Unfortunately we lost Sophie-Mo tonight at about 11:15pm. She suffered very little. She will be sorely missed.

News.

The Re-homing.

I found someone who wants to adopt all four of the pigs. She is an hour and a half away and we're driving to meet her tomorrow.

Sophie-Mo.

Mo's health has been on a slow but steady decline. A recent trip to the vet revealed that it's due to old age. She currently weighs in at a frail 1lb 4oz, which is less than she has ever weighed. When I got her in '07 she was around 2lbs, before she started losing weight she was around 1lb 9oz.

This morning just as I was leaving for work I saw Livvy, Tasha and Rocky all gathered around the food dish eating their breakfast. My white fluff was nowhere to be seen. Oh no.

She was laying under the hay rack, not interested in food at all. My poor lady. I eventually was able to convince her that pellets were delicious and this evening when I got home, I made her some home-made Critical Care mash with Sweet Meadow pellets, endive, maroon carrots, organic blueberries,[all of her faves] and a tiny bit of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar. She is currently chowing down, but still not doing great.

Wordless Wednesday featuring Ferdinand

Oh deary me.

Usually when I haven't written in a while, I make some comment about what a bad blogger I am or how things have changed drastically.

They have. I am having to do something I never thought I'd have to do.

I have to say good-bye to half of my herd.

Yes, it's true. I feel like a terrible pet owner but the truth is, I should probably have done this a long time ago, when they were younger. It would have been much easier on all parties involved.

There are several reasons why I need to do this.

1.] I am allergic to them. And not just a little. Sneezing, runny nose, itchy mouth/eyes, watery eyes, etc. are not just symptoms I get when I touch one of them, pick them up or hold them. I have them all the time. I have been miserable since we moved out of the yellow house in the beginning of February. I am also allergic to the hay, but not as bad.

2.] I don't have the space. I've had to split them up and most of them are living in pet store cages. No one is in an adequately sized cage right now. This makes changing their cages even worse because that's when I start sneezing horrendously and the mucous starts a-flowin'. Having to go through that once is bad enough, but having to go through it five times is a nightmare. I take allergy medication on the day that I change their cages, which helps a little, but not much.

3.] I am physically not able to care for all of them. I was supposed to have a surgery on my ankle to remove built-up scar tissue from an old injury. I have been delaying it for over a year due to lack of insurance. It has been slowly getting more and more painful to walk. I cannot take pain medication for it, as even the strongest of doses does just about nothing. Every time I have to change their water, feed them, play with them, etc. I have to go up and down a flight of stairs, which is very difficult for me. I don't know when I will have the surgery but even after that I won't be able to walk for about a month.

4.] None of this will change any time soon. I am not able to care for all of my cavies, and I am not doing right by them keeping them in their current conditions. Sophie-Mo, Rocky, Natasha, and Olive will be staying with me and I hope to get a good-sized cage built for them as soon as I can, and get them back on fleece, which should help.

You can see their Guinea Pig Home page here.

What's Going On?!

Hi Everyone!

Life is busy these days in the yellow house. Some big decisions are being made, some big paychecks are being earned, and some big time-budget cuts are being made.

Rocky.

It looks like Rocky is a keeper. He is very old, that's for sure. He's probably lived his whole life alone, and lord knows how long he's been dealing with this impaction problem, but even with a big cage, a HAFF [Hay and Fresh Foods] diet and regular cleanings, I have to "squeeze" him at least once daily. My vet said that neutering him would have little if any effect on his chronic impactions. He is obviously uncomfortable, and I just want him to be comfortable and happy for the rest of his life.

Because I don't have the money right now to get Laika and Ferdie spayed, and because I'm not sure if I even really want to put them through that procedure unless absolutely necessary, AND because I do not want to mess up the "dynamic" of the sows' cage, I have decided that I am going to adopt a buddy for Rocky. Probably an older male (3-4). I would love a Peruvian if I had the choice.

Rocky's QT period is over, his URI has subsided and his infected rump is growing fur. He is moving into the girls' room for now, And I will work on building him a C&C cage and getting him a buddy within the next month.

Winnie and Milo.

Winston and Milo are doing very well at my mother's daycare. I call them my "satellite" pigs. The kids love them and are learning a lot and my mom is warming up to them. I will get some photos and do a special write-up about my take on guinea pigs in day cares, classrooms, and children's rooms someday soon.

Much-needed update

Sorry for missing our fourth Social Sunday, folks. I was busy wondering why my bed was made of diced chicken and getting angry at Neptune for stealing my bathwater. Ehm.. I had a 103F fever.

