Mikatelyn's Piggies

How lovely for you and sweet Bandit
Always so sad to have a piggy die after surgery and Bunker was a lovely piggy
Hoping this is helping you to cope without Bunker
Can’t wait to hear about the bonding soon 🥰
 
So I just have to gush about Blaze a little bit. He's just the sweetest littly piggy! He's already accepting pets and getting less wriggly with being picked up. I do believe he's starting to learn to come when called. I was expecting it to take months to get to this point and it's barely been a day and a half! And he's so soft! I'm just a sucker for soft fur.
When Bunker passed I was thinking that I'd be done with keeping piggies after Bandit passed as well, and maybe give Blaze back to the rescue if it was in the next 90 days (the rescue has a 90 day return policy) or adopt him out, but now that I've met Blaze I just couldn't do it! This little piggy already has me wrapped around his tiny paw!
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I am sorry to hear about Bunkers passing.
May he popcorn high at the rainbow bridge. 🌈

Welcome to Blaze, it sounds like he has found his forever home. Hope you enjoy getting to know him.
 
I have decided to move up the bonding schedule. Bandit is acting listless and not interested in doing much except staring over toward Blaze's side of the divide. There's a cloth barrier over their dividing grates, otherwise he'd be chewing at the bars incessantly.
Blaze is 3 days shy of his 2 week quarantine.
To minimize risk of Blaze having something infectious, I'm doing the following:
Per Saskia of the LA guinea pig rescue, I gave Blaze a bath with head and shoulders shampoo to minimize risk of ringworm, and gave a drop of 1% ivermectin on his ear to minimize risk of mites. I don't plan to apply routinely every 3 months as she suggests, as I don't want to risk treatment resistance. I've cleaned his cage, and now he's exploring my bathroom while a portable heater slowly dries out his fur.
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Blaze not super happy about bath time, although was happy enough to find some bell pepper show up halfway through!
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Could it be that he is litter trained? I had a small tub under the sink. While he was towel drying he got really insistent that we was done (a couple of nips) so I let him wander. He ran around the bathroom floor until he plopped himself into the tub and peed and pooped there, then plopped himself back out of it!
I'm thinking I may have a very smart piggy on my hands!
 
Some piggies do seem quite fastidious about where they "deposit". My Dignified Sir George earned his title because of this. If given the chance he will get the poo outside of the cage, it's always in nice neat piles one upstairs and one downstairs. Never in his bed or hammock, so unlike his cagemate who poos anywhere.
 
Ah Blaze is soooooo sweet
It does seem as if Bandit is lonely …..
I’m so hoping that when you bond them it goes smoothly 🥰
It’ll comfort you while you get used to lovely Bunker not being there 💔
 
Well I guess I'll go ahead and give you all the blow by blow. Bandit wasn't really wanting to take any treats at all today, his weight was 20g below his low normal (I started weighing daily when Bunker died). When I heard some occasional squeaking from him i realized it was more than depression/pining, which wad my initial thought. He's had a small bladder/urethral stone maybe 2 years ago, for which he had to have a brief anesthetic to express from his urethra. So I popped him into a clear tub to see if he was peeing blood (no) but i did feel something kind of hard around his bladder/anal area. I knew from this forum and the LA guinea pig rescue videos that it could be an anal sac problem (Bandit is over 4.5 years old now), so I checked it (first time didn't do it right and didnt find it, had to review saskia's videos and retry) and sure enough he had an impacted anal sac! So I expressed out the material (yes indeed i can verify it smells terrible), gave him a dose of metacam for the pain, and force fed him a few CCs of critical care. 2 hours later he is now looking better and eating his veggies again!
What are the odds?!? Bunker dies then Bandit gets an anal sac impaction a week later!?! So I guess Bandit is going to get daily inspections of his bits and pieces for a while now until I figure out how often he'll need a clean out! I think I'll hold off on attempted bonding until he's back up to fighting shape (maybe 1-3 days? I'm planning on just trying to read how Bandit is feeling). Thank goodness for all of the knowledge in this forum's guides and for saskia's videos! I'm sure Bandit would thank you all if he knew how this forum has helped educate me on piggy health issues!
Any tips, comments or suggestions are welcome!
 
Oh gosh poor old Bandit - well done you tho for spotting that and acting quickly
My Geoff is nearly 5 and has partial impaction - he still produces perfect poops but he does get stuff impacting there
I think as guineas get older this can happen as the muscles there become weak.
I’d keep a close eye on him and weigh him daily just to be sure
Maybe get the Vet to check him as he had a stone before and just reassure you 🥰
 
@Roselina I'm curious how often Geoff needs a clean out? Do you use a q-tip to clean or just sort of milk it out like an oversized pimple (what I ended up doing)? Poor Geoff and Bandit! The indignities of aging!
 
