Buy a piggy Calendar and support a shelter!

Dear Guinea pig lovers,

Thirteen calendars have been ordered so far, some of them have already arrived!
Do you want one too, order here!

Like the previous 2 years, we from the undercover guinea pigs blog in cooperation with you as our readers and suppliers of cute piggy pigtures, have made the undercover guinea pigs calendar again!
You can order either a wall or a desk calendar, which will have a new cute pigture every month,
and of course our inspirator Agent F on the front.
Prices are 15 euros for the wall calendar and 12,50 for the desk calendar, plus additional shipping to your country.

If you have not ordered a calendar yet, but you want one, and you want to support a guinea pig shelter, buy one (or more)!
If you still want to recieve them before the end of this year, I advise you to order soon, unless you want to go for the more expensive 7 day shipping option...

Here is a preview of the wall and the desk version. You can click on the pigtures to enlarge them..

Pigtures wanted! Calender 2014

Hey dear guinea pig loving readers,

We had a small poll about whether we should make a new Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2014. The results showed that you are all in favor and want to buy a calendar, contribute a pigture or do both!

This months Calendar Piggies: My Lily, Roos, Daisy and Woopy

So, it's time to send in pigtures again!
It would be nice if the pigtures are of a reasonable resolution, If you only have low res pigtures, you could have more than pigture on a month. That way the pigtures don't have to be that big to look okay, and together they will fill up the page! Plus it gives us as viewers more piggies to watch.
You can do (month) themes, like halloween, christmas or easter, or ,
but cute, funny pictures or just pigtures are fine too! It can be a pigture of just one pig or of a group, it doesn't really matter, so surprise us with your piggies gorgeousness...

Like previous years there are 12 pages to fill, and one to go on the front, which so far has been filled by our beautiful late Agent F, who started the idea for this blog.

Like the other years the calendars will be available in desktop and wall calendar, but if possible I would like to try to ship the calendars before the end of the year, because I noticed the shipping goes up quite a lot towards Christmas...
Any money that is not paying for the calendars itself will be donated to a guinea pig shelter. You can suggest a shelter and then can vote at all the nominated shelters.

If you have a nice pigture let us know, we have an email how to contact us on the  contribute tab (second one below the pigture of Fugly).

Looking forward to your entries!

Mieke

September Calendar piggies: Mr Kiss Kiss, Weasel, Mirabella, Amelia biscuit & Maisey

Hello all, its Mr Kiss Kiss pigcipant of the September calendar pigture.

Sorry the post is late, whee have just come back off holiday from our local rodentologist.

I'm the boss of my herd and its a hard job looking after the girls. Whee are all rescue pigs from Windwhistle Warren in Gloucestershire where we used to live. We don't know how old we are but that doesn't bother us.

Its been a difficult year with the passing of the Weasel and Mirabella but we do our best. I'm now a dental pig, requiring regular work with rodentologists trained by the Cambridge Cavy Trust. I wouldn't be here without them, but still wriggle when I go to see them. I'm doing better now and starting to eat on my own again. Amelia Biscuit is still the behemoth of the group, stealing all the food and best places to sleep. Maisey is the more serious pig, and the biggest lover of grass.

We are sad now that Summer's over and there will be no more grass until next year. The picture shows us celebrating the bringing of the cattle in from the Summer mountains for the winter, celebrated in alpine countries.



Piggie kisses to all,

Mr Kiss Kiss, Amelia Biscuit and Maisey.
---

In about 3 months it will be the end of the year again. We could do a Calendar again for 2014.
So far we usually gathered about 150 euros to donate to a piggy shelter...

What do you think: Should we make another calendar? Would you contribute your pigture? Would your slave buy one?




Thanks,Mieke of the undercover guinea pig blog

Our donation to Palace Piggie Rescue!

Dear readers, especially the ones who send in pigtures of their agents, and who bought the Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2013,

We worked out the donation for our winning rescue Palace Piggie Rescue, near Crawley in England (UK). By selling 23 Calendars and a extra donation (he knows who we mean) we could donate 148,20 euros to the rescue.
A big thank you to everyone who supplied us with pigtures and/or bought a calendar, together we could donate this amount!

