Agent in Training Martin Piggyfriend

Hello readers. Martin Piggyfriend here. I am an Agent in Training and I have been practising my camouflage technique.

I am trying to hide in the pigoom carpet.

My Ginger bits show up too much don't they?

Is that better? There is not quite so much light reflecting off my coat.

Maybe I can hide better when running away? Our leader, Tyrion, says that this is technically called retreating. That is OK by me. My brother, Fernando, cannot join me in this exercise as he has lots of white in his coat, which is a shame as I would rather work with him.

Helping

Hello readers. Tyrion Piggyfriend here.

I am helping Slave with our Christmas decorations.

How am I doing?

I am not getting near that holly though. It looks far too dangerous!

It's Sinterklaas eve!

Today is Sinterklaas' birthday in the Netherlands! Our human likes to eat chocolate letters (or maybe characters is a better word). This is a milk chocolate hazelnut one, an M as the first letter of our slave Mieke's name. Kids will get presents from Sinterklaas this evening.

We were asked to pose with the chocolate characters and playmobil Sinterklaas and Piet as well, but we were more interested in the veg we had just gotten from dad... though Bér is taking a peep

Raani sniffed and nibbled the boxes and Piet...

And then she knocked the boxes over, and sat on them 

trying to eat the box and nibble on Piet

Ah well, slave tried to get pigtures of us....

Oh, and she was at it again decorating our cage with Christmas lights....

What do you think?

Happy sinterklaas, if you celebrate it!

the guinygirlz Tijger and Raani

And boar Bérke

Friday video: Piggy baby eating a carrot...

On of the piggies we follow on instagram (https://www.instagram.com/fuzzberta/) has been posting baby videos of the little ones her piggy Jennifuzz has gotten about 3 weeks ago. They are so adorable... Do check out her account for more cute baby piggies and the adorable mum and auntie. Have a great Wheekend! The guinygirlz: Tijger, Raani and boar Berke

And now, for your in-flight entertainment: robust baby Billy Blob enjoying a carrot 🐨✈️ - We are on layover in Denver on our way home for Thanksgiving. The jelly babies are taking their first flight in stride, and all piggies are enjoying lots of treats during the flight.  For those of you wondering, Frontier is the only US airline that allows guinea pigs in cabin. We have two airline-safe pet carriers now, one for MGP and one for Jennifuzz and the jelly babies.

Een video die is geplaatst door Fuzzberta & Friends (@fuzzberta) op 17 Nov 2016 om 10:44 PST

Piggyfriends share a Piggy Jigsaw!

First thing every morning, Slave feeds us and cleans our cages. Only then does she have her own breakfast and, whilst she is eating it, she does the Magic Jigsaw on her iPad. The daily puzzle is a mystery as she does not know what the picture is going to be until she has done enough of it to recognise the image.

Imagine her delight when, as she was assembling Monday's puzzle, a little guinea pig was smiling back at her.

We are sure that Magic Puzzles will not mind her sharing this image with you all........
 

.......especially as they have overprinted the image with their own logo. We wonder who this piggy belongs to.

Dee's girls

Hi,

We are Josie and Callie.  Dee just adopted us.  We are not agents but would like to be.  Callie is very good at escaping when we have floor time.

Slave Dee

Piggyfriends review a book.

Look what Slave received for her birthday. "A Guinea Pig Oliver Twist".

We don't know if it is OK for us to reproduce photos of this book but they are not very good pictures and, as we are advertising this book to possible purchasers, we hope that the lovely people who made the book will not mind.

Slave already has the Guinea Pig Nativity and Pride and Prejudice in this series so she was delighted when our pigsitter gave her this book for her birthday.

This is the story of Oliver Twist with all the characters played by guinea pigs. It has a shiny cover and nice shiny pages so we apologise for the fact that our photos reflect the flash but it is such a lovely book that we wanted to share it with you all.

Here are the characters all dressed up with wonderful clothes made especially for the book.

Slave read the book to us and she did laugh when she saw the little vignette of the ball and chain with 4 little chains for piggy feet.

Can you see it?

In detective stories on the television, we see police tape on the floor where the victim was found. Here, there is the shape of a fat guinea pig drawn with chalk. Don't worry readers - this is only a story and nopig gets hurt. Sorry about the reflection. We had several goes at taking this photo and this was the best ( or the least worst ).

Finally, here is a scene from the book. We love the little Victorian outfits.

Everyone who loves piggies should get a friend to buy them this book for their birthday or, with Christmas coming up, what a wonderful gift to place under the tree.

We can't wait for Bloomsbury Publishing to create another Guinea Pig book.

Bonfire Night. Mimi and Lulu aka the Diva Girls reporting.

In England, the 5th. November is Bonfire Night although the celebrations seem to go on forever, especially when, as is the case this year, the 5th. falls on the weekend.

