Slave's Birthday Presents

It was Slave's birthday at the end of October. It must be easy for humans to find presents for a piggy lover and here are some of them.

This is a scarf that is absolutely covered with piggies!

Difficult to take a close up! The design is called "Lettuce be friends". Now she wants lockdown to be over so that our pigsitter can take her out for a much belated birthday dinner and she will be able to wear it.

This mug is called "The Anatomy of a Guinea Pig". We do not think that you will be able to read the captions but our favourite says " Squeaky Squeal Region ". The ears are labelled " Baby Cabbages" and the eyes are entitled " All-seeing vision beans."

Isn't this the sweetest little piggy? He is made of glass and you can tell how tiny he is from the next photo.

Yes readers. That is an apple behind him for comparison.

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

A Piggy A-Z. L is for Lots of Lovely Leaves.

 This is part of the farm where Slave goes to collect Lots of Lovely Leaves for us.

In the foreground there are Broccoli plants and behind those are Cabbages and Cauliflowers. Right at the back, in front of the farm building, there are rows of winter Lettuce. Slave's friend, who owns the farm, lets her pick anything that she likes for us.

Around the edges of the field there are lots of tasty weeds, shepherd's purse, groundsel and chickweed and she forages for whatever she can reach. Sometimes we get sow thistles and dandelions too but Slave has to watch out for nasty nettles.

 

 

Here are some of the cabbage plants. When they have been harvested, Slave will be able to get to the cauliflowers. They are our favourite.

On the other side of the road are the fields where she cuts boxes of grass for us.

"You two start at one end and I will start at the other," says Carter to Saoirse and Aoife. "We will meet in the middle."

"Quick Saffron," says Bounty, " let's eat this leaf before Ebony wakes up from her nap." " I think that it might be a bit too much for just us two," replies Saffron.

"Move up Miss Marple," say Mama Bonbon and Bella, " there is plenty for us all."

This post was inspired by the lovely leaves that the Surrey Squeakers were enjoying on their blog.

Happy Hallowe'en, Readers !

 "What is all this about?" asks Hazel Piggyfriend.

"It is Hallowe'en tonight," says Slave."And you can light our pumpkin later when it is dark. That is the lighter and the little candle in front of you."

" I am not too sure about these little fellows." says Hazel.

" It all looks very colourful," says Hazel," and those leaves look tasty!"

"I will come and light the little candle later but I think that I will ask you to put it in the pumpkin. I do not want to singe my whiskers."

Happy Hallowe'en to all of our readers. Maybe next year, we will be able to celebrate properly.

Enter the Dragon --- But Which Dragon???

Halloween is coming up soon, so we Prairie Pigs were very excited when Mum Slave told us she had bought us a new costume --- a wonderful shiny and fearsome dragon outfit!  We already have some other costumes, but of course everypig wanted to wear the new one.  How can we decide who gets to wear it for Halloween? 

The fairest way seemed to be for everypig to try it on and see who looked the most dragon-like in it --- not everypig can carry off a look like that, after all!

Pavarotti tried it on first.  To tell the truth, he doesn't look fearsome at all, in fact "freaked out" might describe his expression better.  

Edvard Munch tried it on next.  That's better!  He does have quite a majestic and resolute look, doesn't he?  

Oh, I think we have a winner!  Bonnie McSmithers might be tiny but that look of steely determination and smouldering rage when Mum Slave insisted on taking just one too many pigtures is very dragon-like, don't you think?  (Not to mention that, since Bonnie is the only girl Prairie Pig, we all love her to bits and could never deny her anything!)  

Floor Time!

Hello from Nugget!

My mom finally got a photo of me enjoying floor time. Scottie and I were out, and she saw I was eating pellets from the wood table (you see just a corner of it). Scottie ran past me, and when I turned to see where he went, she took this pigture.

To the right is a water bottle in a wood holder my dad made, and behind me you will see our PVC tube (Scottie likes to sleep in it) and also the area our dad made for floor time. It is sort-of-linoleum with a wood frame. The wood is untreated, so if we chew on it, that is all right. Scottie has done several taste tests and given it his approval.

You will also see hay strewn about. Sometimes it's as much fun to play with hay as it is to eat it.

My mom is now trying to get a photo of Scottie on the floor, or of us together there. Wish her luck!

A Piggy A-Z. L is for Love. Piggy Love!!

 We all love our piggies and our piggies love their piggies......

Here is Carter Piggyfriend on the right. He Loves his Little Ladies, Aoife and Saoirse. They have all snuggled into a box of hay for a well deserved nap after demolishing their breakfasts.