If you live near Crawley, West Sussex in England, please consider to adopt a piggie from them. Their website is: http://www.palacepiggierescue.org/

You can see their piggies for re-homing here
Also have a look at the gorgeous hutches and sheds,  that Lynn's husband made.

Piggingham palace

Here is the mail we got from the rescue ladies Liz and Lynn:
"Thank you so much for this, we have received it, this will be used for some bedding we have just had delivered...and have to pay for soon!! It will also help with the vet fund, we had to have an emergency spaying of one of our sows last week as her insides were coming outside!!! Fortunately, she is doing very well, but at a very large cost!

Thank you again for organising this and for donating the money to us, we are truly grateful. 
Kindest regards 
Liz and Lynn"

Since many of Penny's Piggyfriends came from Palace Piggie Rescue, we've asked Penny for some pigtures. Thank you Penny for the pigtures!

Tiggywinkle Piggyfriend and Baby Angelina

Grown-up Angelina aka Agent Mouse, showing off her favorite veggie
 as a cucumber hat.

Susie and Sally aka Agents Gemini

Bosworth Boar aka Agent Plantagenet

M, Janneke and Mieke of this Undercover Guinea Pig blog.

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!

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

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

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

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 -->

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

November 2012 UCGP calendar piggy

Hi there,

I would like to share with you this months calendar piggy, agent Curly, aka Fuzzypeg of the piggyfriends. 

He is one of the gorgeous piggies that featured in this year's undercover guinea pigs (UCGP) calendar. With the making and selling of the UCGP calendar 2012, we made a little profit, that was donated to a piggy shelter. We plan on doing this again for the upcoming year, and we need your help with that!
First of all we like to recieve pigtures of you so we can fill up the calendar.
Read more about sending in your pigture here
Secondly we need people who want to buy the calendar, to adore the piggies standing on their desk, or posing on their wall ;)
When you already know you want to order the UCGP calendar 2013, you can do so by filling in this form, or have a look at the order calendar 2013 tab. Once we got the calendar complete and ready to be printed, you will recieve a request for payment from Mieke, using PayPal.

We hope you will help us out to make this a success again this year!

P.s. don't forget to enter our first competition... more info here

Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2013!

Hi Piggies,

Like last year we want to make an Undercover guinea pigs calendar!!

How does it work?

We have 12 spots, one for every month, to fill the calendar, and we might also want a piggy to go on the front. We would like to receive pigtures of your cavy or cavies, which we can use in the calendar with your permission.

If we recieve too many different entries, we might have to choose. Sorry there are only 12 spots to fill, but we will give priority to piggies that have not appeared in the calendar last year (or actually if one piggy of a slave has been in there already and he/she sends in a pigture of a different piggy he/she owns, and we also received a pigture from a cavy who's slave hasn't had a piggy in the calendar before, the last one will get priority).

We will also ask you to nominate a shelter where we will send the money we make on the calendar. Once all calendars are (almost) sold, we will have a vote for which shelter which should recieve the money.Everyone can send in nominees, this is not restricted to piggies featuring in the calendar!

The shelter that won last year, will be excluded, as we want to give all shelters a chance.

Mieke from the undercover guinea pigs blog will post when you can order the calendar (desk or wall version) from a company and have the company send it to you directly (as it's probably cheaper and faster).

So, send in your entries! It can be one of or all your piggies, and we love big, good resolution pigtures for the calendar, themed pictures eg Christmas, Halloween etc are also good. You can send in pigtures with a little accompanying text about the piggie(s) and their agents names, either to the blog directly (see the contribute tab) or mail it to us and we will post.

The undercover guinea pigs blog girls,
Mieke, M and Janneke

Final call: vote for the Dutch Guinea Pig Foundation

Hi All,

The guinygirls wrote about the Dutch Guinea Pig Foundation and asked you to vote so that they would have a shot at winning a Camper (last day to vote, so if you haven't, please do! We voted on every computer we have). We asked the guinea pig herd from Almere to write something about the Dutch Guinea Pig foundation, since many among their ranks come from the stichting cavia shelters, and they've been to the cavy-village in Bakkeveen.

