| You too eh
My girlfriend has been whining for a guineapig for a while now and a few months back we bought one. We asked the petstore staff to inform us of any particular requirements/needs/recommendations or whether they had any litterature we should buy and read etc. They didn't say much apart from getting a big enough cage and the vitamin issue.
Anyways, we went slow on the lil guy. Going by our own judgement when it came to how often to pet him, take him out, teasing him with food etc. After about 2-3 days he was getting pretty warmed up and seems very happy. He pops a lot every single day and is content to fall asleep on either of us if he's held while we watch tv etc. He had a little runin with the floor from a height a lil while back and broke his top teeth, obviously this led to a paniced drive to the vet who commented on how content and well kept he seemed, clipped his lower teeth a bit and sent us back home. His teeth have since grown long enough again to start eating without special treatment (ie, he could only eat anything he was able to put entirely into his mouth while the upper teeth were at gum level).
Being the kind soul she is my girlfriend decided we really should get a friend for the lil guy to keep him company while we're at work. Personally I found him to be quite happy and content alone and was worried about introducing another pig. She also categorically refused to consider neutering him and getting a female. So we got another lil male pig yesterday. Again we asked the pet store people (a different store this) about any special consideration and they didn't even vaguely hint at a quarantine time or anything like that, nor offer any advice on introducing the two. In other words, we got the lil guy home, cleaned out the cage to remove the "ownership" of our first to some extent, then put them both in and sat guard for the rest of the evening, separating them for a few minutes if they got too rowdy. Also took them out a few times and held them together on our laps etc. They've been together overnight now and all so the best we can do at this point I figure is to bring the new guy to the vet to have him checked out.
Anyways, like I said, we put them both in and sat guard to separate them if blood started spurting. Basically the older fellow was overjoyed to have a new "friend". He also sniffed the butt of the new guy like nuts then conveniently chose to ignore them both being males and tried to hump the new guy from every direction for the next few hours. Now the new guy is the fearless kind. He was immediately happy to be picked up and cuddled, runs around on our laps and gurgles contently right from the start. He started making it rather clear he ain't gay, shrieking rather loudly and snapping after the older one if he tried to get some. Girlfriend was up to guard til 4am this morning watching them to make sure they wouldn't get into nothing too serious, and when I got up this morning they had calmed down quite a lot and can manage to "talk" to eachother and even touch noses without it leading to 5 minutes of wild running and hooting afterwards.
I am sorta worried about the old one never catching on to the fact they're both male. But I guess there won't really be any harm in that apart from being a bit annoying to the new one? |