Joy It's taken 1.5 yrs for me to pet one of my boys and another to popcorn

[4boipigs]

My sweet first guinea pigs Chico and Amigo...I got them in July 2020 from an animal shelter. Recently, Chico has FINALLY let me pet his little head. Amigo has been letting me pet him for around a year now, but Chico has never liked it. Now when he lets me, he will stay still and enjoy it. And just today I finally saw Amigo popcorn! He and Chico are always making noise, so I was surprised to see Amigo doing little jumps in the hay pile along with the normal chatter. I just always assumed they were never much into doing it, especially compared to my youngest Maple Leaf who does it several times a day. It's always exciting when they start doing new/normal things but sad when I think about how long it's taken.

 

[Guinea Pig Papa]

Sometimes it takes soooo long for our newest little ones to come out of their shell. I never really noticed it with Pooper and Sly, and Punkin and Scooter were with me from the time they were three weeks old so they basically were already out of their shell, so to speak.

Simon has turned into a VERY loud, mouthy boy. He is finally also allowing himself to be petted while NOT being held, but he's still skittish about it. It will be two years June 1st. Picking Simon up is so, so easy. Leo, you have to chase LOL.

Leo has turned into a big, sweet loveable chonk. If I have his pepper slice in the morning, I scratch his cheeks and he will walk right up to me, climb up, lay his chin on my tummy and grumble while I scratch them.

The more time passes, the better they get. Sadly, Leo still won't wheek. He has wheeked once since Scooter passed away, and that was in sheer terror when he was being given a bath. He babbles quite a lot, but he would wheek quite a bit when Scooter was with us. Since losing him, nothing.

Enjoy every little bit with Chico and Amigo. They must be so much fun to watch!

 

[SSLee]

Chico is so cute and I'm very happy to read that he is letting you pet him now. What a feeling of joy you must have felt the very first time Chico let you pet him.

My sweetie, Lily, part of my first pair, is 5 years old and she has never tolerated being touched. That was mainly my fault, as shortly after I got Lily and her sister, through a Craigslist rehoming for my niece, my father fell and I started staying at his place to take care of him. I rushed home from work at 7 PM to feed the piggies and clean the cage before leaving to go to my father's to stay overnight. It was so exhausting and eventually I ended up staying at my father's fulltime and thought about rehoming the piggies. In the end, I snuck them into his apartment and we all stayed at my father's for over a year.

The piggies and I are back in my place as my father is now in a senior apartment. From then and to this day, Lily would come up to the cage for her treats and vegetables but would run and hide in a tunnel whenever I tried to pet her. On the weekly cage cleaning, Lily would run into the tunnel or a snuggle sack and I would move her to the kiddie pool, which is their temporary cage. Lily knows the difference between the cage cleaning transfer and me trying to pet her; she stays very still for the cage cleaning transfer. The two other piggies won't go into the tunnel to be transferred to the temporary cage but they practically fight to rush into the tunnel for the return to their newly cleaned cage.