Just to let you know: we found Daisy had crossed the bridge early on last monday morning... I am devastated as she was doing so well on saturday after a bladder stone surgery on friday. \Her belly was really swollen,
we suspect her bowels were punctured when trying to get air out with a
needle... that caused fluids/air to leak in to her belly cavity and madeher belly make sloshing sounds...
The vet's assistant punctured her swollen belly when I took her body in on mondag, and said only blood was coming out. She suspects she had an internal bleeding.
She was pretty certain whatever it was that they could not have done much
about it, and she was impressed we got her through the weekend at all...
Hug all your piggies from me!
Mieke, Erwin and the remaining Woopy (almost 6,5!), Roos and Berke
P.S. I will post what happened in the upcoming days... (If you are on the GPDD you probably already read it...)
This is Daisy with her boyfriend Agent Zeppelin, they met when we drove south to get Bérke
As it is already October, it is time to start gathering photos again for the calendar of 2015.
As always I will collect photos of your guinea pigs. By sending me the pigtures you allow us to use it in the calendar, and on the blog for calendar related posts.
The proceedings will be donated to a guinea pig shelter somewhere in the world, which you can nominate and vote for.
This year I would like to try a slightly different format. Before, we let people send in pigtures of their piggies, and every (group of) piggie(s) would get their own month.
For the upcoming year I would like to give all months a piggy breed theme: so for example one month for short/smooth-haired, one for abyssinians, one for rexes, one for US/CH teddies, one for crested, longhaired piggies and so on. I am not sure we can actually find 12 different breeds but I think we can also fill 2 months for some breeds...
Every month we can have a different breed, that will be discussed on the blog. So describing what the traits of a breed are, and other interesting information about that breed. Maybe we could also have a look at the different colorings?
For both gathering pigtures and more information about the different breeds I will need you help!
So what do you think, are we up for this?
Up to now I have always used Vistaprint for the calendars, because they have offices on all continents it seems, which reduces the shipping costs. I have not really found a better candidate yet, but if you have good suggestions for a company like Vistaprint, let me know.
So assuming we will do the next calendar is a Piggy breeds format, I made a list of what breeds I could think of. Please add a comment if you have piggies in those or other breeds and you can provide pigtures of your current or late piggies.
Happy wheeking,
Mieke
Guinea Pig Breeds (I could think of)
- Short / Smooth -haired
- Abyssinian
- Peruvian
- Rex
- US / CH Teddies
- Texel
- Alpaca
- Coronet
- Crested
- Merino
- Hairless: Skinny and Baldwin
- Ridgeback
Sorry this is so late, but unfortunately I could not get into contact with Jan who owns these gorgeous piggies, but she did give me this info when sending me their pigtures.
Enjoy!
----
Anya
Agent Name: Agent Demon Girl
Favorite Food: Carrots
Hobbies: Trying to take over the pen from Boomer
Boomer
Agent Name: Agent Athena
Favorite Food: Green Beans
Hobbies: playing in tunnels and trying to put down insurrections by Anya
Dargo
Agent Name: Agent Gentleman D
Favorite Food: Anything
Hobbies: Staying out of the way of Anya and Boomer
Gandalf says to Tyrion, " There has been a lot of noise outside today. When we have finished this snack, let's go and see what has been done."
" Ooh look, Gandalf!" exclaims Tyrion. " There are walls now and the windows have glass in them. " " It looks a lot more like a proper room now," replies Gandalf.
Just then a van pulls up and piles of mysterious
flat boxes begin to be unloaded so the boys run back to their temporary
accommodation before they are seen and tell the other piggies what they have
discovered.
The next day Dorian and Rafferty
take their turn exploring.
" Those boxes were full of tiles," says Dorian,
" and now they are on the floor."
" They are very grey and dusty," says Dorian, " but they make good camouflage for me! "
" They look black in Slave's catalogue." replies Rafferty. "I'll be able to hide amongst them when they are cleaned up."
The piggies hear another vehicle pull up outside and sneak around the garage to see what is happening. They hide behind Slave's car and see that a skip has been delivered. " Slave will be so pleased to see all the debris being taken away." they all think.
