Guinea Piggies

1. Your Guinea Pig’s Social Life

2. In Sweden, it’s illegal to sell someone just one pig—they have to have a buddy. :)

(It’s not illegal to own one pig, though)

(Source: capntrips)

ziggiepiggies:

Hello!

Piggie nose off

amylwoodhead:

Seems like such a long time ago… It’s a baby Charlie! :’)

pinkel:

okay, pet stores will try to con you into buying things you don’t need, especially if you are new with guinea pigs. you’ll end up wasting money on unnecessary items and potentially taking your pig to the vet due to injury, dehydration, etc.

before starting, i highly suggest finding a legitimate breeder or rescue, they are less likely to have sick or pregnant pigs. plus, if you have any questions, they’re far more experienced than an employee at petsmart, they won’t trick you into buying useless shit. oh, quick story time, once i went in to peek at the piggies. the store had a guinea pig sitting under the hay rack. her eyes were crusted, slimy, and mostly shut. clearly, any employee should notice this, but they chose to keep the pig in with others? if you notice ONE sickly pig in a cage, do NOT buy any that are with it, even if they seem healthy. illnesses can take days to incubate and you could end up with a dead pig or a hefty vet bill. (not to mention, this petsmart had a little vet thing built into its store, yet it kept a sick pig in the cage? what, they couldn’t take it out and take it to the vet area to get cleaned up and taken care of? oh, of course not, that would be too much work.)

from my experience, they’ve told me to buy:

• a rabbit cage with a wire bottom
• a giant ball
• vit c drops for water 
• a harness
• small starter kit cage

i bought my first officially guinea pig back in february. i asked the lady what i should get. she told me some of those above items. i stupidly bought the cage and vit c drops.

the cage seemed big enough at the time, because elliot was just a tiny little thing. as soon as i put her in the cage, i knew it wasn’t going to be big enough. the picture on the box seemed so much bigger. petsmart refused to take the cage back since i had ‘opened’ all of the starter kit materials. (i didn’t even open the food yet, but they considered it used.)

i asked them what they’re biggest cage measurements were and all they could offer was a slightly larger rabbit starter kit around $70? pfft. i had to do a lot of searching around to buy a brand new cage. i think i wasted about $60 on the starter kit (somewhere around that range, anyway). the new cage i bought was from a family owned pet store. the cage was HUUUGE and only $42.

elliot hardly drank water, but i figured she just wasn’t a huge drinker. i did some research only to discover vit c drops disintegrate quickly and they make the water taste disgusting, so piggies completely avoid their water. who can blame em, would you wanna drink that water? (rule of thumb- if you wouldn’t eat or drink it, don’t feed it to your pig. excluding pellets of course~)

when i got my second piggy back in august, the worker told me to buy a rabbit cage. “it’s the same thing,” she tried telling me. i simply asked her if her store held larger cages than the starter kit, because that cage is far too small. she pointed to the wire bottomed rabbit cage. really? were you trained at all? i told her it isn’t good for their toes or feet, considering they’re really small and can get caught.

before the cage ordeal, she told me, “i’ll put your guinea pig at the register, would you be interested in a harness or large play ball? it’s really fun for them.”

i was just like lol bitch really. i told her no thanks and those were unsafe as well, she sort of looked at me, agreed, smirked, and walked off. 

long story short, guinea pigs need vitamin c, but try to give them fresh veggies and vit c enriched pellets instead of water drops. besides, those drops are expensive. i believe $8 for a tiny bottle? no thanks.

http://www.guineapigcages.com/forum/diet-nutrition/22156-read-me-guinea-pig-nutrition-charts-poisonous-plants-list.html#post254730 guinea pig nutrition.

don’t buy balls or harnesses. sure, you may have used them before and nothing bad happened, but is it worth the risk? their spines are curved in a way they cannot straighten them or bend in certain directions and they aren’t very flexible like other rodents. they can dislocate, compress, or break their spine. so tell me, you still wanna walk them in their harness or plop them in a running ball?

http://www.rodentswithattitude.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=5015

oh, and don’t buy cat/small pet nail clippers from petsmart. i dunno, i find them harder to use than inexpensive toe naill clippers from target or walmart. i think it’s easier to judge where you’re clipping as well, since you’re trying to avoid clipping the kwik, you can see right where you’re going to cut.

yaaaaaaay be smart, but not petsmart ‘smart?’

… :3

PS DON’T BUY HARNESSES AND SHIT, man, give your piggy’s spine some lovin’, don’t stress it out.

DISCLAIMER i don’t need to hear you work at petsmart and you never do that and you’re trained and petsmart cares about their pets and i don’t know what i’m talking about wah. hoorah, you’re a special snowflake of the business and you actually know what to do with animals. go teach your fellow workmates what you know.

(via meerschweinchen)

(Source: clumsy-odd-stubborn)