Happy St. Patrick's Day!

 On behalf of all the Piggyfriends, Rafael is here to wish everyone a very happy St. Patrick's Day.

Orla was going to be in our photo this year as Slave's pendant would have showed up well on her bright, white coat but I was picked up to have my nails trimmed and, as Slave had her camera at the ready, I became the...er.. victim. Not that I minded as I was rewarded with a carrot for being a good boy.

Please join us in raising a glass on this special occasion....

.......filled with fresh, green grass of course.

                                                   Slainte! Cheers! Good Health to you all!

The Prairie Pigs Light Our Candle

 Here is Attila, standing guard over our Peter Gurney Memorial Candle.  So many piggies and friends of piggies now at the Rainbow Bridge to think about!  We spent a quiet hour watching our candle and remembering.  Thanks to Cindy, Audrey, Oliver, Scottie and Coke for organizing this event each year.

Candle Lighting at the Piggyfriends

Some piggies do not behave very well on what should be a solemn occasion.  We wanted to use Peaches this year, as she is the very image of the piggy on Peter's book, but first of all she tried to light her whiskers on fire.

Then she was more interested in the boars in the pen behind her, but it does make an amusing out-take!

We can always rely on Bella to pose nicely for a photo, so here she is showing how it is done.

In memory of our dear friend Peter, who loved piggies as much as we all do!

We Lit a Candle in Swannanoa, North Carolina

Ceilidh, Shannon and some small friends wish Peter Gurney a Happy Birthday from Swannanoa, North Carolina, U.S.A.

 

On March 9th, We Remember Peter Gurney

                                        

 Oliver here!  I am one of the organizers of the Peter Gurney Memorial 

Candle Lighting, which takes place on March 9th.

The Guinea Pigs' Daily Digest has held this event every year since Mr. Gurney passed away in 2006.  It's a time to remember and celebrate guinea pig advocate Mr. Gurney, as well as other friends and loved ones who have gone to the Rainbow Bridge, whether they were human, furred, feathered or finned.

We hope you can join us!  All you have to do is light a candle (which can be real, virtual or electric) at 

8 p.m., wherever you are, and keep it lit for an hour if possible.  At 9 p.m. your time, others in 

the next time zone will light their own candles and in this way, our little light travels around the world.

You don't have to be a member of the GPDD to participate.  Just let us know where you lit your candle (please include city or town, state or province and country) so we can include you in our list of locations. (No personal names will be listed.). You can do this by sending a note to PG_Memorial@gpdd.org (http://gpdd.org).  

We hope you will help us shine our light around the world --- thanks! 

On Valentine's Day, We Are SMITTEN!

First we'd like to wish everyone a very Happy Valentine's Day! 

Second, and of utmost importance, we received quite a lovely note from Charlotte and Emily of the Prairie Pigs, asking us to be their Valentines!  We happily accepted.  This is the letter we sent back to 

Charlotte and Emily: 

"Dear Charlotte and Emily,

We have never received a Valentine letter before <blush>, and we hope you will forgive our tardiness in answering. We have spent much of our time popcorning in happiness and reading your note over and over.  "Just once more!" one of us will say.  Please take our delay as a tribute to your lovely words.  We can only hope to come close to your eloquence.

In short, our answer is a very happy "YES!"  We would be very honoured to be your Valentines.  You are beautiful, thoughtful and smart ladies, and we admit we have awakened our parents at night a few times as we sighed in admiration at your photos.

You have most definitely captured our hearts, which we freely give to you!

LOVE and KISSES, and FOREVER YOURS!!!

OXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX

💗💗💗Scottie and Coke💗💗💗"

(We wanted to put exclamation marks after every sentence but tried not to. )

Having seen their photos, we asked our mom to print them out so we could admire them night and day. Then we asked our mom to take our photos with theirs.

We decorated their photos with hearts. Emily is on the left, and Charlotte is on the right. (I, Scottie, must note that Charlotte and I look quite alike, and somehow it turned out that we are in similar poses.)

I, Coke, admire Emily's coloration and think she has excellent taste in veggies.

We send love and kisses!

We also wrote a poem for you:

Ladies, thank you for your Valentine's note.
We appreciate everything you wrote.
Your thoughts are better than any treat.
You are the true definition of sweet!

Love is in the Air in the Frozen North

 I should have known something was up!  At the beginning of January, Emily and Charlotte began to ask whether or not we could do a Valentine's Day post for the blog this year.  It seemed a little early for that so I just told them we could think about it a bit later, but they seemed to be very impatient about waiting for an answer.  

Soon after that, I noticed that when I got up in the morning, sometimes things seemed to be moved around on my computer desk, as if someone very small was trying to find a way of boosting themselves up to use the keyboard --- who could that be, and why?

Then --- this!!! One morning I came downstairs and surprised little Emily, who appeared to be guiltily admiring Cindy's piggy Coke on the computer!  Oh my goodness, what was going on?  I decided I had better pay closer attention to what those little girlies were up to.  Teenage guinea pigs are like teenagers of any species, after all --- they do sometimes get these romantic notions into their little heads.  

Then I was cleaning cages a few days later and decided to sweep out the very furthest back corner of the girlies' cage --- what on earth???  Where did that poster of Scottie come from, and could that be my sweet, innocent little Charlotte casting such amorous glances at it?  (I hadn't noticed before, but they do look a bit alike, don't they?  Maybe that match was just meant to be!)

Even more shocking was the piece of paper I found folded up very small and hidden under a pile of hay at the back of their pigloo.  Yes, it was a love letter from my little girl piggies to Scottie and Coke!!!

"Dear Scottie and Coke,

We have a very important question to ask:  will you be our Valentines???  We have seen your pigtures on the blog, and we think you are sooo handsome and intelligent.  We printed out some of our favourite photos of you so we could look at them secretly and we even had a few enlarged into posters.  There are some rude and boorish boars living in our immediate vicinity and we don't want them to know!  They think rattling the bars of our cage and honking at us will make us love them, but they are wrong!  Our hearts belong to YOU!!!  We hope you feel the same way.

LOVE and KISSES,

XOXOXOXOXO

💖💖💖💖Charlotte and Emily💖💖💖💖"

Of course, I immediately sent a message to Cindy so we could put our heads together and come up with a plan, only to discover it was already too late.  The girlies had figured out how to send their message and Cindy had just discovered that her boys had already responded; their message to the girls was on its way at that very moment.  It seemed as if we could no longer stand in the way of True Love, which had already triumphed over cage bars and thousands of miles of separation.

So, my little girls are getting their Valentine's Day post after all.  Perhaps they are old enough for boyfriends, at least long-distance ones, and I know their hearts are in the best of hands (er...paws) with Scottie and Coke.  Happy Valentine's Day from Emily, Charlotte and all of the Prairie Pigs (with special love going out to two handsome boars far, far away)!