A Piggy A-Z. D for Daktarin

After the excitement of voting for our favourite shelter, it is back to the Piggy A-Z.

Today it is D for Daktarin. When piggies have had dental work, sometimes their mouths are sore and this is where Daktarin comes in.

I am Louis Piggyfriend and I came here with overgrown molars so I need occasional trips to the Rodentologist who trims them.

I have put on weight since my arrival now that I can eat properly. Here is a tube of Daktarin. Slave squeezes a blob onto a cotton bud ( shown here ) and swabs it around my mouth. It stops my mouth feeling sore and it tastes good too.

I don't know if it available in other countries ( we live in England ) but I do hope so. Slave buys it at the pharmacy as it is made for humans.

Update on the Agents in Training

Hello readers. Tyrion Piggyfriend here. I thought that you might like to see how my students are getting on.

From the next pigture you can see how much they have grown. They actually look bigger than they really are in the pigture as their coats stand straight out whereas mine lies flat.

They are not as brave as they think they are as, when they saw Slave with her camera, they ran and hid! Ivan disappeared into a pile of hay so missed out on having his pigture in the blog but Magnus ran into the hay tube and he thinks that we can't see him.

Whilst I am here, I want to tell you that Slave recently went to the Summer Fair at our local rescue. I came from there, not as a rescue but from the gardener, who breeds a few piggies and enjoys showing them. Otto and Rafferty also came here from her as they were the wrong colour for showing and I was a little runt in need of a good home. At the rescue, she saw these giant guinea pigs and took a pigture.

They sat still for their photo unlike my little rascals.

And the winner is...

The Excellent Adventure Sanctuary (TEAS) in the UK!!
 Soon we will let you know what the amount of donation is, we just received 2 more orders for the card game (at time of writing this there are only 1-2 games left!)
Here are some more statistics of the vote:

Where did your votes come from (Geographical responses)

The vote results in a Pie chart

Votes on a timeline, as you can see at first Sharna's cavy sanctuary was in the lead,
but eventually TEAS took over..!

Congratulations to The Excellent Adventure Sanctuary in the UK!

Voting Closed - Vote for a shelter!

These are the nominees, click on their names to read a bit more about them:
TEAS, UK
Sharna's cavy sanctuary, AUS
Het Knaaghof, NL
Eastpeckham guinea pig rescue, UK

By selling our undercover guinea pig card games (btw there are still a few available) we made a little profit which we want to donate to a shelter somewhere in the world.

Please cast your vote for one of the shelters. The voting will be open for a week, you should be able to vote once a day, on monday 20 June I will count the votes.... So start voting!

Vote for you favorite shelter

TEAS, UK

Sharna's Cavy Sanctuary, AUS

Het Knaaghof, NL

Eastpeckham Guinea Pig Rescue, UK

online quiz maker

Friday video: Another shelter to vote for: Knaaghof, Rijswijk, The Netherlands

Our Peaches came from de Knaaghof, in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, which is not very far from our home. We would like to give the keyboard to Peaches as the spokespig who lived there.

A photo posted by Mieke (@pandameisje) on Jun 9, 2016 at 10:51am PDT

(Peaches) Hi all, Peaches here. I was found in a patch of nature with some of my friends. We were living in the wild there and I can tell you this can be tough with all the rain, wind, cold and other animals. Luckily we were captured and taken to the Knaaghof before the winter really kicked in (Note from slave, I was adopted from the Knaaghof in November 2014). There they took good care of us and healed us if needed.
The Knaaghof, in dutch it translates to something like the 'gnaw court', is mostly populated with bunnies. Unfortunately there are way more bunnies needing a home, then guinea pigs are other rodents... But when our Roos had to leave us (my cuddle buddy), slaves contacted the Knaaghof to find us a new friend, but they only had 4 guinea pigs and all boars at that time. As we already have Berke slave looked further and eventually found Raani. So I guess the point I am trying to make is that this place has mostly rabbits and if this cause wins, the money will probably be going to rabbits mostly (which is not perse a bad thing, just want you to know this)!
We were taken good care of, the place is clean and seems organised, volunteers that work there are nice and seem knowledgeable. The bunnies have a great setup you can see that below in the video. There is a big play area in between the cages at the edges of the area. Every so much time one or more of the bunnies hatches are opened to let the bunnies in the big play area. It looked great. Us guinea pigs have sort of a big cabinet which can be divided in smaller areas. When there are not to many piggies in the shelter they will get as big a set up as possible. I had a rather big patch to myself with a house that I loved... I still love houses I have to say.
The Knaaghof is part of the Dutch Animal protection, I guess it is like the RSPCA, so they do loads of good work for animals, not just for bunnies and rodents.
The Knaaghof itself is located near a school where kids can learn about animal care, and part of their activities can involve helping out at the Knaaghof.
I hope I have given you a bit of insight into the Knaaghof, unfortunately their website is all in Dutch, so probably not very understandable for most of our readers, that I why I choose to add the video below to give you an idea of the shelter. The video has the purpose of getting more sponsors for the animals there, so it has a bit of a sad music, but it gives a rather good impression of the place!