I do it every 2-3 days
I use a q tip dipped in warm warm and I do squeeze gently with my fingers to open it up , after I gently wipe the area with the remaining water , dry it and place a little aloe Vera gel and of course give the necessary treat 😂
 
About 30 minutes into bonding this morning... I do believe it's going well!

I opened up both their grates into the neutral area, thinking they would both run in there and duke it out, but blaze ran into bandit's side, completely ignored bandit and started eating all the hay like he didn't have exactly all the same stuff on his side! Bandit was hiding out in a draped towel and it was like they didnt know or care the other was there.
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Then blaze found bandit, humped bandit, but then bandit turned around and humped blaze, there were some circular chasing, teeth chattering, chin ups, and that kind of constant small squeaking i always thought was the "ok, I'm submissive" sound. But BOTH of them were both teeth chattering while simultaneousy making the submissive vocalizations.
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But luckily I appear to have ADD guinea pigs because the intense moments only lasted a couple of minutes and both piggies gpt distracted and started exploring the other side of the wall from their normal sides.
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Bandit would occsionally go seek out Blaze and they would kind of pose or chatter, for a few seconds, but both of them seem more interested in other things.
Now Blaze is still eating like he's been starved for a week, despite that he's had an entire bin of timothy, bermuda, AND orchard hay, same as Bandit. And Bandit had decided to take a nap in the big red tunnel on the right.
So as of this sentence it has been about 50 minutes and only a couple of tense moments throughout all that. I am cautiously optimistic! I'm hoping that going back to Bandit's norm space of 30 sq ft will help his impactions too. (He's been in 8-9sq ft for a week initially because we made a smaller portable cage so that we could move him around the house to hang out with us so he wouldnt be lonely, then he was back in the big pen but smaller space due to the divide and creating a neutral area for the bonding).
 
I thought I'd give a little update. Blaze has been intermittently chasing Bandit, but then they seem to settle down after a couple of minutes. It's been getting less frequent, which is what happened when Bandit bonded with Bunker. So less anxiety producing than the first time I monitored a bonding, but anxiety producing nonetheless. I got to worrying that maybe this was too much for Bandit in his old age (Bandit has been showing signs of aging over the past 6-12 months or so. We've checked him over and the plan is just to keep him happy and comfortable until he isn't anymore) and was getting ready to put a divider down (literally grate in hand), when Bandit comes deliberately strolling out in front of Blaze in brazen provoking rumblestrutting fashion. 🤣 ok, that's Bandit in a nutshell for you. He's like the class prankster, or the perpetual annoying little brother. He's happiest when he's messing with another piggy. Blaze initially looks like he might be top piggy, but Bandit knows how to play the long game. He's the persistent wiry underpiggy type, and he'll just keep at it until he's the one calling the shots (or at least the other piggy let's him think he is). Bolt (his littermate and 1st bonded pal) was initially dominant, but then a few months later we realized Bandit was actually boss. Then same thing happened with Bunker. Lol, these little furballs and their soap opera-like interactions.
 
Mikatelyn said:
I thought I'd give a little update. Blaze has been intermittently chasing Bandit, but then they seem to settle down after a couple of minutes. It's been getting less frequent, which is what happened when Bandit bonded with Bunker. So less anxiety producing than the first time I monitored a bonding, but anxiety producing nonetheless. I got to worrying that maybe this was too much for Bandit in his old age (Bandit has been showing signs of aging over the past 6-12 months or so. We've checked him over and the plan is just to keep him happy and comfortable until he isn't anymore) and was getting ready to put a divider down (literally grate in hand), when Bandit comes deliberately strolling out in front of Blaze in brazen provoking rumblestrutting fashion. 🤣 ok, that's Bandit in a nutshell for you. He's like the class prankster, or the perpetual annoying little brother. He's happiest when he's messing with another piggy. Blaze initially looks like he might be top piggy, but Bandit knows how to play the long game. He's the persistent wiry underpiggy type, and he'll just keep at it until he's the one calling the shots (or at least the other piggy let's him think he is). Bolt (his littermate and 1st bonded pal) was initially dominant, but then a few months later we realized Bandit was actually boss. Then same thing happened with Bunker. Lol, these little furballs and their soap opera-like interactions.
Click to expand...
I started imagining this wise ole’ Bandit, roughened up by life and his determination to run to aid whenever his city is in need for a hero.

Then his wild apprentice Blaze, very eager but much too inexperienced and ends up getting many comedic lessons until he, too, is a wise hero.

Zorro.

I was imagining Zorro with the actors replaced by guinea pigs.
 
