Guinea Pig Connection

Something New For Piggies To Tunnel Through

We know that piggies most love things they can crawl through or crawl under, so we're always on the prowl for something new to entertain them.

A few months ago, I happened upon Super Pet's new Natural Corn Husk Tube in an independent pet supply store. My girls enjoy their Chubes and Chewbulars well enough, but I could tell some of the zsa zsa zsu was gone. So I bought a large one, popped it into the cage, and waited to see the reaction.

They became obsessed with the thing. Such shredding and tearing I've never heard, and when they needed a break from tearing off the corn husk they worked on deconstructing the tunnel itself. It took them just about 3 days to strip the thing bare, and the edges of the tunnel were so raggedy it looked like badly made fringe. I almost felt sorry for the thing under their relentless remodeling.

The Corn Husk Tube seemed to provide a more-than-adequate challenge. Where the veggie-dyed paper on the other tubes I mentioned comes off fairly easily, it takes serious effort to strip a Corn Husk Tube down to the cardboard. The bonus is that the corn husk has a delightfully noisy crunch that clearly appealed to the girls' taste buds. There was a clear sense of accomplishment in that 2x5 C&C cage when the tunnel was demolished.

Unfortunately, when I went back to the store they didn't have any more -- and continued not to have them for weeks. Searches in other stores turned up nothing. In the meantime, the girls made it clear that everything else I offered them fell far short on the satisfaction scale. (I felt like a negligent pet parent. [slapping my hand punitively] Bad mommy! Bad BAD mommy!!) Thankfully, I finally found the tubes on Amazon and ordered several.

Young guinea pigs definitely need the medium size, and full-grown pigs definitely require the large size. (The medium size will be outgrown quickly enough.) I'm starting to see them more consistently in brick-and-mortar stores (particularly independent retailers), but online retailers still seem to be the most reliable sources.

When you do find 'em, do yourself and your piggies a favor -- buy two (or three).

New Year. Same Fight. New Focus.

Last April, the rescue was thrown a curveball when Cindy had to step away on medical leave. We suspended surrender intakes for several months, canceled vacation boarding for the remainder of the year (resulting in a loss of much-needed funds), and continued caring for the sanctuary and remaining adoptable pigs.

Since then, all the emails coming into the rescue have been routed to my inbox. I field care questions every night after work, and field surrender requests. For the families who could continue housing their guinea pigs until new homes were found, I screened adoption applications and made many successful matches. I also fielded adoption inquiries that proved to be wholly unsuitable for pet stewardship in general, and guinea pig stewardship in particular. There's been a lot of emails, a lot of phone calls, a lot of paths crossing that would not have happened for me if I hadn't stepped in for Cindy.  

Last fall, we reshuffled the board positions that had been in place since 2005. Cindy founded the rescue in April 2004. I joined her a year later. I remember well the challenges she faced when she started the rescue. I remember the newbie questions we got from people who visited our events and came for their adoption appointments. I remember the reasons we heard from the people who wanted to surrender their pigs to us. I remember how many potential adopters came to us wholly uninformed about the scope of responsibilities that come with pet stewardship. I remember what we saw, heard, learned, experienced, and struggled through in the beginning...as well as all the years since. 

What has struck me and frustrated me over the last 9 months is how little has changed for pets in general, and guinea pigs in particular. 

Last year I participated in a couple of online courses through the Humane Society University. I approached the courses through the lenses of The Guinea Pig Cause and The Exotics Cause, and my homework for those courses drove home the scope of effort required to improve things for guinea pigs, for their counterparts in the category of "small & furry exotics," and for all the other exotics who have feathers, scales, shells, webbed feet, and so on. 

In October, I took an online course through the Institute for Humane Education, which proved to be even more intensely reflective than I'd already anticipated. Again approached through the lenses of The Guinea Pig Cause and The Exotics Cause, the coursework rocked me to my core. 

I am frustrated by how little has changed for guinea pigs and the other exotics. More to the point, I am frustrated that there are still so many members of the human species who have not evolved into kindness, compassion, responsibility, and accountability.

And so 2014 will be a year of renewed focus and determination. All the care questions and all the lessons learned will be pulled from archived emails, adoption applications, screening phone calls, adoption appointments, exhibits and events -- and will find their way onto this blog and our main website. There are so many animals who need our help, and so many guinea pigs who have been helped in this rescue whose experiences and stories can't be forgotten. 

I hope you'll stick with us in this new effort, and invite your friends to come visit us as well. The animals need as many champions in the human species as they can get -- and they need us more than ever. 