People light noisy fireworks and burn huge bonfires and the family who live across the road from Piggyfriends are having a Firework Party right now.

That is why we are wearing two pairs of Slave's earmuffs as we do not like the noise.

We live in the country and have very few neighbours but we feel sorry for piggies who are having lots of fireworks let off all around them, especially those piggies who have to live outdoors. Our double glazed windows keep out a lot of the noise and Slave is playing some CDs so it is not too bad.

We did not live here last year at this time but some of the Piggyfriends remember this "Celebration" from previous years and they say that it will soon be over. Phew!

Slave is giving out tomato slices to make up for the disturbance. Yum yum!

Piggie calendars for 2017?

Dear readers,

In the past years we've done a yearly calendar and a card game with pigtures of piggies from this blog. This year I decided to not do a calendar, because it is a lot of work and it as also pretty late to get started now. But I always enjoyed supporting the shelters with the small profit we made from selling the calendars or card games.
So I would like to provide you with some other options. These are either small businesses enthusiastic about guinea pigs or shelters that make yearly calendars.

Found this pigture on Google, as far as
I know it is in none of the calendars below

We ordered this calendar of Mieps the guinea pig, she is a Dutch piggie, but her owner ships her calendar worldwide, please check their site for shipping costs. If you are in the Netherlands shopping will be at the end of November, for the rest of the world's it will at least be before the end of the year. There are two front cover designs to choose from, but if you want to order you have to be fairly quick, you can order until the 5th of November! Order here:
http://www.miepstheguineapig.com/shop/calendars/
Mieps can be found on instagram, her owner was going to see a possible friend for Mieps on monday, so exciting times ! https://www.instagram.com/miepstheguineapig

Every year Tammy of Cavy madness assembles a nice small desktop calendar with pigtures sent to her of piggies from around the world. These are fairly inexpensive little calendars, Tammy is in the USA so shipping is also good if you are in the US. As they are small I imagine shipping to other countries is also not too bad.
http://cavymadness.com/shop/calendars.html
Our reader Jocelyn's piggies Apollo and Dante wigglebottom are featured in the Cavy madness calendar of 2017!

In our quest for calendars we found an old post by Happy Cavy about calendars, it even mentioned our 2014 calendar. As it was old most calendars are no longer available but we were glad to see the Real Men Love Guinea Pigs calendar can still be ordered! This features Orange County Cavy Haven shelter male volunteers with guinea pigs, and you can decide when the start date of your calendar should be!
Order it here: http://www.cafepress.co.uk/occh.309469550

A couple of years ago we got a calendar from the UK- based Bobtails Guinea pig & rabbits rescue from one of our readers the Surrey squeakers, looks like they are making another desktop calendar this year:  http://www.bobtailsrescue.org.uk/news2.asp?newsID=332
They have a rabbit and a guinea pig version for sale via eBay.

So do you know of any other small businesses or shelters selling calendars? we would love to hear about them, if you send us a link (or put it in the comments below) we will add them to this list!

Mieke of undercover guinea pigs blog, slave to the guinygirlz and Bérke

We found another calendar made by the owners of the late Fuzzberta:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/490345929/mini-guinea-wall-calendar?ref=shop_home_feat_1
She was supercute, her owner now has a new fuzzy piggy named Jennifuzz. Turned Jennifuzz was pregnant and she had 3 adorable fuzzbabies, if you are on instagram give her a follow (or simply have a look following the link below) , the babies are so cute! https://www.instagram.com/fuzzberta/

Happy Halloween to our Readers

"What is all this about, Magnus," says Ivan Piggyfriend, " and where is Tyrion?" " Tyrion told us to go with Slave to have our photos taken but I am not sure why." Magnus replies.

"Keep still boys!" calls Tyrion. " Look at the camera!".

" Now say " Happy Halloween" and you can have some of that apple. " That's more like it," say the little boars.

"HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE," they call. "Well done lads," says Tyrion, " you can come home now".

All the Piggyfriends join the boys in wishing all of our readers a fun Halloween. Lots of treats and no tricks.

Happy Halloween from the Peegies!

This year we are vikings! - Apollo (brown Abby), Dante Wigglebottom (black and white piggy), and Dmitri (black Abby who wasn't really into being a viking...and threw the viking cap off the set at one point.)

Happy 6th. Birthday Otto.

Hello everyone. This is Otto Piggyfriend ( aka Agent Mystery ) and it is my 6th. birthday today. To celebrate the occasion Slave gave me 6 of my favourite chicory leaves.

I think that this may be too much for one little piggy, so I am sharing them with my best friend, Angelina ( aka Agent Mouse ).

Maybe we should save some for Slave as it is her birthday too tomorrow. Right now, we need a nap.

Later on, we shared a big pile of grass that Slave brought home from her friend's farm.

We think that food is the very best present for a piggy.

