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.