@RosieLily haha, in my mind it plays out a little more like Revenge of the Nerds, where Bandit is the nerd who gets picked on by jock Blaze, but Bandit is a smart and relentless prankster who ultimately gets the last laugh.
But now I'm imagining them as Zorro and young apprentice! Certainly Bandit already has the eye mask! Lol
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Well, I had to put the divider back down. Bandit's swagger might have been his downfall. I see him clearly going over to mess with Blaze, but then Blaze ends up chasing Bandit. It almost seems like a game of tag, or "neener neener, you can't catch me!" So I see Bandit repeatedly doing this, but then I hear a big tussle and a thud and Bandit is whining and holding his head tilted. So I think Bandit maybe ran his head into the wooden hidey while playing his game. We also found a tuft of Bandit's fur torn out at the root earlier today, so I think they are getting too rough with each other. I gave him a few minutes of cuddles and he seemed to settle down and head tilt was gone. Maybe 30 minutes later he ate a whole lettuce leaf so I think he's ok. *sigh*. Boys.
 
Alright guinea pig support friends, I need advice! Bandit has now started chewing at the bars trying to get over to Blaze. He's quite the quandary, this little piggy. At first glance he looks afraid of Blaze because Blaze chases him away. But upon further observation, he seems to be the instigator and riles up Blaze, but then has gotten hurt at least twice now (1st piece of evidence was missing a tuft of fur we found in the cage, 2nd when he, I think, bashed into something while running away from Blaze). But now he's desperately trying to to get back over to Blaze again. Do I retry letting them bond? Is missing fur a definite separate forever? No one has drawn blood. I don't want to just put towels over their grates, which would make bar biting difficult but effectively cut off communication through the grates. But I can't just let him bite the bars, right? Can't they break a tooth or something? Should I move this question into the bonding section of the forum?
 
Sorry to hear your boys have had to be separated, I think moving your question to the bonding section is probably a good idea, some of the more experienced members are more likely to see it.

Our boys live separately with a divide- and our Wally is a bar chew menace- we have tried everything to help him break the habit. He doesn’t differentiate between the dividing grids or the edge of his home. It appears to be just how he is despite all our efforts & alternative chew things he’s offered.

Covering the grids for a while is a good idea, then slowly removing the cover for longer periods. We often use cardboard as a cover.

Pop bar biting or cage biting in the search and it will bring up a few discussions & a few ideas that may help you.

Thinking of you and hope your boys calm down.
 
Wiebke

Thread 'Bonding and Interaction: Illustrated social behaviours and bonding dynamics'

1 Introduction
2 Pre-bonding
- Quarantine and sexing
- The need for a plan B
- The rule-breaker: Youngsters under 4 months (sub-teenage)
3 Setting up an introduction
- Getting to know each other
- ‘Buddy baths’ – why not
- Scent swapping - why not
- Setting up a neutral bonding area
- How to start the bonding
4 Acceptance phase: Do we like...
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Hopefully I have linked the bonding guide. Which you may have already read, but I found it very useful.
 
The bar biting SHOULD settle. One of my boys was like that, it's usually the "troublemaker " that wants to get back together. It's the other one you want to watch, does he seem relieved and relaxed?
My boys never got to a point of bridges burned, I plan to have one last try at rebonding eventually.
Once they've settled down, keep an eye on their interactions. I will wait until Master Boris hasn't shown any negative behaviours through the divide for several weeks until I try the bonding as he still has "snippy" moments.
 
@fluffysal I think you're onto something there! Blaze does seem scared whenever he sees Bandit and is sort of scuttling from hide to hide. He gets really alert and ready to run whenever he sees Bandit approaching, even though it's on the other side of the bars. I think he is fearful aggresive towards bandit, and not just aggressive. I think i got that term from watching the Cesar Milan dog whisperer videos, but I think it applies here. I think I will emulate your approach with your piggies and just let them settle side by side for now and perhaps retry in a few weeks. You had suggested that with Bandit and Bunker (bandit's previous pen-mate) when their first bonding attempt failed, and after 3 months of side by side they re-united and became best of friends! When Bunker was unwell that last day, Bandit would come running over to Bunker to check on him whenever Bunker was in pain, and would lay down next to him to keep him company. Bandit can be a little punk to his buddies, but he's also very sweet to them if they are actually not doing well.
Below is from a couple of months ago. Bandit and Bunker doing a practice critical care feed, and both clamoring for more over it!17378338519281.webp
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we adopted Mischievous Master Boris when he was about 5 months old. He was living on his own but we don't know how long for. We were told that he wasn't well and needed to be separated for quarantine and treatment, we couldn't get details on when this happened, what it was or how young he was.
This was P@H adoption so it's likely that he just didn't get bought because of his "evil" red eyes, then got too old.
IMG_20231030_204612.webpAnyway, he missed out on learning proper manners.
Sir George was already very chilled, I was surprised that he was the dominant when they met, but in hindsight it's what the unruly youngster needed.
 
Blaze (right) learning from Bandit (left) to come when called.17379205981230.webp
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What a smart piggy! Learning to put a paw on my hand to get treats. Actually had both piggies doing simul-tricks! I was a little worried they would start to get into it with the grates open, but they were too distracted by food to pay each other any mind in our interaction area at the front of the pen.
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