The piggies all rush to join Garnet
and see a man carrying pieces of........"What is that stuff?" they all
wonder.
" Our garden is full of windows
and bits of metal. What is it all for? " they ask each other.
"Let's all have some lunch and a
nap," says Garnet. "Yes," says Petunia, " then we can go and see what is
happening outside."
" Are you coming, Angelina?"
they all ask. " No thanks," she replies. " I'm still getting dry." The rest of
the Piggyfriends run off. " Phew!" thinks Angelina. " I avoided going outside
again."
When they all sneak outside (
minus Angelina ) they see what all the strange things are for. " Wow!" they
exclaim, " They are all parts of a new room." " I hope that man doesn't fall off
his ladder," says Garnet.
"Hey, Rafferty," says Bosworth. "As soon as we are dry,
shall we sneak outside and see what's going
on with our pigroom? Hey Rafferty! Oi!
Am I talking to the right end? I don't know.
You are as bad as Agent Zeppelin!"
"Look, Bosworth," says Rafferty. "There are men on our roof! What are they doing there?" " Ooh look! I can see the reflection of Slave's greenhouse in the window." says Bosworth.
" Those men might see our reflection too, " say the boys, " Let's hide behind that pile of bricks."
The boys peep out from behind the bricks and......... " Help! The roof has gone," says Rafferty. " And the windows too," replies Bosworth, " and that radiator is not going to be much use anymore."
" The man is using his phone, Rafferty. He won't see us if we creep back inside."
" I have eaten a lot of cucumber, Angelina.I think
that I need a nap. You should have come with me," says Florence. " I'm staying
here." replies Angelina, " It's much safer even if there is less
cucumber."
" I am going to have a look at what is going on."
says Susie.
" Come with me, Max! I've packed a pignic basket. "
" I hope that there is enough for two." replies Max.
" The man has knocked down the whole wall!" says
Susie. " Look, Max, I can see the tool shed outside." " Surely Slave must know
about this." says Max. " That could be why she moved our
homes."
"Let's sneak outside and take a photo" " Oh dear",
says Max."Look at Slave's terrace. Such a mess. Where are all of her plant pots?
Auntie Ann will be sad to see this pigture."
"Max! There's a big hole in this wall. Let's go
back inside and tell the other piggies but we'll finish our
pignic first."
Hurray! We are Piggies of the Month! You probably know who we are, but we're going to introduce ourselves anyway. We are a herd of three and we live in the Netherlands. It's a small country just between the UK and Germany. People think we eat lots of cheese and tulips, but we've never seen any of those. We live in a really big cage and we have many hobbies, including eating chicory, eating parlsey, and eating dandelions. When we're not eating, we sleep, deconstruct cardboard boxes or try to coax more food from our staff. Ow. And we're the pigs behind the Friday Video blogposts.
In the calendar you see Bo (the abby), Coco (the coronet) and Sjeuf (the sheltie). Unfortunately, Sjeuf is no longer with us. He passed away on Christmas morning, leaving us in quite a shock.
RIP Sjeuf
Coco and Bo always had a sister-like relationship. They quarreled quite a bit when Sjeuf was still alive (but when the J was not looking Bo would lovingly wash Coco's ears). But when Sjeuf passed away the quarreling got worse, so we decided that it was time to find a new boar to blame for everything.
Ties
So, after a mourning period, we went on a speed date with Ties in the Kuufke shelter. We quite fancied him and we took this tall dark and handsome man home with us. We actually dated Berke first. But WE didn't fancy him *cough* (and we're sticking to that story!). Ties is a very gentle man, and a gentleman and he tolerates almost everything. Barbering, cutting nails, baths, and all the other horrors J has in store for us. He is also extremely tall (27cm nose to tailbone) and heavy (1400 grams) which is very convenient when the girls are having a bit of a tiff. He just plunks his big body in between the girls and then they will forget what the fight was about. What is also very cool about Ties, is his resemblance with the illustrous agent Zeppelin. That hair is just awesome; our staff frequently tries to feed him veggies on the wrong end, which gives us more time to snag it away.
