlz Cookie, Linn and boar Binky

and slave Mieke

Honeydew's Ovarian Cyst.

Hi! I am Honeydew of the Piggyville girls of North Carolina. I am a

three year old Abyssinian. I would like to tell you a story about my
ovarian cysts. In January, I started to lose hair on both sides of my
body. I lost my girly figure and my body became pear shaped because my
abdomen was distended. My slave, Ann, felt my ovaries and told me that I
had ovarian cysts. She said they felt like they were the size of the
bubbles on bubble wrap. I had never heard of ovarian cysts before.

She explained that any girly pig regardless of whether the piggy has ever been
pregnant can develop them. I have never been pregnant. The reason that
cysts can form is because about every 17 days my ovaries release eggs.
This is called ovulation. But sometimes not all of the eggs burst out of
their sac which is called a follicle. If the follicle doesn't break
open, or if it seals before all of the fluid inside is released the
follicle can form a cyst on the ovary. In many cases the next time
ovulation occurs the cyst bursts and all is well. In my case, I had
cysts on both of my ovaries. The cysts can cause the ovaries to have
unbalanced hormones. They did not cause me any pain. I did not become
excessively hormonal or grumpy or start bossing around Squirly and
Tilley. Though I did notice that my nipples were sometimes crusty and I
certainly did not like losing my gorgeous red hair.

Ann explained to me that piggies can get 5 different types of ovarian cysts.
Rarely are they ever cancerous. And the only way to find out what type of cysts
I have was to do a surgery called an ovarian-hysterectomy. That is where a
veterinarian takes out both my ovaries and my uterus. Oh NO!!! Not for
me!!! I would rather be a bald piggy with a pot belly than to have
surgery.  Here are two pictures of my bald sides.

Then to really get me confused, Ann said that possibly hormone
injections could make the cysts go away. The secret here is that only
two of the five types of ovarian cysts will respond to hormone
injections. I decided that I wanted the injections, so on March 1st. I
was taken to the vet’s office. The vet knows my slave is a
rodentologist. Ann asked for a prescription for 2 bottles of Human
Chorionic Gonadotrophin hormone (HCG), 1000 units/ml. It took about 2
weeks for the bottles to arrive by mail. She gave me a subcutaneous
injection of 200 units and 14 days later another injection of 400 units.
For this second injection she had to use the second HCG bottle. This is
because the hormone in only good for 24 hours after it is mixed with
diluent which is a sterile solution.

Now I noticed on the HCG bottle it said to give the injection into my muscle.
My slave explained that she was trained by Vedra Stanley-Spatcher of the
British Association of Rodentologists. Vedra had taught her that the HCG
works just as well when it is injected under the skin as it does if it is injected
into the muscle. Also, depending where you learned rodentology the amount that
you inject can be anywhere between 100 to 1000 units. Well 1000 units is
1ml and that is a lot to inject into the thigh muscle of a piggy and it
hurts a lot more too. So that is why she gives the injections under the
skin. The HCG hormone made me ovulate and this caused the cysts to
burst releasing their fluid. Like a miracle I began to grow hair back
immediately after the second injection.

Within two months of the injections almost all of my hair grew back and my nipples are no longer crusty.

By four months after the injections I had regrown my lovely red
hair and rosettes and I have my girly figure once again. So the moral of
my story is that if you decide to get HCG injections be aware that they
cannot cure every type of ovarian cyst. Most importantly make sure the
vet is using a fresh bottle of HCG for each injection and that the
injections are given under the skin. HCG goes by the name of Chorulon in
the UK.

If I am Sitting Just Right, You Might See This

We have just received this new post from our Guest Reporter, Scottie:

A big hello from Scottie! I don't like to pose for photos, so my mom has to wait for me to rest on my sofa before she can get a pigture. She took this one because my white stripe made her think of "Nessie" from Loch Ness in Scotland.

What do you think?

If I were able to travel, I would like to meet Nessie. I imagine we would have things in common, like hiding when people come around, or enjoying food and eating a lot. I am told that, like me, Nessie is camera-shy.

Maybe Nessie just needs a sofa!

A Piggy A-Z. K is for Kiwi.

Hello readers. This is me, Kiwi Piggyfriend. My brother, Machu Picchu and I were the last piggies to come from Palace Piggies before they relocated many miles away.

On behalf of all the Piggyfriends, I hope that all of our readers are OK and getting by during the frightening pandemic that is affecting humans all over the world.

I have to admit that we do not write this blog on our own and need our Slave's help sometimes but she has had to spend a lot of time queueing at the store to get our veggies. She has to drive to a town and then stands in line outside the store for an hour before she can get inside. Later in the year she grows lots of our food in the garden but it is too early to be picking much at the moment.

