Belated Halloween Pigture

We were supposed to give you a building work update today but Mummy saw this yesterday when she went for lunchtime walk and we had to share it.

Mummy says for an idea of how big this really is if you look closely at the pigture you can see it's 4 courses of bricks tall.

What we want to know is who got to eat all the yummy middle bits, we don't care what happened to the nasty pips although Mummy has been known to eat them.

A Piggy A-Z - A for Abyssinian

Here are two more Abyssinians for our "A".

These two are Roisin and Niamh, two little sisters who were the result of an accident when someone's prizewinning Peruvian and Abby got together by mistake so they came to live at Piggyfriends.

This is Roisin as a baby. You pronouce it Roshin.

And this is Niamh, pronounced Neeve.

And here we are all grown up. Abyssinians have rough coats, which stand up in rosettes, neatly arranged all over their body but as we two girls are only half Abyssinian, we would not win any prizes. Our Slave says that here at Piggyfriends all piggies are prizewinners! Abbies are usually smaller than the average piggy and are extroverts and we are no exception, bouncing around our pen and always shouting for food.

Niamh likes this pigture of herself as it shows her nice whiskers and, as you can see, we love to tear up cardboard boxes.

Happy Hallowe'en to all our Readers!

Otto Piggyfriend here ( aka Agent Mystery ). On behalf of all the Piggyfriends, I would like to wish you all a happy and safe Hallowe'en. We hope that you all get lots of treats - tricks are not necessary. More treats please Slave!

Spooky Halloween themed Friday video

We tried to find a creepy halloween-themed friday video...
Not sure we succeeded, let us know if you found any better ones;)

Abyssinians & A piggy A-Z: Tijger has abbytude!

Hi,

My name is Tijger (Tiger in Dutch) and I am an Abyssinian, so I fall in the A category. My mum and dad say I have 'Abbytude'. I am not sure what that is but it sounds cool, huh? I guess it means I am usually a very present piggy, curious and interested and I know what I wants.

If there are more abyssinians out there please join in! We need at least two more for the Go fish! game mummy is planning to make. Did she already tell you about this!?

Okay here's the plan:
As many of you know me mum used to gather pigtures and create a calendar of it every year. She wanted to try something else, and she also likes that near the end of the year they could sell the calendars and the profit that was made on this was sent to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world. A have never lived in a shelter, but I know my friends Peaches and Berke come from a shelter, and eventhough they were taken good care of in the shelter, they do really enjoy living with me now in their forever home! As many piggies are abandoned, money is always needed for these shelters.
This 'something else' turned into a Go Fish! card game, if you do not know the game, have a look here. We call it Kwartet in dutch (kwart meaning one/fourth), and the goal is to gather the most 'kwartets', which are 4 cards on a certain topic.
Up until now we have gotten a lot of entries for our go fish game, and Mom thinks we are ready to make a game... some quartets (see the Kwartet link above) might not be complete yet. We will let you know soon, if we need more and if you have a nice piggie pigture in one of the catagories needed send them in. Otherwise Auntie Penny (and maybe Stef or Jean) have owned so many piggies, I am sure we can complete the sets with their help.. ;)
We will order the Go fish/Kwartet games once we can make complete sets, and then they can be ordered with my slave. Like with the calendar she will make a form for you to sign up.
Once we have a nice profit I will ask you to nominate shelters and there will be a poll up on the blog to vote on your shelter.

Mum however has no clue how many games to order, so if you already know that you would like one, please comment below. Of course if it turns out you cannot get one in the end that is okay, but it would be nice to have some kind a indication how many people are interested...

We would like to have the games ready and send to their owners before christmas, so keep an eye out for posts about this if you are interested!

Nice to meet you all, I am nearing Agent weight (1 kilogram), so hopefully I can reveal my agent name soon,
Tijger of the Guinygirlz (Roos & Peaches and boar Berke)

A Piggy A-Z - A is for Audrey

This story was sent to us by our reader Pat, Slave to the Prairie Pigs..........

These girls are Audrey ("A" for Audrey) and Doris, both long gone to the Bridge now, but years ago they were my third and fourth guinea pigs ever. Like many animals who have been through hard times together, they were absolutely devoted to each other.

And these two had definitely been through hard times. They ended up at my local SPCA shelter as part of an animal abuse case. Some horrible people had decided to "get rich quick" breeding rabbits in their garage, and things had gotten seriously out of hand. The poor rabbits were in terrible shape by the time the SPCA was alerted by the neighbours and many did not survive, but in the midst of this horror was a tiny cage with two guinea pigs in it. (Apparently, they were intended to be the beginning of a guinea pig breeding operation, but since they were both girls, that part of the "business" was not going well.)

They had to stay at the shelter for several months while the court case proceeded, but afterwards one of the shelter staff who had seen me coming in with donations of hay and pellets decided I would be the perfect pig parent for these two. I had only had my first two piggies, Daphne and Guinevere, less than a year and wasn't really intending to expand, but you couldn't hear Audrey and Doris' story without wanting to make sure the rest of their life was good, so they came home with me.

At first glance, Audrey seemed to be quiet and shy, but I soon realized she was the boss of the pair. When it was floor time, Doris was not allowed to leave the cage until Audrey left, and if Doris got impatient and tried to sneak out ahead, Audrey would herd her back in and make her stand in the corner until she apologized and admitted she had been wrong. Doris was much braver and more outgoing where people were concerned, but Audrey was definitely the talker. She had a distinctive and piercing voice and a very large vocabulary; she was my introduction into the wondrous diversity and creativity of piggy language, and was always the first to sound off if she heard a refrigerator door opening or me getting out of bed in the morning.

That has become one of my favourite things about pig-keeping --- listening to them talking to each other or giving me orders. I think people who have only one or two piggies are really missing out, because they never get to hear all the vocal variations you get with your own little herd.

Friday video: Piggie city dwellers

We liked this video, because it depicts the day in the life of a human, ehm Guinea pig...