A Piggy A-Z. L is for Ladies who Lunch.

 

Here are Miss Marple, Bella and Mama Bonbon, the Ladies who Lunch and breakfast and dine and have afternoon snacks and lunch and lunch and lunch........................

Life is one long meal for the Piggyfriends.
 

We are Buddies

We have been waiting a while for a joint post from our American reporters, Scottie and Nugget, and here it is!

Scottie here. Yes, you have seen the sofa before, and the A-frame, but what have you not yet seen? 

You haven't seen me with my brother!

Due to some lighting problems and her rather modest camera, our mom was beginning to think she'd never be able to capture us in a pigture together. In addition, I, Scottie have been reticent to allow photos.

Last night, though, before floor time, our mom saw us relaxing and thought she'd give a photo another shot, no pun intended. She turned on all the lights, and we didn't move.

Nugget is the croissant to the left, and I am doing my best to define lounging. If I do say so myself, I am doing a rather good job. I glanced up once to see what was happening but decided to let Mom continue. Besides, I had not finished my nap.

Nugget hopes you'll like his style, and I hope you can see that my white stripe still resembles Nessie of Loch Ness fame, though Nessie has, um, grown.

Some of my Favorite Things ...

We have just received this exciting new story from one of our intrepid guest reporters, Nugget:

Hi all from Nugget! My mom's camera hasn't been working for a while, but the other day she gave it another chance and it worked, much to her surprise. So she's been taking some pigtures of Scottie and me again.

This afternoon, despite rainy weather and therefore not the best lighting, she took this photo and seemed pleased by it. I hope you'll like it, too.

Here I am eating hay, which of course is any guinea pig's favorite pastime. You might be able to tell that I'm eating from a wooden table. My dad made it and also the wooden "A-frame" behind me. I rest in there quite a lot when I'm not busy eating. Beside me is our sofa, which Scottie likes to fold over. I hope you can see the flowers on one side. It is reversible, and we like that.

Well, that is my tour for right now. My mom is trying to get some photos of us on during floor time, but we will have to wait for the sun to come out!

Photos from abroad.

We have a new photo to share showing two of our one time Junior Slave's herd of piggies. We call the US branch of Piggyfriends "Piggyfriends Two."

Here is one of Mama Rin and her daughter, Maki
.

And here is a newcomer! This little piggy is being fostered by them after being rescued from some terrible surroundings.

She will have a home to go to so they are not naming her as, once named, she will never leave. They are just calling her Minipig for the time being. She never stops eating or running around so it was difficult to get a good photo of her. Isn't she pretty?

Our Slave could never foster as they most certainly would never leave. We wonder what will happen with Minipig and will keep you updated.

Nail cutting day. Silly pigtures.

It is time for some of us to have our nails cut. None of us mind this at all but some of us will even lay on our backs so that Slave can easily see our little paws.

Here is Kiwi. He was so relaxed that he actually fell asleep like this. All of his nails are black so having him in this position makes it easy for Slave to see where to cut.

And here is Saffron. Although she is a plump lady, she is not as fat as this pigture makes her appear.

And here is her boarfriend, Bounty, who is definitely not as fat as he seems to be. He was sliding off our pigsitter's lap at the time.

The Piggyfriends are back with L is for Lettuce.

Hello Readers! Picchu Piggyfriend here. We are sorry that we have been unable to post anything for a while but Slave's camera broke down. The lens cover would not open and, due to the nasty virus that is chasing after humans in the outside world, all the non-essential shops have been closed since March. Luckily for us, that did not include food shops and we have been amply supplied with veggies.

Slave was unable to take her camera to the repair shop. Now some shops have been allowed to reopen and we are in business again. We are starting up our Piggy A-Z again with L is for Lettuce.

You may remember our lettuce seedlings growing in our conservatory earlier in the year. Now they are growing outside and you can see some of them here.

Our garden suffers from rabbits, who sneak in and eat Slave's produce so she is growing our lettuces in boxes on shelves that are out of reach of nasty thieves.

These lettuces are called Salad Bowl and Slave can pick some leaves every day for us and new leaves grow in their place. What a good idea.

Our parsley, that you saw in our earlier post, is thriving outside in big pots and continues to keep us in tasty treats.

Piggy Talk

Humans are reaching out to their pets for conversation during quarantine.
Karlijn Koning of the Netherlands, a 28-year-old caretaker of service
dogs, started training her dogs and guinea pigs with communication
buttons, and she says the piggies already know how to press the "snoepje"
button to ask for a treat.
Enjoy these pix of piggy and dog with their talking buttons! This article
appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

--Mary Fran
Alas, toujours sans piggy

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 Kale.