For the first few weeks, the store was rationing everything so that she could only get three of each veggie. You can imagine that three cucumbers do not go far between a herd of hungry piggies. She has not been able to get any romaine lettuce at all but recently the store have allowed more than three of each item so last week she tried her luck and put eight cucumbers in her cart along with other veggies and the checkout lady did not take them away, What a relief. She also stocked up on carrots, celery, and chicory but some veggies do not keep for a whole week.

Our little local shop where she could top up on celery and cucumbers without having to go to the nearest town has been shut as have most other shops.

She is not even allowed to go to visit her friend Roly's farm, where she cuts our grass and forages amongst the crops for tasty weeds and leaves. So she has set up what we call our Parsley Farm.

This is in our pig room and you can just see a corner of a pen in the pigture.

Here is some more of it.

You can just see a piggy in the left hand pen. I think that is Saffron, who lives with her family next door to me, under the little stool. Slave has started lettuces in that tray at the front and has to move it all to get to our pens to feed us and to clean. She has tomato plants on the table and, if the weather improves, they will be going out to the greenhouse but it takes a long time before they produce a fruit.

Grass is growing much better now that spring is here so we are not starving but we would like to have all of our veggies available again. Slave would like the little shop to be allowed to open and to visit Roly again. She has plenty of food for herself in her larder but never imagined how difficult it would be to feed a herd of piggies.

Let us know how you are all getting on. We would love to hear from you.

Mother's Day.

Hello readers. We hope that you are all safe and well. Here in England today is Mother's Day and Slave's son, our pigsitter, would have taken her out for dinner but we understand that there is a nasty virus circulating amongst the humans and all the restaurants are closed. He is not even allowed to visit her.

Here at Piggyfriends, our only mother is Mama Bonbon so we are posting a photo of her enjoying a pile of grass with her daughters, Bella and Miss Marple. ( In that order in the photo. )

Bonbon has really got stuck into her grass and even has some on her head.

" We are sad that you cannot go out with Sean," says Mama Bonbon. " Would you like to share our grass?"

Take care everyone. Love from the Piggyfriends. xxx

Candle Lighting Day 2020

Every year the GPDD organises a Candle Lighting Day on March 9th. when their members and friends ( and anyone else who would like to join in ) light a candle at 8pm. in their respective time zones so that the light goes around the world in memory of friends both human and animal who are at the Rainbow Bridge. This is the date of Peter Gurney's birthday. He wrote many guinea pig books and had lots of piggies of his own.

"Would you like to light our candle this year Miss Bonbon as you were not here last year?" asks Slave.

" I am not sure that my little paws can manage that dangerous looking device," says Bonbon.

"That is alright," says Slave.  "I will switch it on for you. See!"

" That is better," says Bonbon. " I would not want to get too close and singe my whiskers."

 " Now sit nicely next to the candle," says Slave. " I will take your photo and send it to Audrey. She is going to collect the photos and put some of them on the GPDD home page for everyone to see."

We are lighting our candle in memory of a whole host of Piggyfriends past, our dogs, fish, birds and mice and most especially for our human Daddy Slave, who passed away last year. We are grateful to our pigsitter, Sean, who helps Mummy Slave by fetching hay bales and taking all of our soggy paper and hay to the tip, jobs which he used to do. We all miss him very much and try to cheer up our Slave every day.

We love snow days

Our friends, the Piggyville girls from North Carolina, have sent us a report about their snow day. Here in England we just have rain, rain and more rain so this makes a pleasant change.

" Hey girls!  Wake up." says Honeydew. " I think that I heard Mom say that today is a Snow Day. Aren't these Mom's snow wellies?"

"What is a Snow Day?" ask Squirly and Tilley. Honeydew explains that a Snow Day happens when children cannot go to school because there is too much snow on the roads. Just one inch of snow is enough to keep the school buses off the roads in Swannanoa, North Carolina.

" Do we go to school?" asks Tilley. " Of course not, "replies Squirly. " We stay at home and teach our humans how to come running every time we squeal or rattle the bars.Today we will try to teach them how to take a photo of us out in the snow."

The Piggyville girls ponder how they are going to go outside in the snow without any snow wellies.

" We are pampered piggies!! Our Mom made sure that our little feet did not get cold by putting us on vet bedding. We love Snow Days. Too bad all the snow had melted by the afternoon but we sure had fun watching Mom slip and slide whilst trying to take our pigtures."

Happy Valentine's Day

                                                        Pig to love.

                                     
                                                       Pigs to love.

                                       
                                                          Lovely, lovely pigs to love.


Love your guinea pigs on Valentine's Day. Love them every day. Courtesy of Bon Bon, Miss Marple and Bella Piggyfriend.

A Piggy A-Z. I is for Ivermectin and Isoflurane.

We thought that it was about time that we got back to the Piggy A-Z so here we go with I.

I is for Ivermectin, a wonderful medicine that kills mites, the bane of all piggies.