What Relentless TLC Can Do To Mites

When I left off with Rolo's story, the excruciating itching caused by the mites had led Rolo to self-mutilate, adding more open wounds to the ones he came to us with. Cindy and the vet had put him in a body wrap and started a course of prednisone. To comfort him, Cindy spent many evenings with him on her lap watching TV. On weekdays, Rolo went to work with her due to her concern that he'd try and scratch himself and get a leg caught in the bandage.

Although many of the open sores had closed up, the itching was still intense enough that whenever the body wrap was taken off, he'd immediately start scratching, hurt himself, cry out in pain. Even if he didn't scratch right away, the new skin was tight and the smallest movements pulled and tugged at it, upsetting him.

The first day that Cindy left him at home while she went to work, Rolo tore his bandage off and opened a wound on his back. So back to work he went. Cindy kept him in small cages to restrict his movements; with one cage in the kitchen and one in the bedroom, Rolo was always with her and she could always catch him quickly if he tried again to tear off the bandage.

In mid-July, Rolo returned to the vet. Dr. Albin prescribed an antibiotic ointment called Animax to put on Rolo's back each day when Cindy changed the bandages. The recommendation was to keep Rolo bandaged until the sores completely healed and his hair grew back.

By early August, his skin was healed and his hair was filling in all the bald spots (though not fully grown in). But Rolo was still having trouble with itching and discomfort, so Dr. Robbins took some cultures and sent them to the lab. The result: Pantoea Bacteria, which is associated with, among other things, wound infections. The vets had never heard of this in guinea pigs before. The godsend was that the bacteria was sensitive to familiar antibiotics like SMZ, Baytril, and Doxy.

Understandably, after such a hard battle, Rolo's exhaustion was palpable and his eating choices narrowed exclusively to leafy greens. His front teeth showed some mild, uneven wear; Cindy prayed that he wouldn't have dental problems on top of everything else. As the new antibiotics started working on the pantoea bacteria, Cindy and Rolo settled in for a long recuperation.

These days you would hardly recognize Rolo from those photos you saw in Part I and Part II of his story. He has a thick Abyssinian coat, and he's plumpety-plump-plump. His eyes are bright and his coat has a good healthy color. But his battle aged him, and in his energy you feel the been-through-it-all wisdom and fatigue only found in those who have been to hell and back.

Moderately social, he's more reserved than most piggies and Cindy is his Preferred Human. A little too withdrawn, Cindy attempted several introductions to find him a roommate. After a getting-acquainted phase, a successful match was found in Bentley.

Sociable and a little rambunctious, Bentley seems to have easily found a balance between pulling Rolo out of his shell and giving him the space he needs on his quieter days. In many of the photos Cindy has taken of them, there's yet to be much (if any) snuggling between them--yet Bentley is rarely far from Rolo.

Rolo will almost certainly remain in the sanctuary. When you see him and Cindy together, it's impossible to envision him with any other human caregiver. They've left imprints on each other's heart and separating them would replace the imprints with holes.

What Mites Do To Guinea Pigs (Part 2)

In the first installment of this mini-series, I introduced you to Rolo and shared the story of how he found the rescue. I admit fearing that in my effort to make a needed point, I might have gone too far with the photos and the emotion. It was hard to be around Rolo on July 2 and not be emotional and angry; it's hard to remember that day and not feel all the same emotions again. 

Reassurance came from one of the blog's email subscribers, Jennifer Wright from Texas, who emailed to say that Rolo's story helped her put the pieces together about what was troubling her new guinea pigs (who, it sounds like, came to her with mites). So, onward... 

You'll remember that I said in Part 1 that Rolo got worse before he got better. Once Cindy started throwing the full course of medicine at him, the mites took their last stand on Rolo. A gently administered bath removed the dirt, mite debris, loose hair, and flaky skin; if nothing else, getting rid of all that old icky stuff raised his spirits and strengthened his will. 

But the mites didn't go away quietly and Rolo was consumed by the itchiness. He itched and he itched and he scratched and he scratched. And he tore himself up in the process -- wherever his nails could reach. His back and his neck...

...his sides...

...and his face...

Nothing calmed down the itching. Rolo scratched and he cried, and he scratched and he cried. When the blood dried and the wounds would start to scab over, it was one more thing that pulled at his tender skin and made it itch. And so he'd scratch and he'd cry -- and cry louder. And when he cried, Cindy would flinch and run to him. 

She was running out of ideas, and so was the vet. Then, a brainstorming exchange on the GuineaLynx forums yielded an idea. 

