Brushing and trimming nails

[Jen22]

Heyy! My piggies are only a few month old but have long hair. They hate getting their hair brushed, they won't even take veg or treats when I have them on my knee their hair gets knotted and it obviously pulls when I brush them, even when I try to hold the hair so it doesn't hurt. How can I make this better? I feel like they hate being picked up because they know a brush is coming. So they hate cuddles I'm dreading having to clip their nails because I'm worried they'll hate me more. Helppppp pleaseeee

 

[Pantalaimon]

I’m sorry I can’t help much with the grooming as I don’t have long haired guinea pigs.
Young guinea pigs are always a bit wriggly so can require lots of patience. You should try to make it a positive (or at least not negative) experience with nice food on offer even if they don’t want it. It is really important that you do regularly trim their nails and brush/trim their hair while they are young so they become used to it to make it less stressful as they get older. Even if they don’t need their nails trimmed that often at the moment, you can still get them out and gently touch their feet to maintain their familiarity with the process.

Something I find helps is to keep a very set routine around things. Guinea pigs (like most prey animals) do really well with set routines, it makes them feel safe as they know exactly what is happening and what will happen next, even down to where you move an object in the room. The way their brains work is that if they can’t predict something, its next move could possibly be to eat them so they should be scared. My pigs know that when I go into the room and roll back the fleeces in a specific way to take the towels from underneath it means it is nail clipping time and go to hide, when normally they would be begging for food. I am not quite sure how to describe this in a way that makes sense to other people so I hope you can sort of see what I mean!

 

[Ruth1]

I’ll brush what I can, but Instead of trying to brush out knots etc in mine, I just carefully, CAREFULLY…. trim it off. Much more pleasant for the piggy - just have to be really careful where you trim. If you can do like a hairdresser and have your fingers between the piggy and the tatt and make sure you can really see what you’re doing before trimming. I know my girls would much prefer this than pulling on their hair.

Do they need brushed every time you hold them - maybe good to just handle them and get them used to food on your lap, without brushing for a few times?

Nail clipping - I’m a wuss! I got the dog groomer to do it for me when she came to clip the dog. My vet told me to put budgie sandpaper down in an area for them, so I have it on a space they run when free ranging in the kitchen. Hoping that keeps their nails down, but jury’s out yet.

 

[Daisy_and_Mocha]

about your relationship with them, the important thing is to make sure that positive (or neutral) interactions with them outweigh any negative interactions. For example if you have twenty positive interactions and one negative interaction, your overall relationship with them will be positive.