Guinea Pig Connection

Struggling With Vet Bills?

Even before the economy took a nose dive in 2008, our rescue was getting requests for help from guinea pig owners blindsided by vet bills for illnesses and unplanned surgeries. Our friends in other rescues for dogs, cats, birds, bunnies, ferrets, chinchillas, and reptiles tell us that they similarly can't go a month without getting at least one request for help from a pet owner overwhelmed by an existing vet bill, or emotionally strung out because they have a pet that needs surgery but they just don't have the money to pay. 

The requests for help fall into one of the following buckets:

• a straight handout that doesn't have to be paid back
• a loan that will be paid back over a period of time
• the chance to let them run their pets through the rescue's often-discounted account with a local veterinary hospital
• surrender the ailing pet so that the rescue can foot the bill, handle the medical care (e.g., antibiotics, wound care, post-operative care), and rehome the animal (or pay to have the animal put down if the problem reveals itself to be incurable)

Cash-strapped rescues rarely (or never) have extra funds to loan or grant to pet owners, and few will jeopardize their own relationships with vets in order to falsely funnel someone else's pet into surgery under whatever discount the vet has extended to the rescue. Some may have special arrangements with vets that allows them to provide "compassionate interventions," but they're more likely the exception than the norm.

It breaks our hearts to have to tell an owner whose guinea pig, say, has bladder stones that we can't help them financially, knowing that the animal may well die because the owner can't afford the surgery bill and the vet, for whatever reason, refuses to work out a payment plan. The best we can do is offer the suggestions we know about, and pray that one of them will pan out.

More Options Available Than You Think

Negotiate with a vet. In instances where the owner says they haven't asked their vet about installment payments over a course of two or three months, we encourage them to try negotiating such an arrangement. Vets may be willing to work out such installment payments if they can bill to a credit card number, or deposit post-dated checks, on mutually agreed-upon dates. Beyond that, we suggest vets whom we know have been reasonable with arrangements for critical-care patients whose humans are struggling financially.

Apply for a grant. There are some medical grants available, for which individuals can apply on their own or with the involvement of a veterinarian. These grants come from organizations like Help-A-Pet, United Animal Nations, and the AAHA Helping Pets Fund.

Repayment plans. Because the vets we know often won't extend payment plans more than three months from the original date of service, you might need to look elsewhere if you know that 90 days isn't going to be enough time. We are hearing more and more about financing arrangements, like Citi Health Card and Care Credit, that can give pet owners repayment plans stretching as long as 18 months. (If you can discipline yourself not to use it for other purposes, you could also simply have a separate low-interest credit card tucked away just for vet bills.)

Insurance and savings accounts. Some advice articles suggest creating health savings accounts (HSA) or flexible spending accounts (FSA) for your pets, the same as you can for humans. On the insurance side, we're aware of pet insurance plans from ASPCA, Purina, and 24PetWatch. The VPI Avian & Exotic Plan is the only one I've heard of (so far), that covers exotic pets, birds, and reptiles.

The best time to start contingency planning for the unexpected is before you need it. Doing so means that when your pet is in crisis, you can stay calm and focus on its needs and not on the growing hole in your wallet.

Related Reading

• Good dog, bad bill: Veterinary care financing options
• Having Trouble Affording Veterinary Care? (HSUS)
• Medical Grants for Homeless Pets and Pets In Need
• Insurance, credit options can take the sting out of vet care

Trying To Rent With Pets

We all too often get surrender requests from folks who are moving to a new rental apartment or house and are being forced to choose between their pets and a place to live because of the new landlord's "no pets" policy.

The landlords' policies often stem from bad experiences with previous tenants whose cats peed on the carpets and hardwood floors or whose dogs angered neighbors with their barking, and a lot of expensive disasters in between. And sometimes the policies are a result of tenants who hoarded animals in their rented units, creating public problems with local health departments and law enforcement agencies.

Unfortunately, those "no pets" policies get extended to smaller animals that will never come in contact with carpets or make disruptive noise. The tenants-to-be acquiesce in the absence of any ideas for negotiating with landlords, and their pets wind up in rescues or shelters.

AAHA recently published an online article titled No Pets Allowed: Renting With Pets, which includes bargaining chips like separate security deposits for pets, contact information for previous landlords who let you rent with pets, and more. If you or someone you know is looking for a new rental home that will let you keep your pets, AAHA's article (and list of additional online references) is worth checking out.

