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.
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."
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...
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.
We were going to post this earlier but we wanted you to have plenty of time to meet new Guinygirl, Linn.
Slave's eldest son, our pigsitter, came to stay with us at Christmas and he gave her this calendar. It is full of lovely pigtures and is hanging where we can all see the pig of the month.
He also gave her this little book.
It is the next in the series of classic stories adapted by Bloomsbury Publishing to feature guinea pigs in the starring roles. This one is the piggy version of the Nutcracker ballet. We all know how graceful piggies are don't we? Don't we........? Say yes everyone.
We particularly love the Sugar Plum Fairy pictured above. Slave always calls us her little sugar plums and we thought that this was appropriate.
And here is the handsome Nutcracker prince. We hope that Bloomsbury do not mind us sharing these photos especially as they might encourage our readers to go out and buy a copy.
Hi everyone,
My name is Linn! I am a little over a year old.
My previous owners brought me to an animal shelter after my friends went over the rainbow bridge.
The animal shelter I came from is the 'dierenbescherming' slave thinks this is like the english RSPCA (=Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). There was one lone piggy in the shelter, the others already had friends, that was me, I am glad Cookie and Binky liked me enough to take me home with them.
You probably already know my new friends, Cookie and Binky. Unfortunately they had to say goodbye to their friend Raani just before halloween, she had a saddle back and quite some bladder stones in the 3,5 years of her life.
I really like my new boar friend Binky, we love to lie next to each other in the cage. He is very big compared to me... Here we are sharing a leaf of endive (just before I ran of with his leaf again ;)
Though big, he and Cookie did loose weight since they meet me, I think all that running after me has made them more active.
I am a very vocal piggy, which slave Mikey likes a lot. Raani was also a little chatterbox at times, so she is happy I am a chatterbox as well.
At first I was rather afraid of taking veggies from the slaves. But the others always run up to the front of their cage, so I had to see what they were doing. I came here on 7 December 2019, and I now come to get my piece of veg, though occasionally I will steal a piece from the others. Slaves are sure I know my name, because when they call it out they can see me reacting. So after a week or so I learned when they are calling my name it means they have a piece of vegetable waiting for me. By now I have also learned that pills are okay, they others were so enthusiastic so I just had to try that. Slaves are glad I take the pills now, they say it will come in handy when I actually need pills, not sure what they mean by that...
I am not the best of friends with Cookie (yet), but she tolerates me most of the time. I do know she is safer then whatever is outside the cage and I tend to hide behind her or Binky whenever we get spooked by anything.
By now slave Mikey is pretty confident we get along well enough, ever since she found the three of us in and under our new hammock like this...
This was taken half an hour after the one above, we were still in the hammock. Cookie is with her back to us in the first pigture, if you can browse (press >) to the second pigture, you can see she was enjoying a bit of sunshine. Mom thinks Cookie might think she is a cat...