Piggy A-Z: D for Do It Yourself (DIY): a fleece pillow

Some weeks ago I made a little photo tutorial on how to make a very simple guinea pig pillow. We bought one like this when we got Bérke, a couple of years ago. We could easily have made a pillow like this, and will show you how below, but we liked to support the shelter where we got Ber by buying the pillow.
Btw, on world animal day (4 October) it was  Berke's 5 birthday, so belated carrotbeers all around!

So what do you need to make a pillow for your guinea pig?

- Fleece fabric (one or two colors, more if you want it to be multi colored, but for this tutorial I will use two colors), preferably washed (so it has already shrunk if it does that)
- A sewing machine, or needle (and some handsewing skills)
- Thread

- Pins
- Teddy bear / Fibre filling
- Scissors
- Chalk (or something else you can use to mark your fabric)
- measuring device, like a ruler or measuring tape.

Decide how big you want your pillow to be,
add some seams (All round) to that number and
draw that rectangle on one of your fleece fabrics

Cut out the rectangle and put your cut-out rectangle on top
of your other piece of fleece fabric.

Pin the rectangle to the other colour fleece
and cut it out

Fleece has a wrong and a right side. In general
The fuzzy side is seen as the right side, and
the very smooth often slightly shiny side
is the wrong side of the fabric.
However feel free to use the side you like on the outside

Put the right sides together and pin. This means
the wrong sides (the sides you what on the inside
of the pillow) are on the outside.
Unless you want the seams on the outside then
you put wrong sides together and pin

Sew together 3 sides of the rectangle,
to make sure the treads stay in place
sew forward, a bit back and forward again,
at the beginning and end of your sewing. 

Most sewing machines have
a button to sew back.
Leave one shorter side open.
To turn in the corner,
put the needle through the layers of fabric,
 lift the foot and turn.
Put the foot down again and continue

If you want seams on the inside (!): Cut of the 
corners off the side you just sewn (as shown)

This makes for a more defined corner 
when you turn it inside out.

If you want the seams on the inside, turn inside out,
 otherwise don't turn. Stuff and pin closed.
Fold the seams inside if you want seams in the inside

Here it is pinned closed with seams folded inside

Sew the short side closed, again go forwards and
back at beginning and end of your sewing
This is how it looks sewn on one side

And the other side.

It's done now and can be given to your piggies!

As far as I know fleece can be washed (not too warm though!) And the filling is washable too, might be useful to check if you can wash the filling when buying it.

Enjoy, if your slaves make a pillow for you we would love to see them!

Slave Mikey, as requested by her Guinygirlz and Bérke to make this tutorial

Guinea Pigs React to Donald Trump

We could not resist this topical video...

Dangermice get a bath.

Our Slave decided that we needed a bath. We have to admit to not being the best behaved piggies in the house and we were really naughty when Slave tried to catch us. She had to resort to trapping us in pipes and transferring us to the big box that she uses to transport piggies upstairs to the bathroom.

We did not behave very well in the bath either and Slave said that it was like the Wall of Death as we raced around running away from the shower hose ( well, wouldn't you?) but she washed and lathered us much to our disgust.

After we had been shampooed and rinsed, we were put back in the box full of towels to dry off. Here we are.

Then we tried to escape by climbing on each other but Slave was watching and we did not get away.

All the Piggyfriends get treats when they are drying off but Slave decided that she deserved one more than we did so she had some chocolate. Not fair!

Then she CUT OUR NAILS! Eeek! Actually Casper was very good and sat still for this to be done so she relented and gave us a treat after all.

We had some Savoy cabbage that she had collected from her friend's farm this morning. We do look nice and white again so maybe we should not have made so much fuss. Maybe next time.......

Friday Video ClearScore Summer 2016 TV ad: Pineapple

Whee are a bit late posting this Friday video, but better late than never right?

See how we have grown!

This is a post from Magnus and Ivan Piggyfriend. Slave has been on holiday and her wonderful son has been pigsitting. When she got home, she was astonished at how much we had grown. She says that we get bigger by the minute so we thought that we would show you this pigture of us with our mentor, Tyrion.

That is him on the left, Ivan is in the middle and Magnus is on the right. We are enjoying a pile of grass from Slave's friend Roly's farm.

Does anyone have a pigture of their own piggy? We'd love to see them.

I was very brave today!

I am Fernando Piggyfriend and when I grow up I am going to be an Agent but in the meantime, look what happened to me today!

Slave says that I must have had a long haired piggy in my ancestry ( but I do not know as I came from a rescue ) and my coat grows long at the very back. It was getting tangled so she said that I needed a haircut.

I was grabbed from my wooden house, wrapped in a towel and look what she produced.

A pair of scissors bigger than me! Slave says that they are the very best pair for piggy haircuts and she should know but I was very apprehensive. It only took a moment and my rear end was as neat as can be.

Maybe haircuts are not to be feared but I envy my brother, Martin, whose fuzzy coat does not seem to grow.