The Herd Gathers

Okay, as this is my first posting to this blog, let me first introduce myself.  My name is Mark and I'm the husband of a recently Guinea Pig obsessed wife, Cris.  Well, perhaps 'obsessed' is a tad over-dramatic but her love of these small and furry creatures is certainly up there near the top-end.  I wanted to write a blog to convey her experiences of keeping what I believe are affectionately called 'piggies', herewith referring to as 'GPs' for the sake of avoiding Repetitive Stress Injury.  She is writing her own account of the pleasures and problems of our new family members but I thought a proxy post would perhaps provide another angle on things.

We started off a couple of years ago by buying a couple of GPs for my eldest daugher on her 5th birthday.  Connor (a British Crested) and Sam (a Dutch).  They've since been very happy living in our garden which they explore during the day before being put away at night.  Recently though Cris thought that more GPs might be a nice birthday present for herself.  Off we went to Pets At Home to see if they had anything of interest...and we weren't disappointed.  After much deliberation, we came away with Patch (an Abysinnian) and Spot (a Smooth Coat), who were all about ten-weeks old.  We'd previously read that it was possible to introduce younger GPs to older pigs but not the other way round and, thankfully, there weren't any issues when we introduced the new members of the growing herd, who are all male by the way.  But, the acquisition process wasn't quite finished there; the family didn't seem quite complete so, the very next day, we headed back to Pets At Home and picked up 'Butch', another Smooth Coat.  Now, five GPs seem like quite a nice little group so that they've got enough company and none of them could ever be called 'lonely'.  However, the story doesn't quite end there.

As a responsible pet owner, Cris had been buying books on how to properly look after her new charges and one of the pictures in the book showed a Peruvian.  After I'd mopped-up the drool from the floor, the hunt was on for a Peruvian.  Except, finding one of these lovely looking creatures is rather difficult if you limit your searches to the traditional pet stores.  We searched on-line but, initially, didn't find anyone locally who actually had one but my, ever resourceful wife, did find a breeder in Biggleswade who had two male long-haired GPs, about five-weeks old, listed on her website.  The car keys were retrieved and the family packed up for the short trip up the A1.  We made the return trip with two new members of the family, Sheldon (a Sheltie) and Leonard (a Coronet) who were introduced and immediately accepted by the others.  I should add at this point that over-crowding was not an issue.  Since buying the new additions, Cris had purchased a two-storey hutch to compliment the existing hutch that Connor and Sam had been using before the influx of refugees.

I'm sure you can imagine that, although still very young, this number of mouths require more food than the two we initially started with.  It was during one particular visit to the pet store for a purchase of provisions that Cris' eyes settled upon the Holy Grail.  There, in the adoption centre, was a Peruvian that had just come in.  Sitting nestled-up to the Peruvian, was another Abyssinian who had also come from the original owner.  After chatting to one of the staff members it was discovered that they ran a 48-hour quarantine policy so we'd have to go back in a couple of days and pick them both up (well, we couldn't separate them now, could we?).  Both Cris and I have full-time jobs so we were sure that, by the time we could get back to the store in the evening, they would both have been given a new home.  However, we got extremely lucky and although I wandered into the store, expecting the worst, I walked out with another box containing Jeeves (the Peruvian) and Wooster (the Abyssinian).

The family is now complete, or so I'm assured.  All NINE 'piggies' have a loving new home and get spoilt something rotten.  Another reason for writing this blog is that I feel I'm going to have plenty of stories to share with you all over the coming months and years.  Each of the herd has their own distinctive personality and even I have my particular favourites.  I'll probably write more of a description of the individual members and describe some of the situations they find themselves getting into as this blog grows.  If you have any questions though, please ask them in the comments and either Cris or I will try and answer them.