Sponsor-A-Guinea-Pig has a new pair of piggies up for October! Cinnamon and Salizar are a senior pair of sweethearts-at six years old, they have been through adoptions, returns, lost mates, and now they’re going to spend the rest of their life at the rescue, living the good life. They met and fell in love in the rescue in their senior years.
SAGP hopes to raise $200 to fund two months of their care!
When Salizar (on the left) was just a young boy in the rescue he lost his eye in an attempt to assert dominance. He still found a loving adopter, and was able to be paired with other males successfully. He had to be returned to the rescue when his owner moved to New Zealand.
Cinnamon and her mate were returned to the rescue when her owner was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her owner was devastated to return them. The rescue wrote, “Collecting them from their Mom and watching their farewells was incredibly hard. Sadly she passed away several weeks later and Cinnamon’s beau also passed following surgery to remove a stone from his bladder.” Around the same time Salizar’s bonded mate, who was in poor health, passed away, and both pigs were lonely and depressed. The two were introduced and have now been bonded for years.
Cinnamon and Salizar have slowed over the years. Salizar suffers from arthritis and asthma, and needs his eye socket cleaned daily. He also suffers from impaction issues. Cinnamon is presently fighting an infection. The two pigs are still close friends who love each other deeply. “They snuggle together and still love to dine in style together..Salazar and Cinnamon are an ‘old’ couple, they do not run about their cage but rather paddle about it.” Thank you to Wee Companions for caring for homeless animals in their old age!
We are grateful to SAGP for featuring our own Piglet as August’s Piggy of the Month, and hope all our supporters will pay it forward by visiting SAGP to continue to support other needy Sanctuary piggies!
I’ve announced a couple of times that Piglet was chosen as the August beneficiary of Sponsor A Guinea Pig. I’m happy to report that SAGP gathered well over $200 in donations! That means this month’s tooth trimming was completely covered!
Here are some updates and new pictures of our Piglet. As always, click the thumbnail for a larger image.
Piglet is always waiting for dinner in (or under) her cuddle cup when I get home. You can see she still has a smudge of breakfast on her nose!
SO HAPPY DINNER OM NOM NOM!! Finally eating alfalfa. I mix it with a little timothy/bluegrass to try to trick her but that usually just gets pushed to the back
Wait, is there more?
A very happy ending.
We cannot give enough thanks to SAGP and all of the people who donated through this innovative program. It makes a huge difference in Piglet’s life, as well as in the lives of the other animals we can help, now that the whole month’s budget isn’t already earmarked for Sanctuary vetcare.
Please visit SAGP in September to support a new piggy, BOOTS!
He is an absolutely adorable skinny pig who was rescued from a tragic hoarding situation. His lifetime care is guaranteed by private donations and the volunteers of CA rescue Orange County Cavy Haven. Boots has kidney disease, and is on daily medication. OCCH is 501(c)3 so donations to Boots are also tax deductable. You can also sign up for a recurring subscription donation, which lets you automatically donate to a new piggy each month!
We’ve got a few new residents up here at the Sanctuary. On June 19, I spent about 5 hours waiting for Midwest flight 2704 from Raleigh to Milwaukee, which had a special climate-controlled, pressurized cargo compartment carrying three new Sanctuary residents. I spoke about Gracie in the last update, now it’s time to introduce Sadie & Chester!
Chester & Sadie are a bonded pair of piggies. Sadie is mostly white, with lovely gold and black markings on her head, and a slight coronet (swirl of fur on the forehead). Chester is fawn, red, and white, and is enormous (nearly 3 lbs, over 1300 grams). They came to us through some unusual channels.
When they were about 1 year old, they were rescued by our friends up at Cave Spring Guinea Pig Rescue in Virginia, and then placed into an adoptive home. But after nearly four years, they were returned. Cave Spring was inundated with surrender requests at the time, so having a pair of older pigs was hard on them. But we at ACR&S had very few adoptable pigs. