Big Pigs.

When I go on holiday, I always miss my herd of Piggyfriends, so I was delighted to find a few of their big relatives, some lovely capybaras, in Dartmoor Zoo in Devon, England. I am always wary of zoos and am the first to complain if the animals' quarters are not up to scratch but these lovely capybaras had a huge enclosure, which they shared with two nice tapirs and some rheas.

When we arrived, it was a hot day and the first animals that we met were these capybaras, basking in the sun beside their pool.

 

And as you can never have enough capybaras, here are some more. The one beside the tree was obviously having a nice dream as he kept waving his paws around!

Here are their friends, the two tapirs, who were also fast asleep when we arrived and were snoring very loudly. Sorry about the wire but I could not climb in to take a better shot.

Later in the day it rained and the capybaras all woke up and went in search of lunch. Just like our piggies, they love their fresh grass.

When we were leaving, the capybaras were walking in a line like a piggy train to go to their big wooden shelter where they had lots of hay but, unfortunately, there was too much wire in the way for me to take a good pigture so here is one of the tapirs, one of whom was in the pool that they share with the capybaras.

I wish that I had room at home for a capy but their pool was bigger than my garden.

 

Daisy had a bladder stone part 2

I wrote this part last Sunday, when I did not know yet how she would be doing on Monday... 

So after we took Daisy home on friday we force fed her some science recovery and she seemed to be doing pretty well. Our vet was saying we had a really strong piggie, as she thought earlier that day that she would not make it.
I forgot to mention they also removed a polyp from her bladder.

On saturday, we kept a hawk's eye on her most of the day and she ate some chicory (see the video), drank a little and nibbled some hay. Of course we kept up with the force feeding and medicine, and she started to object quite violently. Which of course did not make it easier for us, but I was glad she was this feisty as it meant she was feeling better.

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Look Daisy is eating chicory! #guineapig #eating

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Today, sunday, she is still hanging in there, but she seems a bit less than the day before... It does get faster to hand feed her though but she does not want to eat by herself. Though I do think she ate a little parsley on her own. As we put in quite some food the day before, but did not see her dump any of it on the back side, I tried to separate her from the rest. I put up some C&C grids, gave her hay, a drinking bottle and pellets, put her in to see if she did poop. Within 5 minutes however she escaped, and to my surprise she left at least one poop. I felt like she was saying. "Hey mom, I did a poop, i'll let myself out now, okay?'
A bit later that day she seemed a bit more perky and that was when I think she ate the parsley. Also hand feeding her went a lot smoother. I did notice her tummy seems really swollen, also when she walks she sound like something inside is really sloshing... Anyone have a clue what is happening there?

We are keeping up the force feeding, she had less at this time of day, then she had yesterday. She has antibiotics (novadox: which is doxycycline), Carprofen as painkiller (this is rymadil I think) and cysaral for getting her gut to keep moving (it is cisapride). Today I also syringed her some water inbetween the force feeding, and some oil in case she was so swollen because of gas.

Right now she seems okay-ish, and I really hope she gets through another night, so we can talk and maybe take her to the vet again tomorrow.

I'll keep you posted and hope you will keep your fingers and paws crossed for her. She fought so hard to stay around, so she really deserves to get better soon!

On a happier note: Berke turned 3 yesterday, and he plus the others were happy to see Daisy back. They are sweet to her, and keep her company some times.

Hugs to all your Piggies,
Mieke of the Guinygirlz: Woopy, Daisy, Roos and Berke

Friday Video: when JoeJoe the Capybara meets Puppies

Today we have a suggestion from Pat and the Prairy Pigs (thank you Pat!). She sent us a video with JoeJoe the Capybara and puppies. Since we found lots more video's from JoeJoe with puppies and we couldn't choose. We've decided to post them all. Hope you won't mind ;-)


Puppy play time


Trying to nap with puppies



JoeJoe loves puppies


Joe Joe and puppies

Have a nice Wheekend!

Daisy had a bladderstone :(

Hi all,

Unfortunately we found out our Daisy was ill, this is her story.

We noticed her weight dropped 200 grammes in only a month, and she was wet underneath. So I
suspected cystitis. We tried her on one of Peter gurney's remedies of barley water. But after a few days it was clear to me that wasn't helping enough...
So of to the vet it was. She confirmed my theory of Daisy having cystitis, but she was also doubting a bit if maybe she had a bladder stone, as she thought she could feel something in the bladder area..
We tried antibiotics and a painkiller for almost a week, but Daisy was not really improving.