The wearable piggy wrap, constructed of gauze and bandage, gave Rolo some peace. He couldn't scratch at himself, and the wrap seemed to help calm down the itching. As the healing started, Rolo had some free time on his paws. Time to rest, socialize with other pigs, and eat -- eat a lot. And so he stayed wrapped for the rest of the summer. 

Stay tuned...the story gets better from here...

What Mites Do To Guinea Pigs (Part 1)

The call came in at 5:15 on the evening of July 2: a guinea pig had been found abandoned in a cardboard box on a path near a reservoir in Fairfield by someone who was out walking a couple of dogs. The day had been hot, one more in a series of uncomfortably hot days, and our first concern was heatstroke and dehydration. 

When I retrieved the pig, he was in a cardboard box with a Chube, a half-filled water bottle, and a food dish with a few food pellets in it. Gisella, the young lady who'd found him, said she'd been unable to get a good look at the piggy (because he wouldn't leave his Chube) but thought she saw a bite on his back. It was by the grace of God she'd found him; the piggy was left on a path she walked only infrequently, but that afternoon something -- Something -- pushed her down the path, she thought, to give the dogs a change of scenery. 

What I could see was dull eyes, dirty fur, and a lot of flakes in the fur. The piggy had no trouble accepting the romaine lettuce and carrot that I placed in the box. I called Cindy to tell her I was bringing him to Durham that night, instead of fostering at my place until the weekend, because something was very wrong and I knew she had a variety of medications on hand that I didn't.

When she lifted the piggy out of the cardboard box 60 minutes later, she was as horrified, angry, and worried as I was when she saw his condition. Considering some of the horrific cases she's taken in over the last 8 years, it said something that she wasn't sure if he could be saved. 

He was thin. His eyes were surrounded by crusted discharge. Easily 75% of his hair was gone. Where there had once been hair was bare, scratched-up skin and layers of dandruff-like flakes. A couple of places were scabbed over, where he'd scratched himself until he bled. 

He cried out in pain when Cindy gingerly lifted him from the box. He cried -- I'm not exaggerating -- when you lightly touched the tip of a small clump of hair with a gentle finger. He cried at every kind of touch in between. Each time Cindy touched him to give him medicine, she'd have to wait over a minute to touch him again because physical contact left him quivering, twitching, and almost seizing. In record time, she managed to give him Metacam (for pain), antibiotic, ivomec (for mange mites), and Vitamin C. We both cast up prayers, because neither of us thought he'd live through the night. 

Every time he cried I alternated between wanting to cry and wanting to put my fist into whoever neglected and abandoned him (and I'm not a violent person). Every time we looked into his dull, listless eyes, our hearts broke. Every time he twitched and flinched, pieces of us died inside. 

This doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen over a weekend. It doesn't happen in a week. This takes time. We've had people surrender pigs to us who were missing half the hair that this little guy was, and listened to them try to convince us that it "just happened in the last couple of days"...as if Cindy wouldn't know better after 950+ pigs and 8 years.

This is what mites do to guinea pigs.

This is what a neglected guinea pig looks like. 

Cindy named this little guy Rolo. His story gets worse before it gets better. 10 weeks. $600 in diagnostics and treatment. Numerous vet visits. Boundless patience and compassion. 

I'll be telling his story in installments, because the story and some of its pictures are too overwhelming to take in at once. 

Stay tuned...

Is It Too Hot To Talk About Cozy Cups?

We're always on the lookout for new sources of things to make a small critter's life luxuriously comfortable and, fortunately, there is a growing community of craftswomen opening up shops on the Web.

(I say "craftswomen" because, so far, everyone we've found out about is female. There may be men out there making stuff...we just haven't run across them yet.)

We have to hand it to this community, they do their best to support the small critter rescues. (Fabric is not cheap, even if you take advantage of every coupon and sale at places like Joann's Fabric & Crafts.) So we do our best to give them exposure, and hope you'll try their products and spread the word about them through your favorite social media channels.

Debbie Warren, who lives in southeastern Connecticut, opened her own online business named Simon's Shoppe. She's been very generous to the rescue. The pigs love the comfiness of her cage accessories, and Cindy loves their durability. Currently, you can find Simon's Shoppe on Facebook. For those who aren't on Facebook and don't want to be (like me), hopefully Master Simon will consider setting up his Shoppe someplace like Etsy (hint hint...nudge nudge). In the meantime, you can contact her at SimonsShoppe [at] gmail [dot] com.