Caviabende Almere

We, that is CaviaBende Almere, would like to tell you something about the shelter we came from. Pom used to live in a big herd (about 60 piggies!) because somebody let his/her piggies breed without limits. Sofie, Melissa and Darwin were signed over to Stichting Cavia because their former owner didn’t want them any more :-( Our new owner found Pom in the shelter in Bakkeveen, the girls in the shelter in Haarlem… and we are very happy together! Since we hope more piggies wil find a good home this way… well, we like to tell you something more about Stichting Cavia!

Stichting Cavia (Guineapig Foundation) was founded in september 1997.

The goals of the foundation are:

• To offer a shelter for guinea pigs and attempt to find a suitable new owner for them
• To supply information about guinea pigs in order to increase their well being and pleasure in life.
  Stichting Cavia headquarters is located in Bakkeveen (Friesland, Netherlands), but has many smaller shelters throughout the Netherlands and even in Belgium.

If someone is no longer able to look after their guinea pig, looking for a temporary care solution (ecc holiday), or looking for a new piggy at your home they are welcome here! Stichting Cavia also provides people with information about piggie healthcare and daily care. Stichting Cavia offers a shelter for guinea pigs from people that can no longer take care of their them  (regardless of the reason). Stichting Cavia doesn't charge the previous owners, they only ask them to fill in a declaration stating that Stichting Cavia is the new owner of the guinea pig. 

If the guinea pig is healthy and not too old, the foundation will try to find a new owner.
If they don't succeed in finding one, the guinea pig will spend the rest of its life in the cavy-village (Caviadorp) in Bakkeveen.

Most of the time Stichting Cavia has a large number of piggies available, so if you are looking for a piggie: check Stichting Cavia first before you go to the petshop…!

Caviabende Almere enjoying their forever home

With getting a new piggie from Stichting Cavia you also become a contributor of the foundation for 1 year and you receive the newsmagazine “de CaviaKrant” (Guinea pig newspaper) twice a year.

Amongst the many guinea pigs that are brought to Stichting Cavia there are also old animals and animals with a weak health. In principle, these guinea pigs can still have a good life despite their shortcomings. However, due to the time and costs involved in their caretaking, they are not suitable for the average pet owner. These guinea pigs stay in the cavy-village for the rest of their lives.

You can support these guinea pigs by financially adopting them for the amount of 16 euro a year (you can deposit this amount on account 7741751 or bank account 50.16.28.460 of Stichting Cavia in Bakkeveen). You can choose the guinea pig on this page (in Dutch). 

Of the guinea pig(s) that you decide to adopt financially, you will receive an adoption certificate. If you extend the adoption with another year, you will receive a card with a short description of how the guinea pig is doing. Additionally, you will receive our newsmagazine "De Caviakrant" (Guinea Pig Newspaper, in Dutch, only delivered in the Netherlands) twice a year. Thanks to your help, the guinea pig can enjoy the rest of his or her life in the cavy-village.

If you are interested to support us by financially adopting one of the guinea pigs in Bakkeveen, you can send an e-mail to: informatie@stichtingcavia.com

Caviabende Almere

Vote for the Dutch Guinea pig foundation (stichting cavia)

Hi all,

We have a request for you, the dutch ebay, called 'marktplaats' is giving away a camper. Many groups and foundations have signed up to become the new owner of this camper.
We just heard from our friends of the Guinea pig gang Almere (@caviabendealmer on twitter) that the Dutch Guinea Pig foundation (stichting cavia) is competing.
They have guinea pig shelters in the netherlands, and a big guinea pig village where they take care of loads of unwanted guinea pigs. They pick up about 3000 guinea pigs a year, and their van unfortunately is old and broken at the moment...
Please take a minute to vote for them!!!
Vote here and click on the 'Steun mij' button, which means 'support me'

http://www.winjouwmarktplaatscamper.nl/mijn-camper/stichting-cavia/

Thanks from all the Dutch guinea pigs
and us,
The Guinygirlz (who luckily have a forever home):
Woopy, Lily, Daisy and Roos

P.S. you can vote until the 10th of May
p.s.2 Also don't forget to vote for the caption contest!

This is What Your Kind Donation Bought

Hi all have heard from Suzy of Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue who won the vote for our calendar money and here is how the donation has been spent.