So back to the vet to see if she did indeed have a bladderstone. This vet gave the same diagnosis: cystitis and she could feel something in her bladder. So I came back in the next day (this was last friday) to have her x-rayed (I had the last appointment the day before) and see if she really
had a dreaded stone.
So I got a call later that day saying she could see 2 things on the x-ray.
2 things? I did not like that...
The first thing was she indeed had a bladder stone, and it was to big to flush it out. The second thing was that she had a huge amount of something in her tummy... it looked like have her belly cavity, and the vet suspected a huge ovarian cyst... She had to puncture these first before she would do an operation to get the stone out. As it took up so much space, it would very likely be in the way for the removal of the stone. We agreed to get the liquid out of the ovarian cyst and then have the vet remove the stone.

Daisy's x-ray, the stone is clearly visible on the top photo.
In the bottom photo you see almost have of her tummy looks dark..

After some time I got a call again, the operation went well, the stone was removed (and about 1 cm in diameter). And she did not find an ovarian cyst.
When puncturing all that came out was air... apparently the huge bubble that showed up on the x-ray was air. The theory was that it was in her appendix that contained all the air, and as she was in pain, she inhaled a lot of air... (Anyone ever heard of this?)
However, she was having a lot of problems recovering and waking up, she started bleeding from her bladder, and it was not getting less so far....
She could put Daisy under again and see if she could fix it, but she was very hesitant to do that, as giving her that extra anesthetic the vet was afraid would give Daisy that last push to cross the bridge...
So she suggested we wait for her body to fix this...
I asked if I could come and see her... and a little bit later I was there.

Daisy was not looking good, cramping a lot because of the pain (she did have painkiller of course, but she was obviously still in a lot of pain) and her lower half was all bloody...
After about an hour the cramping became less, and the bloodflow seemed to almost halt. After a while her temperature was getting back to normal, so the heating in her intensive care unit was turned off.
About an hour later, she seemed to have improved even more, and she seemed more alert, and at some point I think she even tried to nibble the fleece she was on. This is a typical thing Daisy would so in a healthy state. She also moved around a bit more.
At that point I had already spend some hours watching her and they said I could go home, eat something and then get back in 2 hours to pick her up, if she seemed good enough.
And luckily we were allowed to take her home! At that time it was 7 in the evening. So it was a pretty tiring day for me.

Daisy back home, and picture of her stone,
the bottle is one of those small 10 ml medicine bottles

Daisy :'(

Just to let you know: we found Daisy had crossed the bridge early on last monday morning... I am devastated as she was doing so well on saturday after a bladder stone surgery on friday. \Her belly was really swollen, we suspect her bowels were punctured when trying to get air out with a
needle... that caused fluids/air to leak in to her belly cavity and madeher belly make sloshing sounds...
The vet's assistant punctured her swollen belly when I took her body in on mondag, and said only blood was coming out. She suspects she had an internal bleeding.

She was pretty certain whatever it was that they could not have done much
about it, and she was impressed we got her through the weekend at all...

Hug all your piggies from me!
Mieke, Erwin and the remaining Woopy (almost 6,5!), Roos and Berke

P.S. I will post what happened in the upcoming days... (If you are on the GPDD you probably already read it...)

This is Daisy with her boyfriend Agent Zeppelin,
they met when we drove south to get Bérke

Friday Video: Assassin's Kittens Unity

Have a nice Wheekend!

Preparation for Calendar 2015 and new topic: Piggie breeds?

Hi all,

As it is already October, it is time to start gathering photos again for the calendar of 2015.

As always I will collect photos of your guinea pigs. By sending me the pigtures you allow us to use it in the calendar, and on the blog for calendar related posts.
The proceedings will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world, which you can nominate and vote for.

This year I would like to try a slightly different format. Before, we let people send in pigtures of their piggies, and every (group of) piggie(s) would get their own month.
For the upcoming year I would like to give all months a piggy breed theme: so for example one month for short/smooth-haired, one for abyssinians, one for rexes, one for US/CH teddies, one for crested, longhaired piggies and so on. I am not sure we can actually find 12 different breeds but I think we can also fill 2 months for some breeds...

Every month we can have a different breed, that will be discussed on the blog. So describing what the traits of a breed are, and other interesting information about that breed. Maybe we could also have a look at the different colorings?

For both gathering pigtures and more information about the different breeds I will need you help!
So what do you think, are we up for this?

Up to now I have always used Vistaprint for the calendars, because they have offices on all continents it seems, which reduces the shipping costs. I have not really found a better candidate yet, but if you have good suggestions for a company like Vistaprint, let me know.

So assuming we will do the next calendar is a Piggy breeds format, I made a list of what breeds I could think of. Please add a comment if you have piggies in those or other breeds and you can provide pigtures of your current or late piggies.


Happy wheeking,
Mieke

Guinea Pig Breeds (I could think of)
- Short / Smooth -haired
- Abyssinian
- Peruvian
- Rex
- US / CH Teddies
- Texel
- Alpaca
- Coronet
- Crested
- Merino
- Hairless: Skinny and Baldwin
- Ridgeback

I used this video for some inspiration