Another shelter to consider for your vote.

Tyrion Piggyfriend here again.  When I was at Palace Piggies collecting my new friends, Slave asked the girls if they knew of another worthy shelter for whom you could vote. They told us about East Peckham Guinea Pig Rescue, who helped them in a recent rescue of over 300 piggies. They told us about a lady who had dementia and insisted on putting all her piggies together regardless of sex and the resulting explosion of piggies needed all the help that they could get. They were all collected and distributed amongst any rescue that could help.

Palace Piggies and East Peckham have many pregnant piggies because of this.

East Peckham have a Facebook page, which you can look at.

https://www.facebook.com/eastpeckhamguineapigrescuepage/

And here is their web page.

http://eastpeckhamguineapigrescue.weebly.com/

They have a news page and here is a link to one page that tells a bit about this huge rescue from Bracknell. The poor piggies were just packed into various crates and boxes for collection and you can see a few pigtures of the victims here.

http://eastpeckhamguineapigrescue.weebly.com/10042016-bracknell-part2.html

I think that my new friends might have been part of this rescue but there were piggies everywhere. The rescues were overwhelmed by this piggy disaster and whomever you decide to vote for, anywhere in the world, will welcome the profit from our card game sale.

Kindergarten Agents. New agents in training

Tyrion Piggyfriend here. Readers of the GPDD will know that my dear friend, Gandalf aka Agent Wizard, passed away recently. I am not an Agent but was Gandalf's right paw pig and helped write up his reports as well as taking care of the other Piggyfriends when all the Agents are away on missions.

Gandalf looked after me when I arrived here as a tiny piglet so I was very lonely without him and our Slave decided to find me a new friend.

GPDDers can skip to the pigtures here as they know the story.

Slave took me to Palace Piggies as they had recently rescued over 300 piggies from a very sad situation and Slave felt sure that there would be a friend waiting for me there.

She found a little black and tan fuzzy babe whom she thought that I might like and we were introduced in the Palace Piggies playpen. This tiny babe ran around the pen and then settled down for a nap under my coat so we were ready to come home with him. Then Lynn and Liz, who run Palace Piggies, suggested that this babe might need a tiny friend to play with. Now our Slave has never wanted to have a trio of boars as it is rare for them to get on - we often have groups of sows but not boars - but against her better judgment, she went back to the adoption shed and came back with another babe - a tiny red ball of fuzz, who also ran around the playpen and settled down next to me. So, Slave agreed to take both the babes. Lynn and Liz said that she could always bring one back if a trio did not work out but anyone who knows our Slave will also know that she could never do that.

Now to the pigtures.....

Here we are in the carrier waiting to come home. The babes were named at Palace Piggies.You can just see Ivan, the black and tan one at the back and Magnus, the red one, is nearer the front. They both sat nicely beside me in the car coming back and we nibbled veggies.

When we got home, Slave put the babes into a tub to take this pigture. I think that Slave was persuaded to take the extra piggy as he looks very much like her Rolo from years ago - before there were any piggy Agents. She loves a red pig.

Here we are in what was Gandalf's and my pen just after we got home.

Here you can see how tiny Ivan is!

And here I am with Magnus, who is just a little bit bigger.

This is the last pigure - all of us together enjoying some grass.

Neither of the little boars shows any sign of dominance. We are all getting on well together at the moment but Slave is keeping a watchful eye out for when they grow. I miss Gandalf ( so does our Slave ) but these little fellows are keeping me company whilst I teach them how to be Agents when they get bigger. They have a lot of growing to do.

When we were at Palace Piggies, Slave asked Lynn and Liz if they knew of a worthy piggy rescue that I could nominate for the proceeds of the sale of our card game. We cannot nominate Palace Piggies as they were the winners a couple of years ago. I'll tell you who they suggested in my next post.