Our Slave buys this from our Rodentologists and it comes in the little dropper bottle, pictured above, which gives out a measured dose. We all get two drops of this every three months and it keeps mites away.

Sometimes piggies have come to Piggyfriends already suffering from mites and they have been given the two drops of Ivermectin followed by a second dose a fortnight later to kill off any eggs that might have hatched since the first dose. In very rare cases, a third dose can be given after another fortnight.

Slave keeps a chart with all of our names on it and she puts the dates when we are "Ivomeced" so that no pig is ever missed. We are all given a dose of Panacur at the same time and we will cover this when we get to P. We always get a treat afterwards especially if we are good piggies.

I is also for Isoflurane, the only safe anaesthetic for piggies but we do not have a photo of this. If anypig ever has to be given an anaesthetic, make sure that this is the one used by your vet.

Do any of our piggy readers have a name beginning with I? If so, we would love to see your pigture.

Look what Slave received at Christmas!

We were going to post this earlier but we wanted you to have plenty of time to meet new Guinygirl, Linn.

Slave's eldest son, our pigsitter, came to stay with us at Christmas and he gave her this calendar. It is full of lovely pigtures and is hanging where we can all see the pig of the month.

He also gave her this little book.

It is the next in the series of classic stories adapted by Bloomsbury Publishing to feature guinea pigs
in the starring roles. This one is the piggy version of the Nutcracker ballet. We all know how graceful piggies are don't we? Don't we........? Say yes everyone.

We particularly love the Sugar Plum Fairy pictured above. Slave always calls us her little sugar plums and we thought that this was appropriate.

And here is the handsome Nutcracker prince. We hope that Bloomsbury do not mind us sharing these photos especially as they might encourage our readers to go out and buy a copy.

New guinygirl: Linn

Hi everyone,
My name is Linn! I am a little over a year old.

My previous owners brought me to an animal shelter after my friends went over the rainbow bridge.
The animal shelter I came from is the 'dierenbescherming' slave thinks this is like the english RSPCA (=Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). There was one lone piggy in the shelter, the others already had friends, that was me, I am glad Cookie and Binky liked me enough to take me home with them.
You probably already know my new friends, Cookie and Binky. Unfortunately they had to say goodbye to their friend Raani just before halloween, she had a saddle back and quite some bladder stones in the 3,5 years of her life.
I really like my new boar friend Binky, we love to lie next to each other in the cage. He is very big compared to me... Here we are sharing a leaf of endive (just before I ran of with his leaf again ;)

View this post on Instagram

Welcome to our new addition to the piggie herd: Linn (unless we think of another name 😉)! They are starting to tolerate each other and here she is sharing a leaf of endive with Binky (after running away with his leaf three times)...

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Dec 8, 2019 at 1:38pm PST

Though big, he and Cookie did loose weight since they meet me, I think all that running after me has made them more active.

I am a very vocal piggy, which slave Mikey likes a lot. Raani was also a little chatterbox at times, so she is happy I am a chatterbox as well.

At first I was rather afraid of taking veggies from the slaves. But the others always run up to the front of their cage, so I had to see what they were doing. I came here on 7 December 2019, and I now come to get my piece of veg, though occasionally I will steal a piece from the others. Slaves are sure I know my name, because when they call it out they can see me reacting. So after a week or so I learned when they are calling my name it means they have a piece of vegetable waiting for me. By now I have also learned that pills are okay, they others were so enthusiastic so I just had to try that. Slaves are glad I take the pills now, they say it will come in handy when I actually need pills, not sure what they mean by that...

I am not the best of friends with Cookie (yet), but she tolerates me most of the time. I do know she is safer then whatever is outside the cage and I tend to hide behind her or Binky whenever we get spooked by anything.

By now slave Mikey is pretty confident we get along well enough, ever since she found the three of us in and under our new hammock like this...

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Wie durft te beweren dat we niet allemaal in en onder de hangmat passen..? Who dares to argue we don't all fit in and under the hammock..? Hangmat en standaard van / hammock and stand by @slaaplekkerzacht

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Dec 30, 2019 at 3:30am PST

This was taken half an hour after the one above, we were still in the hammock. Cookie is with her back to us in the first pigture, if you can browse (press >) to the second pigture, you can see she was enjoying a bit of sunshine. Mom thinks Cookie might think she is a cat...

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Ik denk dat de koppeling met newbie Linn nu zeker weten geslaagd is, na ruim een half uur liggen ze nog met zijn drieën in de hangmat... Bekijk op de tweede foto waarom Cookie met d'r rug naar ons toe ligt #hangmatvriendjes

A post shared by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Dec 30, 2019 at 4:16am PST

Anyway, now you know a bit about me,
wheeking new year, Linn
and the others Guinygirl Cookie, boar Binky
and slave Mikey