Three girls and a new mommy!

Hi! My name is Cassie, and I'm 24 and a rather new cavy momma. We'd had rabbits and a pair of gerbils when I was a child, but never guinea pigs. When I was thirteen, I start developing really severe allergies to all of our pets - including the rabbit we had at the time. I'd pretty much given up on the idea of ever having pets again, until last December. I got a little curious and didn't know anyone who owns guinea pigs, so I made some calls to local pet shops (I know, I know. I didn't know then like I do now.) asking if anyone happened to have guinea pigs that would mind if I spent some time with them. I finally found somewhere, but they only had one little girl left! I held her for about an hour and gave her some veggies while the owner and I talked - and well, she ended up coming home with me! I do have a bit of a reaction to the timothy hay, and occasionally to the cavies if I don't wash my hands well enough or still have fur left on my shirt later, so I have a few shirts that I wear while handling them and just change out after.

She spent the first month alone, and I started stalking forums and blogs looking for more information so I could make sure she would be happy! But I ran into a small problem in looking for her a cage buddy - there are very few small animal rescues in our area, most of them being a 5-8 hour drive. I didn't really want to go back to a pet shop again after reading, so I remained vigilant in looking for a new girl that needed a home. Towards the end of January, though, I started caving and made some more calls. No girls - most of the stores in our area apparently only get in males, and occasionally a group of females. So I continued to give her lots of love and floor time and began considering making one of the long drives to a rescue in Florida. It took way longer than I'd wanted, but finally last week, I happened to log on and see a post in the recent topics about a pair of female piggies in Alabama! I thought it was a long shot, but I took a look and googled the area, and it happened to only be a three hour drive, roughly. So I sent an email and turned into a nervous wreck the entire night until I heard back! We met halfway for me to pick up the two girls this weekend, then Monday we all went to visit their new vet to make sure all three piggies were healthy and (most importantly) all females. (I wanted to be triple sure before putting them together.)

We had introductions yesterday, and apart from a bit of rumblestrutting between the youngest two, everything went even smoother than I had hoped. I knew the two babies were close in age and was hoping that would help with their bonding, and I didn't expect any trouble with the mother. Momma is very friendly and has obviously been handled, but baby is super skittish. She'll take veggies from your hand, but runs otherwise. I'm really just happy that everyone is getting along so well, and that our baby seems to be much happier and more vocal finally. We're still kind of unsure on names, so they may change! Our girl had already been named Darling, though, so we wanted to stick to a similar theme and ended up using some names from Disney movies.

I'm still unsure about proper colors/breeds, so if anyone has any input on them, that would be super appreciated.

This is our original girl, Darling, a few days before the new girls came home. I know she's an American, but a bit unsure about her coloring. Is she a dutch? The red doesn't really cover the entire left side of her head (camera right), but the rest seems right to me.


And these are from introductions yesterday, since I don't have any pictures of the new girls alone. Lady + Darling. I have absolutely nothing to go on as far as what breeds the momma and new baby are - momma sort of looks like an Abby, but it's hard to tell in photos.


And one of Darling meeting momma. As soon as I put the basket of hay down, momma jumped right into it and made herself comfy. So much for using it as a snack.


I'll attach a few more in the next post~