An update on the funds given to the rescue thanks to all your votes.

150kg (10 sacks) of guinea pig food has been delivered and paid for by the donation by Undercover Guinea Pigs. This feed makes up 50% of their daily dry feed and should last the rescue around 12 weeks.




JohnnyPig sends his love too - big blurry kisses for everybody!




A huge thank you from me too of course for the tremendous support given to the Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue

Suzy xxx


We would like to say again thank you to everyone who voted, everyone who bought a calendar and most importantly thank you to the GuinyGirlz for making it happen.

New calendar for next year... watch this space

Thank you for voting

Sally and Susie Piggyfriend want to thank everyone and everypig who voted for Palace Piggies, from where we were rescued. Palace Piggies did well to come second.

 

NB. Slave was very careful to watch that we did not eat the daffodils. We just wanted some flowers to make our pigture look pretty.

The Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue

The Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue

The rescue was set up in '03. Started because I felt guilty sitting on my backside watching animal rescue programmes feeling sorry for the animals and when I had the knowledge and experience to do something about it! So I got off the sofa and started organising. Had a shed built, constructed cages and runs, read and learnt as much as possible and let local rescues and vets know about me. The first guinea pigs arrived very soon and since then the rescue has grown every year. I now rescue over 150 guinea pigs a year, this year could be my busiest as I have already taken in 45 in the first 6 weeks of the year, with many on the waiting list for space.



Uncle JohnnyPig


JohnnyPig has poor dental health and requires trimming every month so is a lifelong resident at the rescue. He has earned his place at the rescue by becoming the resident Uncle Pig to all the baby boys that have to leave their mothers at 3 weeks old so no accidental pregnancies occur. He has a kind and gentle nature, is very sweet with the boys and teaches them guinea pig manners. Despite being the heaviest pig in the rescue at over 1.5kg he plays with the babies and popcorns as much as they do.

Vid of Johnny with his latest assignment


1000th pig and the Piggy Bank

In response to the need for more help for piggies across the country than a single rescue or individual can provide I founded the Piggy Bank, a collective of volunteers for guinea pig rescue support, made up mostly of members of The Guinea Pig Forum. There is a central database of all contact details of the members so that when a rescue situation occurs, we have a response team in any area that can be called upon. For the larger scale rescues we work as a network to locate rescue space and transport the pigs to the rescues. The Piggy Bank is still in it's infancy but has helped with small and large cale rescues already, very successfully.

Piggy Bank

Since the first rescue pig, Mr Binkie, arrived on 6th July 2003 The Glynneath Guinea Pig Rescue has now welcomed it's 1000th piggy. He arrived on 18th February 2012, one of the '285 rescue' - Thanks to the Piggy Bank for their part in this rescue, finding rescue space and transport for 120 boars.

https://www.facebook.com/piggybank.gpr



1000th Piggy



Thank you Suzy for this informative update about the rescue, we would like to raise our paws and clap for the wonderful job you are doing.

Who should we donate the calendar proceeds to?

Many of you have pigticipated in the making and buying of the Undercover Guinea Pigs Calendar 2012.
Now we need your votes, who should we donate the profit to?
Read the motivations of the people who nominated their shelters, and why they should win here.











Voting is open until 30th March winner to be announced 31st March.

One a side note that are still a few calendars left, which you can still order. Click on the link in the right column to order yours...

Fundraising Pig T-shirts

Hi there

 

I’ve just been looking at your blog – its brilliant!

 

I wondered if you might be interested in a new online shop I’ve opened selling all sorts of guinea pig t-shirts and clothing.

 

I noticed you have Glynneath Guinea pig Rescue in the blog hop – I’ve got a special range which I’ve designed especially for them to help raise money for the rescue.

 

I wasn’t sure if you were in America or the UK but I have a shop for both. The American one is here http://popcornprints.spreadshirt.com/ and the UK one is here http://www.popcornprints.co.uk/

I also have a facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Popcorn-Prints/313915968619262

 

I would appreciate it so much if you would like to mention my t-shirts on your blog. I’ve attached a picture you could use.

 

Thanks so much, Louise xxx