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?

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.

Happy Easter !

 

Hello, everyone!  I'm Pavarotti from the Prairie Pigs.  I just wanted to wish everyone and all of the piggies a Happy Easter.

I think everyone would agree that things are a little different this year, but my two friends here hopped by for a visit and they brought dandelion greens which I think are the very best way to celebrate Spring.  I haven't seen dandelion greens all winter, so this gives me hope that Spring is on the way at last.

Our slave is complaining that she didn't get as much chocolate as usual.  I offered her some dandelion greens, but she said I should eat them all myself (she did not have to tell me that twice!).

I hope everyone is relaxing at home and giving their piggies some extra attention and hugs.  Don't worry --- the sun is shining and it's a little warmer all the time:  Spring is coming !!!

Guinea Pig Jigsaw

We have received this lovely pigture of a guinea pig jigsaw puzzle with a little note, but don't know whom to thank for it!

Hello everyone,
All this talk of jigsaws reminded me of one hidden away in my cupboard ... never completed because (a) it's too big for my table and (b) when I tried starting it on the floor, the cat decided to sit on it.
Stay safe everyone and enjoy more piggy
 time. xx

Meet My New Brother, Scottie !

Scottie came to live with us in late January, and I am very happy to introduce him to you! My mom and dad named him Scottie because he reminds them of the Belted Galloway cows of Scotland. They adopted him from a couple who thought they had purchased two girl piggies at the pet store, but one night they discovered four little faces instead of two looking up at them. Scottie is one of those surprise babies.

Since my new brother is young, he likes to run around our cage, popcorn, and use our sofa as a trampoline. Here are pigtures of each of us on the sofa. Scottie is the black-and-white pig, and I, Nugget, am the white, black, and tan pig.






I had surgery in January so I wasn't able to meet my brother for quite a long time. When we met, we immediately got along, and the next morning our dad saw us resting side by side and knew we were going to be good friends.

My surgery went well, as I hope you can see.

We send good wishes to all.

Nugget (proud big brother to Scottie)

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 in Swannanoa, North Carolina

The Piggyville girls have sent us a report about their candle lighting ceremony.

The Piggyville girls lit a candle on March 9th. in memory of Peter Gurney and all of our dearly departed loved ones. They chose to place the candle next to a Peace Lily. The lily's bright green leaves and fragrant flowers symbolise the rebirth of the soul. The lily is also a symbol of peace and hope. May we all find comfort in celebrating the lives of the ones we love and have lost.

The girls decided that since Mum has such a short candle it would be better is they all sat for individual portraits.

Tilley, being the new piggy in the pen, was unfamiliar with the candle ceremony. She decided to strike her Sphinx pose.

Honeydew arrived at the candle lighting ceremony atop her favourite cozy.

Squirly prays for all the Piggyfriends and wishes everyone a good night.

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."

A Guinea Pig A to Z - "J" is for Jasper !

Hello everyone --- I'm Jasper from the Prairie Pigs!  

In the proud tradition of Peter Gurney's famous guinea pig, Free Range Fred, I am a free-range piggy too and spend most of the day running loose in the piggy room, visiting my friends and sampling the hay from their hay racks.  (Actually it's the same as the hay in my own hay rack, but for some reason stolen hay always seems to taste better!)

When I first came to the Prairie Pigs, I had a touch of scurvy (the staff at the local Humane Society shelter didn't know how important it is to give guinea pigs Vitamin C) so my gums and teeth were sore and I just was not feeling well.  Slave decided it might encourage me to eat and move around more if she left my cage door open, and even after the daily Vitamin C and regular servings of fresh veggies made me feel a lot better, I convinced her that this was a tradition we should keep alive !

Here I am, hanging out with my girlfriend, the beauteous Bonnie McSmithers.  Isn't she gorgeous???

Now I'm over at Heathcliffe's cage, having a chat.

Of course, though I do love being "out and about", sometimes a piggy just wants to curl up in his very own hay box for a nice afternoon nap...

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.