Late introduction

I'm late with this introduction because I've already posted like 12 posts in other threads. I'm sorry about that.

Anyways, I'm Allison and I'm studying to be a vet tech. I don't own any guinea pigs at the moment (everyone else in my family has mutliple animal allergies), but I am baby-sitting two for the month. They're to be used at my school so we can learn how to handle guinea pigs. So many people want to adopt the pigs we use in this program that my 2 already have homes!

I suppose I can talk about these 2 guinea pigs even though they're not mine. They are sisters and about 2 to 3 months old. They came from PetSmart. Both are Crested. One is definitely an American Crested, but the other might qualify as an English Crested. It's a bit hard to tell because that one happens to be a calico.

The American is gold (or buff-- I'm not too familiar with guinea pig colours), and I'm calling her Taffy. The calico has patches of tan and dark brown but only on her head! The rest of her body is white. I'm calling her Rudy. Both of them are high-strung little buggers; I don't think they've been socialized with people too much in the past. >_< Taffy is a bit shyer and often cuddles with you once you catch her. Rudy is more active, harder to catch, and won't sit still when you hold her. She's an explorer! Oddly enough despite being harder to catch, she is the only one of the 2 that will eat food from your hand.

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I also own 3 dogs (one of whom came from my school) and a full-grown igunna. The oldest is a yellow lab named Misty; she is very smart... a bit too smart. She knows how to open the gate to our yard, so we have to be sure to lock it. Misty won't run away on her own, but she will follow if our other dogs get loose. She'll be 12 this October. She was my first dog (though she was not my family's first dog); I got her during the holidays when I was in 7th grade. Misty is a very good girl who gets along with all people, but she hates other dogs and cats. It's a bit weird that she hates other dogs because we did everything to socialize her as a pup; equally weird is that she only started disliking new dogs when she turned 4 or 5. She still gets along with the other dogs she knew when she was under 5 years old to. Misty was very close to my family's first dog, Odie, and was devasted when he died 2 years ago.

My second dog is Duke; he's a field English setter, meaning he has less feathers than the ones you see in dog shows. He came from school, and we took intially took him on as a foster for a breed rescue. But my parents insisted on keeping him. Duke considers himself to be my dog and follows me everywhere. He is a typical alpha male; however despite being unaltered, he does not show an interest in roaming or acting very hyper. He only acts like a boss towards our other 2 dogs. When we first got him, he was underweight and had kennel cough. Two days later his kennel cough became pneumonia, and he was taken back to my school for treatment. He has since recovered completely. But that's the reason we still haven't fixed him-- he lost too much weight during that! We think he's between 1 and 3 years old.

The third dog isn't actually my dog; she belongs to my mom. Rikki came from one of mom's former co-workers whose Yorkie had an unplanned litter. Rikki is a bit unique in that she was the only one of her litter with a different father. Her brothers are definitely part poodle; in fact the Yorkie's owner knew about that mating. But Rikki is part dachshund. Because it is possible for a female dog to mate with different males and have pups in the same litter with different fathers, everyone assumes Rikki's father was a smooth-haired dachshund. Her mom was quite a flirt! Anyways, Rikki is a complete brat who doesn't listen or behave; that's because mom spoils and babies her, and of course she takes advantage of that. She will be 9 this June. I call her a rat because she looks a lot like a big, black rat! Rikki has always been very interested in our other pets; she has even protected Rudy and Taffy from Duke!

The igunna is my brother's. His name is Ida Jones after one of my mom's patients; we named him before he was sexed so that's why he has a girl's name. We used to live in Cuba where igunnas were native species, and when we moved back to the States, my brother wanted an igunna. Our parents put off getting him one for about 5 years though. Ida came into the family a year before Misty. He was very tiny!! Now he's 4 feet long... counting his tail. My mom didn't think we would have Ida this long; I'm sad to say that mom expected Ida to live only a few years. We really weren't planning on him living this long, but now that he's here to stay we feel it's our responsibility to care for him the best we can. Ida is a fairly boring pet; the only neat thing about him is that he is very particular about who he likes. Because of the location of his cage, he became close to our first dog Odie and now has become close to Rikki.

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One of my favourite pets as a child was my guinea pig. I still miss him. I love guinea pigs even though I can't adopt any until I move out of my parents' home. We used to own 6 guinea pigs though.... but not all at once. The first one was my brother's; then I adopted one. My brother's died due to her pregnancy, and he adopted another female. About a year later we took on another female that no one else wanted; she had been for sale at our favourite petstore for 4 months! The two females were rehomed due to allergies, and mine died of old age. The final 2 guinea pigs were adopted from SuperPets when I was in high school. My mom was a teacher then and wanted them to be class pets. However the female died from a fracture complication, and rather than keep the male alone, we donated him to another teacher.

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I hope to post here occansionally so I can learn more about guinea pigs for when I can finally have one again.


(I hope this wasn't too long; thanks for reading though )