Unfortunately, things are not well in the cavy world. Sophie-Mo has been getting bullied relentlessly by Laika. She has lost a bit of weight and just today I discovered a bald spot on her from where Laika has been pulling her hair out. We have run into this problem before, but never to this extent. I feel awful for not noticing this sooner, but Sophie is recovering quickly. I put her in a separate pen for 3-4 hours a couple of times a day so she can rest and have all she wants to eat. While I am at work I leave Mo with the herd and put Laika separate, to be sure that Mo isn't getting stressed by being away from them for so long. I am going to get her to the vet to be sure that she hasn't developed any health problems because of this.

I'm not crazy about splitting anyone up but if I absolutely must, I think that Mo, Olive, Winston and Milo will get along just fine, and Natasha sure as sugar doesn't put up with any

of Laika's crap, so she, Laika and Ferdie would be fine in a trio. The next time I clean cages I will try this setup. A 2x3 is not suitable for three girls long-term but it won't hurt for a couple of days or so, so I can see if it'll work between the boys and Livvy and Sophie.

That's what's happening in my neck of the woods. After a couple of doses of rice-water and honey, my fever/nausea/vomiting/headachey/hallucinationey-ness subsided. Hooray for natural remedies!

By the way, fi any of you have questions you'd like to submit for Social Sundays in the future, you can submit them here or at any Social Sunday post. They don't necessarily need to be about guinea pigs, the idea is to get to know each other a little better. I would like most of our Social Sundays to be about piggies though, because that is why we're all here, after all.

Introductions: Laika, Ferdie and Winston

The youngest of my herd have told me that they would like to be introduced to you all. So here we go. Ferdie, short for Ferdinand because for the first couple of weeks of her life, I thought she was a boy, Winston, and Laika are Natasha and Milo's three offspring. They will be celebrating their first birthday this year on August 13th, 2010. Two days before my birthday.

When the babies were born, I was living with a coworker due to issues I had with my roommates, one of whom is now serving some much-deserved hard time. My cavies were all living with my mother. I got a call very early the morning of the 13th and raced right over to see my tiny new family members.

Baby guinea pigs are different than the babies of most other small mammals, including rabbits, because they are born "ready to run." They are fully furred, eyes open, nails grown, can eat hay, pellets, greens... They are miniature, weightless cavies with big huge eyes.

Basically, they are the cutest thing in the entire world. Ever. Seriously.

Since that day, my caller ID photo for my mom has been a photo of her with Winston in her shirt pocket.

When I rented a room in September, the pigs had to live in less-than-ideal spaces. Milo and Winston got paired up and stuck in a 2x2-grid space, next door to Sophie, Natasha and Ferdie in a 2x3 and Livvy and Laika in a 2x2. I didn't have the girls all living together at this point because I was still unsure about Ferdinand's gender, so I didn't want to put her in a cage with anyone who wasn't spayed. This went on for four months, though it felt like eight, and it was no picnic for any of the parties involved. When we moved into the yellow house in mid-November, One of the first things I did was set up properly-sized cages for everyone, and let all my girls live together. I planned and planned and planned for a free-range room for everyone, and I am finally getting there.

I love Laika, Ferdie and Winnie very very much. Their birth was accidental and their parents and grandparents were both siblings. There grandparents were conceived in a pet store. So they are quite inbred. While this is common for many small animals, cavies included, I am still lucky that none of them were stillborn or lethals, there were no birthing complications and that Natasha did not reject any of them.

If you have any questions about these three, you're more than welcome to comment. I couldn't think of much to write about them.

Introduction: Sophie-Mo

Greetings, readers! I hope you all are having as wonderful a day as I am.

The sun is shining, it's warm out but not freakishly so, and I have a houseful of things that love me.

I would like you all to meet my Sophie-Mo.

Of all of the creatures that I have had the good fortune of knowing in my years, Sophie-Mo is the sweetest, gentlest being that I have ever crossed paths with. Over the years she has just gotten sweeter, and more wise and humble. Whenever I see her, pick her up, or even when I just hear her wheeking, I can't help but smile. How did I come to share my life with this loving little spirit? A little bit of luck, and a lot of chance.

In the spring of 2008, I was Bundergrounding [to transport a bunny from place to place via a chain of pick-up/drop-off points, usually involving multiple rescuers] a feisty little lionhead bun from the Stevens-Swan Humane Society in Utica, NY to my hometown of Syracuse. At the time, I'd been trying to adopt a pair of guinea pigs for a little under a year and had basically given up hope. The first thing I did when I got to Utica was to get very lost. Then I finally found my way to the shelter.

Upon walking in, the first thing I noticed was all of the guinea pigs! They had at least 6 [two to a cage] in the little foyer. I retrieved the bunny--whose name was Fufu--and while I was signing him out, asked the woman at the desk how much the adoption fee for the guinea pigs was. "You want one? Oh, you can just have them. They've been here so long." I went over to check out a pair of texels that were very cute, but skiddish as all get-out. After a few moments, I decided on the pair that was against the back wall, a fluffy white pig and a tri-color covered in cowlicks. Their names were Mo and Sapphire.