Bo. Always hungry.
Bo is not to be trifled with either. She came in a tiny hairy ball of energy, and nowadays she is a 1360 gr ball of energy (mainly in the butt area). Not to mention; still hairy. Regardless of her weight, she still is the fastest pig in the cage and she hold the record when it comes to eating veggies. She practically inhales the stuff. She is also very inquisitive. It may or may not be related to her love of food. But to be fair; Bo is a very adventurous girl and not afraid of anything.
Sleepy Coco
Coco had us worried this summer. It started with teeth problems, and a week after visiting the vet-dentist where she had the hooks on her molars removed, she was so weak that J had to syringe feed her. She lost a lot of weight (it went down to 750 grams) so off she went to the vet and became the most expensive pig in the Winky team history (lots of tests). The vet suspected artrosis and maybe dehydration. She actually advised us to put her down, but since miss feisty was still stealing chicory off Bo in the morning, our J wanted to give her a chance. So after an IV with fluids, a vitamin shot and armed with critical care, something to improve bowel movement and a painkiller, Coco and J came home. We're happy to report that after a week or so miss Diva was back to her old self. She still has to take the painkiller twice a day, but otherwise she is happy in between her diva tantrums, lunches and beauty sleep.
" The girls have been gone a long time," says Gandalf. " I'll go and look for them when we've finished lunch," replies Tyrion.
" You can come out now, girls" says Tyrion. "The man has gone to have his lunch. Don't stay out here too long. It's very messy."
"Ooh, He's left some tools on the floor. They look interesting. Take a photo, Lola."
" I'm hungry." says Lola. "Is that a carrot? Oh......maybe not."
" I've found a cucumber" says Florence.
" Can I share?" asks Lola.
"As you can see, Florence is busy eating right now." says Lola. " So we'll report back later. Tyrion is right. It is very messy out here. We'll be needing a bath."
Slaves visited the newly re-opened Mauritshuis a while ago.
This is a museum gallery in the Hague in the Netherlands which has many portraits of Dutch and Flemish masters from the Dutch Golden Age. Masters in painting, not per se masters to Guinea pigs ;) One of the most famous paintings there is 'The girl with the pearl earring' by Johannes Vermeer.
It was there that their friend pointed out these Guinea pigs in a painting by Brueghel and Rubens depicting 'Adam and Eve in paradise'. There are many animals surrounding Adam and Eve, two of those are Guinea pigs! Brueghel and Rubens were totally right when depicting some of our kind, of course we were there in paradise!
Being the Guinea pig enthusiast as she is our slave (@pandameisje) was tweeting that Rubens and Brueghel were absolutely right in depicting guinea pigs in paradise! With this picture attached
We were totally surprised when we got a reply of Peter Paul Rubens (the painter himself, of course he no longer lives so his account is managed by someone acting in his name)
Tweet by Peter Paul Rubens informing us Guinea pigs were his friend Jan Brueghel (the elder)'s signature creatures!
So apparently Brueghel the elder used guinea pigs quite often. Of course this made our slave curious and she did some research online.
She found an article about the first archeological find of a guinea pig in the netherlands, mentioning Brueghel using guinea pigs in his paintings. In the first painting (The garden of eden with the fall of men) the guinea pigs looked really unrealistic, which was probably because Brueghel had used a stuffed and badly mounted guinea pig. Not sure what that means, but it sounds nasty...
According to the article there were other painters from the low countries who painted guinea pigs. Both Rubens and Brueghel had acces to the menagerie of the archdukes of Brussels, where they probably saw their first live guinea pigs.
Slave also found this site which lists lots of paintings (many by Brueghel the elder) and other art works depicting guinea pigs.
Have you ever seen a painting with guinea pigs in it?
By the way, if you ever visit the Netherlands, slave says be sure to visit this museum, it is a good size and has loads of gorgeous and fairly well known paintings. And let us know if you need a piggy fix, we live in The Hague...
