Teejay
Adult Guinea Pig
Hi all, my two boars - Pudding and Squeak - are about 15 weeks old now....my hubby bought them (from P@H :x) for me as a Xmas present, so there's no doubt they came from a breeder and probably had no handling whatsoever. Anyway, we gave them a week or so to settle in and get used to their new home before we tried any kind of handling, but any attempts we made at catching them just seemed really stressful for all of us, so I decided to take a step back and try another tack.
I started with spending ages just sat in front of the cage and talking to them.....then, after they seemed happy with that, I started hand-feeding them their veggies, so they'd associate me with pleasant things. That is working brilliantly, and they now wheek for food every time they clap eyes on me! LOL! They're very happy to accept food from my hands, they'll even take small pellets from my hand (although I have to watch they don't nibble my fingers!).
From hand-feeding, I tried to progress to stroking each piggie whilst still in the hutch, and that is fine sometimes.......more often than not, they scarper as soon as I touch them, but occasionally, they'll let me stroke them.
Anyway, our routine now is that I let them out for floor time while I'm cleaning out the hutch, and they're very happy to run round/on/over/under me then, but still they don't really like me to touch or stroke them while they're on the floor.
I've also been working on 'lap time' over the past couple of days.......but, rather than chase them round the cage to catch them (which I really don't like doing), I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan......I open the hutch door (so it's like the start of floor time) but I block off the open door with a pigloo. The piggie happily goes into the pigloo, and I carry the piggie and the pigloo to the settee for a bit of handling time.
However, whilst this is definitely a stress-free way of catching the piggies, when they are actually on my lap, they just seem to absolutely hate it! They won't sit still for a stroke, they scramble around on my lap, seem to be very panicked and they basically make every attempt to escape from me! I was having lap-time with Squeak this afternoon, and he was actually physically quivering every time I touched him, poor fella!
What am I doing wrong? I seem to be making progress, then we seem to take twenty steps backwards.......
At the moment, the boys are in a hutch in the dining room, which is a very quiet room as it's closed off to keep the cats out, but I'm getting a new 150cm long indoor cage tomorrow. When that's set up, I'm planning to move the piggies back into the living room so that we can spend more time talking to them, interacting with them and - hopefully - handling them, maybe that will give more consistancy to their 'training'.
Do you think that'll help at all? I know it's early days, really, but I just want to get to handle and fuss my lovely piggies!
Tracey
I started with spending ages just sat in front of the cage and talking to them.....then, after they seemed happy with that, I started hand-feeding them their veggies, so they'd associate me with pleasant things. That is working brilliantly, and they now wheek for food every time they clap eyes on me! LOL! They're very happy to accept food from my hands, they'll even take small pellets from my hand (although I have to watch they don't nibble my fingers!).
From hand-feeding, I tried to progress to stroking each piggie whilst still in the hutch, and that is fine sometimes.......more often than not, they scarper as soon as I touch them, but occasionally, they'll let me stroke them.
Anyway, our routine now is that I let them out for floor time while I'm cleaning out the hutch, and they're very happy to run round/on/over/under me then, but still they don't really like me to touch or stroke them while they're on the floor.
I've also been working on 'lap time' over the past couple of days.......but, rather than chase them round the cage to catch them (which I really don't like doing), I came up with what I thought was an ingenious plan......I open the hutch door (so it's like the start of floor time) but I block off the open door with a pigloo. The piggie happily goes into the pigloo, and I carry the piggie and the pigloo to the settee for a bit of handling time.
However, whilst this is definitely a stress-free way of catching the piggies, when they are actually on my lap, they just seem to absolutely hate it! They won't sit still for a stroke, they scramble around on my lap, seem to be very panicked and they basically make every attempt to escape from me! I was having lap-time with Squeak this afternoon, and he was actually physically quivering every time I touched him, poor fella!
What am I doing wrong? I seem to be making progress, then we seem to take twenty steps backwards.......
At the moment, the boys are in a hutch in the dining room, which is a very quiet room as it's closed off to keep the cats out, but I'm getting a new 150cm long indoor cage tomorrow. When that's set up, I'm planning to move the piggies back into the living room so that we can spend more time talking to them, interacting with them and - hopefully - handling them, maybe that will give more consistancy to their 'training'.
Do you think that'll help at all? I know it's early days, really, but I just want to get to handle and fuss my lovely piggies!
Tracey
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also i find sometimes if * let them hide there head under an arm they have the mentality i cant see oyu, you cant see me which calms them down 