Driving home, I just couldn't stop looking at them. I couldn't believe it. Guinea pigs were in my car. They were coming home to me, to stay and live with me. I decided to name them Olive and Sophie, but almost immediately started calling Sophie "Sophie-Mo," Because both names fit her very well.

Sophie and Olive were my very first guinea pigs and I'm happy to say, two years later, they're still with me. At first we thought that they were sisters, but these days I'm not so sure. Most guinea pigs don't really show that they're aging, but Sophie-Mo has certainly slowed down. We have had her checked for heard disease, but the results were inconclusive.

As many of you know, Sophie-Mo [and Olive and Natasha] got pregnant in the summer of 2009. When Olive was less than two weeks to term, and Sophie about three, I had to make a very difficult decision. I knew that if I just let them have the babies, someone would die--whether it was the mothers or the babies, it would be impossible to tell in advance. Sophie and Olive were two years old, at least, and had never birthed before. But an emergency spay could lose all of them as well.

I took all three girls, heavy with young, to my vet to get her opinion. She seemed very confident that they would survive the surgery. So with a very heavy heart, I kissed my two girls good-bye, wished my vet and them the best of luck, and headed home with one very pregnant Natasha. I called off of work that day, explaining to my boss that two of my friends were fighting for their lives and I could focus on nothing else. I'm lucky it was Scott.

Dr. Roach had promised to call me once the surgery was done, and at 6:30pm I was starting to get anxious. I called the hospital and explained that I'd dropped my two cavies off that morning for emergency surgery that morning, and just needed to know that they were okay. "Oh, Amy! Yes, they're fine! I'm so sorry for not calling you sooner--Olive's babies are still alive.. they're not doing too great but all the vet techs are doing their best to keep them going. They're such little dears. You can pick your pigs up tomorrow morning, honey, I'll call and let you know how the babies made out when my shift ends at 9, okay?" The woman on the phone was a nurse whose name I can never remember to this day, but she [and pretty much everyone else in that hospital] absolutely loves me and my pigs and bunnies. It turned out that the babies didn't make it, they had barely any fur and a necropsy showed that their lungs were under-developed. They would have had very hard lives.

My girls' impregnation was a complete accident, and I in no way promote breeding of guinea pigs as '"education for the kids," or for any other reason, but there's no denying that some creatures are just born to be mothers. I saw how proud and confident it made my Natasha. And I can't help but be a little sad that Sophie-Mo didn't get to raise her babies. Being with Tasha's babies gave her such joy, you could just see it in her eyes.

I could write novels about what a wonderful and caring soul my fluffy white girl is. But if I don't get up and do the girls' laundry, I will have five very disgruntled sows on my hands. So, I'll be going now. That is the story of my little Sophie-Mo. I am grateful for every day that I get to wake up and share my life with these seven guinea pigs and two rabbits. And you folks. Please do have a wonderful evening.

Introductions: Natasha

Natasha, for whom this blog is named, would be my favorite guinea pig if I had favorites. She was born in March of 2009 as part of an accidental litter. I adopted her and Maybel, her sister, in April '09. Since then she has practically been my sidekick.

In the summer of '09, I ran into a fair bit of housing trouble. I had to move my herd of 4, and all of my other animals, in with my mother for a while. I traveled to Dallas, TX, where I canvassed for Texas Campaign for the Environment for three weeks, as a training exercise for my job as a Field Manager with Citizens Campaign for the Environment. When I returned, I noticed that three of my guinea pigs were very, very fat. And the fourth had a look of guilty pleasure about him. That's right, Maybel was a boy. He developed very late and I was not around to notice it.

Natasha spent the next two weeks getting all the special treatment she wanted from me. She got all the good treats, I took the bus at 5am from my apartment across town to see her, she got all the lap time a girl could want (Tasha is quite the lap pig, especially when she was preggers). A few days before I had to leave for Columbus, OH, Tasha gave birth to three beautiful pups: Laika and Ferdinand [female] and Winston [male]. All were happy, healthy and tiny; baby guinea pigs may be the cutest things on the planet. There is nothing like holding a two-hour-old cavy in your hand. The weight of a creme puff, I tell you.

Since becoming a mother, Natasha went from being the shy, quiet pig who faded into the background to the cornerstone of my sow herd. She is the one pig whom everyone likes.

She has been known to restore peace, protect Sophie--who is at the bottom of the pecking order--from Laika--the boss--and she is always the first one to start wheeking when it is mealtime.

As for Tasha's markings, they are quite unique among guinea pigs. I have yet to see another pig quite like her. When I adopted her, she'd been called "Snickers", which does fit her coloring quite well. But the moment I saw her, I knew she was my little Natasha.