 

Tips For Taking Better Photos Of Your Guinea Pigs

Let's face it, our beloved piggies can be tricky, ornery little devils to photograph. They wander off. They chew on a friend's ear or decide to clean their face just as you're framing a shot. Their varied coat colors make them blend into some backgrounds, and clash with others. But when you do pull off a good photo, boy, is it worth all the effort!

While trawling on the Web site for The Nate Berkus Show for an old episode on another topic, I stumbled across a segment on pet photography, featuring photography expert Me Ra Koh. Her tips include:

• Make like a fashion or home photographer and create a staged set. Remove things that clash. Create some kind of boundary to prevent your piggies from wandering "off set."
• Get your "models" into a calm, even Zen-like state. Have a handler nearby to help you; your two hands are already busy with your camera, you would be greatly assisted by another pair of hands to keep the piggies corraled.
• Get down to -- or below -- their level. You miss a lot when you're standing up.
• Use props to help spark their curiosity, animation, and cuteness. Frame your shot to emphasize the things you love most about your pet (e.g., their profile, their ears, etc.).
• Learn to use your camera's features (e.g., no flash, natural-light settings, continuous shooting mode) to increase your chances of getting a great shot with every shot. After watching Me Ra photograph a pair of dogs (and noting the similarity to fidgety pigs), my next camera is soooooo going to have a continuous shooting mode feature.

For the full details of Me Ra's tips, read the Photo-Recipe for Your Pets article on Nate's site. You'll absolutely want to watch her in action in the Pet Photography Tips video clip, in which you can see her help various owners take pictures of their rowdy dogs, multicolored cat, and wandering bunny.

On Grief & Loss

It's been a tough summer of departure, loss, and many many tears. Cindy has dealt with the loss of two long-time canine friends and some of the rescue's sanctuary residents. In the last two weeks of August, I lost two furkids within 11 days of each other. For both Cindy and I, the losses were unexpected and stunningly -- frighteningly -- quick.

In our personal lives and the rescue, Cindy and I have dealt with many losses over the years and it never gets any easier. Our coping skills might improve with the years, but we feel our grief fully with every death. And it never gets easier to find something comforting to say to each other. Everything sounds hollow, superficial, inadequate, and cliche in the face of profuse tears and deep grief. If we're face to face when we share our news, a hug with no words seems to say everything perfectly. On the phone and in email, words alone aren't up to the task.

Things like "He lived a good long life" or "She found a second chance with you that she wouldn't have found elsewhere" are little consolation. "There's a reason for everything" is also among the 10 worst things you can say to someone who is grieving.

When someone is grieving, our job as friend or family member is not to rationalize death, comment on how someone navigates through the stages of grief, or put our emotional discomfort on display. Our job is to comfort and support, with a hug, with an "I'm so sorry," with an "I'm just a phone call away," or any of the other best things you can say to someone who is grieving. You have to provide the space for your loved one to feel what they need to feel for as long as they need to feel it, even if they grieve differently than you. What is "healthy" or "normal" grieving is for mental health practitioners to assess, not the rest of us.

"Grief is an important healing mechanism, a way the psyche makes the transition from one situation to another," writes Marianne Williamson. "...it is dangerous to shut out or suppress our pain because events we don't process we are doomed to...act out in dysfunctional ways. The time to cry is when we need to cry. Only then will we ultimately not need to cry anymore."

Not cry anymore...but live with a hole in your heart that you feel daily and a hole in your living space that you see constantly. You know full well how blessed you were to have these furry friends in your life, and you agonize over whether you gave them as good as they gave you. Grieving is a bitch...and the doubt, the second-guessing, the would-haves, the could-haves, the should-haves, and the ought-to-haves don't make it any easier and invariably make it even worse (if that's possible). But you have to feel it all, however you need to feel it.

In the midst of my own grief, I happened to hear Jewel sing a previously unrecorded song of hers for the "In Memoriam" segment of the 2010 Emmys and found comfort in the lyrics she'd written for a friend who died from cancer. You can see that performance of "Shape of You" on YouTube, and read the lyrics on Metrolyrics. If you're grieving, give it a listen. If someone you know is, pass along the links. It might help others cope with their own loss.

All The Places Love Is Found

I've long ignored Valentine's Day on the grounds of it being a manufactured holiday, but one of the Web's most irreverent bloggers/artists is making me change my tune this year (just for this year).