We love Kale but it can be gassy for piggies that are so affected so Slave feeds us this in moderation. It is useful in the winter when it is not so easy for Slave to get our grass.

Here it is growing in pots ready for planting out in the garden. It has to be protected from the nasty rabbits that come into our garden and steal our food and also from some butterflies. We thought that butterflies were pretty things but apparently there are some horrible white ones, who lay their eggs on brassicas ( that is the cabbage family ) and the caterpillars that hatch out eat the leaves.

Nothing is safe from pests. Slave has special butterfly netting to put over our kale. This has small holes that the butterflies cannot pass through, The lengths that Slave goes to to make sure that we get our favourite veggies.

We like the second picture as there is a pot of chickweed at the front. Chickweed is one of our favourite weeds and it prefers to grow wild but Slave is trying to grow it in pots for us. We do not think that this will go very far.

Strange Days

Pavarotti from the Prairie Pigs here, reporting in from Western Canada.  Are other piggies out there observing that their Slaves are behaving very strangely these days?  Because our Slave certainly is!   

For years we've been trying to convince her that she should stay at home more, that guinea pigs really require room service 24/7 and she should be restricting her trips into the outside world to urgent errands like buying more groceries for us.  Well, either there is something very weird going on out there in the wide world or our arguments are even more eloquent and persuasive than we thought, because suddenly that is exactly what she was doing --- staying home almost all of the time and only going out when the piggy (and human) snacks are running low.

(Here we have an example of the good part of this change: me, enjoying an "Early Mid-Afternoon Snack", a meal we only invented after Slave began staying home more!)

This all seemed like a wonderful idea at first, but unfortunately, the story gets darker.  There's an old saying: "Be careful what you wish for."  Well, now we're thinking that there might be a downside to Slaves staying at home all the time: sooner or later, even with all of the piggy chores they could be keeping busy with, they are going to get bored and start looking for ways to amuse themselves.

Look what she did to Sundance!  She dressed him up like a pirate!

And poor Heathcliffe had to wear this bumble bee costume!  He was sooooo embarrassed.  The Piggyfriends' Slave, our Aunty Penny, is growing a little indoor garden of parsley and lettuce for her piggies.  Why, oh why, can't we have a Slave who spends her time on useful things like that?

Slave claims she just "happened" to come across our Halloween costumes when she was cleaning the closet in our room and thought we might like to try them on.  A likely story!   Did she ask us if we wanted to do that?  I don't think so!  It seems that the Human/Slave mind can be a dangerous thing when left to its own devices, without proper piggy oversight!

Do other piggies out there have any good tips on keeping their Slaves under control?  We could use some help!

A Piggy A-Z. K is for Kindness and Keeping Close

We have been sent a photo and a story from our friend Ann, Slave to the the Piggyville Girls.

The Piggyville girls each have their own cozy to sleep in. Tilley loves
to sleep either on top of Honeydew's house or inside it. Honeydew acts
like Tilley is her baby, though they are not related. Squirly is too big
to share with anyone. This picture reminds me that no matter how close
or far away our friends or family members may be we carry their love in
our hearts and cherish their memories.  Sometimes with our busy lives we
forget to tell our friends and family members how much they mean to us.
So reach out and connect with someone you love. Ask your parents what
life was like when they were youngsters. Take some extra time to listen
to your child or spouse tell you about their day. Call your friend that
lives across the pond just to say hi. There is no better time than now.

Honeydew is willing to share her home with Tilley as long as she sleeps on the roof.
Squirly is snug as a bug in her tunnel. They are taking a nap after
enjoying their tea time treats. Their bellies are full from eating red
bell peppers, carrots and Broccolini which is a hybrid of broccoli and
Chinese kale.

One Sofa = Hours of Relaxation

Nugget here, and still on my sofa! I mean the sofa I share with my brother, Scottie. He is thinking of becoming a builder or an architect, and he likes to change furniture around. The other day he pushed over the sofa so the back became the cushions, but I didn't let that stop me. That's how I am sitting in this pigture, on the sofa's back. Hey, it is comfortable. You should try it.

In fact, "comfort" is my middle name. Oh, wait. No, it's not.

We have other places to hide under or play on or in, but our mom says instead of being couch potatoes, we are "couch cucumbers." I am just happy to hear the word "cucumber"!

Is it time to eat?