Friday, October 10, 2014

Friday Video: when JoeJoe the Capybara meets Puppies

Today we have a suggestion from Pat and the Prairy Pigs (thank you Pat!). She sent us a video with JoeJoe the Capybara and puppies. Since we found lots more video's from JoeJoe with puppies and we couldn't choose. We've decided to post them all. Hope you won't mind ;-)


Puppy play time


Trying to nap with puppies



JoeJoe loves puppies


Joe Joe and puppies

Have a nice Wheekend!

Thursday, October 9, 2014

Daisy had a bladderstone :(

Hi all,

Unfortunately we found out our Daisy was ill, this is her story.

We noticed her weight dropped 200 grammes in only a month, and she was wet underneath. So I
suspected cystitis. We tried her on one of Peter gurney's remedies of barley water. But after a few days it was clear to me that wasn't helping enough...
So of to the vet it was. She confirmed my theory of Daisy having cystitis, but she was also doubting a bit if maybe she had a bladder stone, as she thought she could feel something in the bladder area..
We tried antibiotics and a painkiller for almost a week, but Daisy was not really improving.

So back to the vet to see if she did indeed have a bladderstone. This vet gave the same diagnosis: cystitis and she could feel something in her bladder. So I came back in the next day (this was last friday) to have her x-rayed (I had the last appointment the day before) and see if she really
had a dreaded stone.
So I got a call later that day saying she could see 2 things on the x-ray.
2 things? I did not like that...
The first thing was she indeed had a bladder stone, and it was to big to flush it out. The second thing was that she had a huge amount of something in her tummy... it looked like have her belly cavity, and the vet suspected a huge ovarian cyst... She had to puncture these first before she would do an operation to get the stone out. As it took up so much space, it would very likely be in the way for the removal of the stone. We agreed to get the liquid out of the ovarian cyst and then have the vet remove the stone.

Daisy's x-ray, the stone is clearly visible on the top photo.
In the bottom photo you see almost have of her tummy looks dark..


After some time I got a call again, the operation went well, the stone was removed (and about 1 cm in diameter). And she did not find an ovarian cyst.
When puncturing all that came out was air... apparently the huge bubble that showed up on the x-ray was air. The theory was that it was in her appendix that contained all the air, and as she was in pain, she inhaled a lot of air... (Anyone ever heard of this?)
However, she was having a lot of problems recovering and waking up, she started bleeding from her bladder, and it was not getting less so far....
She could put Daisy under again and see if she could fix it, but she was very hesitant to do that, as giving her that extra anesthetic the vet was afraid would give Daisy that last push to cross the bridge...
So she suggested we wait for her body to fix this...
I asked if I could come and see her... and a little bit later I was there.

Daisy was not looking good, cramping a lot because of the pain (she did have painkiller of course, but she was obviously still in a lot of pain) and her lower half was all bloody...
After about an hour the cramping became less, and the bloodflow seemed to almost halt. After a while her temperature was getting back to normal, so the heating in her intensive care unit was turned off.
About an hour later, she seemed to have improved even more, and she seemed more alert, and at some point I think she even tried to nibble the fleece she was on. This is a typical thing Daisy would so in a healthy state. She also moved around a bit more.
At that point I had already spend some hours watching her and they said I could go home, eat something and then get back in 2 hours to pick her up, if she seemed good enough.
And luckily we were allowed to take her home! At that time it was 7 in the evening. So it was a pretty tiring day for me.

Daisy back home, and picture of her stone,
the bottle is one of those small 10 ml medicine bottles

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Daisy :'(

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 BĂ©rke

Thursday, October 2, 2014

Preparation for Calendar 2015 and new topic: Piggie breeds?

Hi all,

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

I used this video for some inspiration

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

September piggies of the month: Anya, Boomer & Dargo

Hi all,

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