Hugh MacLeod has long been known for his irreverent, sarcastic, sometimes profanity-laced, "cube grenades." This year, he's been doing "the love series" -- a collection of sketches that look at love from an often surprisingly heartfelt perspective.

One caught my eye because of how much every pet owner -- and especially those of us with the littlest pets -- can relate to its sentiment.

I don't think I have to elaborate on this. If you have a pet, you know all the words and emotions behind this sketch.

Now go hug your critters...

Thought For The New Year

During my Web travels earlier today, I found the following on Wayne Dyer's daily affirmation page on Heal Your Life (I've copied it here because it will be gone by Sunday):

If 2009 left you feeling frazzled and fatigued, perhaps Dyer's thought can help you make sure 2010 starts, continues, and ends on a happier (and more serene) note.

An Alternative To Sticky Roller Sheets

After zipping through yet another lint roller, I decided it was time to look for an alternative. 

My dog- and cat-owning friends have turned me onto the Fabric Sweeper for Pet Hair from Pledge. Originally made for cleaning pet hair off furniture and other home decor, my friends tell me they use this sweeper to get pet hair off of clothes as well. Pledge claims that one of their sweepers does the same work as 145 of those sticky sheets from a lint roller.

Certainly worth a try...it definitely puts less stuff in the landfills.

If you decide to try it, too, let us know about your experience with it.

Who Says We Can't All Get Along?

When you live with a couple of guinea pigs (or more), you inevitably learn a lot of things about communal living, sharing, sticking together in good times and bad, and so much more. The photos on the Web of happy guinea pigs cuddled together are so commonplace that they risk being perceived as cliche if people miss the fact that each photo is like a nudge from The Universe to remember what's truly important: love and peace.

So, to drive the point home that things like harmony, tolerance, and acceptance are possible if we can get past labels and appearances and learn to see the spirit that lies within, we guinea pig folks have to look to other species with legendary "animosities." Author and artist Cecelia Soprano recently sent me a video link of a pet cat and pet rats that begs the question, "Well, if they can get along, what's everyone else's problem?"

I love cats. I have a hard time warming up to pet rats (but wish them no harm). Even if the cat is really just tolerating the rats, these furry teachers should be able to persuade at least a few humans to re-evaluate their perspective on their own "sworn enemies."

Pets On Oprah

This past Friday, Oprah devoted her entire show to all things "pets". The show started off with a profile of Puppies Behind Bars, which demonstrated a point I blogged about last week, then proceeded with some unique don't-try-this-at-home wildlife adoption stories.

At the end of the show, she brought some two dozen pet owners and their pets out on stage to help show her huge viewing audience all the kinds of animals that can be adopted: cats, dogs, disabled/special needs animals, guinea pigs, rabbits, hedgehogs, birds, turtles, snakes, and more. Kudos to the show's producer and camera crew for making sure that each animal on stage got camera time. I liked what one owner said about how their pet "filled a space in my heart I didn't know I had."

I liked what Oprah said even more, stressing that we should only adopt pets when we're confident that we have the time, space, budget, and commitment to do so. Gesturing to the people and pets on the stage behind her, she encouraged the adoption option "if you're ready and committed...and it takes commitment, does it not?"

Bravo, Oprah. And thank you.

She's featuring pets in her June issue, which is on newsstands now -- and is pretty hard to miss with the pack of puppies that join her (including her newest pup, Sadie). Oprah's Web site also features a great article titled, Pick the Right Pet for You. Be sure to share the link with anyone you know who is considering bringing home any type of pet!

Another Way To Look Out For Small Animals

As the calendar prepares to turn from Adopt A Rabbit Month (February) to Adopt A Rescued Guinea Pig Month (March), and as our friends at Forever Feisty Chinchilla Rescue work to make March 4-10 "Chinchilla Appreciation Week," it bears mentioning that there are other ways we can look out for these three species (and all the others as well).

One big thing that everyone can do is to let their wallet and their shopping patterns do the talking. By this, I mean buying products that are not tested on animals, boycotting products that are, and...if you're so inclined...writing e-mails or letters to manufacturers who still conduct testing on animals and helping pressure them into stopping these testing practices.

Both Caring Consumer and Leaping Bunny offer lists and pocket-sized guides that help you find manufacturers who don't test on animals. (Caring Consumer also provides a list of companies that still do.) Products include cosmetics, health and beauty aids, and household products.   

All companies should take the same attitude as the Urban Decay cosmetics company, which pointedly says on its product packaging and on its Web site:

We DON'T do animal testing. How could anyone?