Hello to my fellow guinea pig lovers!

[Dom R]

Hello everyone,

As said by my name, you can call me Dom, or something else I'm not really too fussed.

I have currently owned and looked after approximately 6~ pigs over my life, and I'm only 19.

My current three guinea pigs are: Peanut, who is sadly living alone as of last Friday, where I had to make the unexpected and extremely upsetting decision to let Rodney go, due to him developing Cavy Leukaemia. Ash, who was originally with Peanut, but they fell out so I had to split them up, and I rescued the third baby pig, known as Oscar. (Ash and Peanut were from a pet shop, which I regret but I don't regret, if you get me), but from now I will be adopting/rescuing when possible.

I'm currently waiting for an appointment at a somewhat local rescue to allow people to choose his new cagemate, as I really dislike him being by himself. I've owned guinea pigs since I was quite young, before the age of 10, and I have always cared for and loved them to bits. But I didn't have any pigs for a few years, until 2016, when I got Fudge and Peanut, I was a bit rusty back then and fell for the classic 'Oh this cage will be big enough' trick that pet stores do, and obviously when Peanut grew to 1.2kg to 1.3kg, he was definitely way too big. Fudge unfortunately passed away suddenly overnight, after fighting an abscess for around 1.5-2 months, which shows how quickly they can go downhill; he was treated with antibiotics, but the vet took him off of them a few days before his passing; my guess was that the abscess popped and caused a lot of internal damage, causing him to pass away.

This is where I got Ash, from a pet shop, again. Yes I know, a pet shop , and I had to buy a second cage, because yet again, I fell for the classic pet shop tricks. I ended up with one of the cages free, which is where I originally learned about adopting/rescuing pigs, which is where I got Rodney in May last year. He suffered from two abscesses at the begging of this year, and with his strength and determination, and my unwillingness to give up on him, we managed to get him through it (He dropped from 1100g to around 800g, so he was REALLY close to losing the battle). This, although it was a difficult battle, granted him another 8-9 months with us; which is where he really came out of his shell, and we quickly bonded after that, and pretty much became attached to each other.

I then bought some of the attachable grids to allow them to have floor time together; they were fine having floor time before, but after this (I regret putting all three of them together now, but lesson learned), is when Peanut and Ash fell out, so I built a cage out of them, a two storey one at that, and soon after Peanut and Rodney bonded, and lived together up until last Friday. I also bought more grids to make a four storey cage, which fits nicely into my room, and gives them a lot more room to roam about in and chase each other and what not.

Then this is where we got Oscar, because Ash was alone, he was getting stresses and constantly nibbled the bars, so we rescued Oscar, who we've had for about 2-3 weeks now.

So that's basically it, apologies for the ramble, but I'd just like everyone to know the story of how I got to this point with my piggies.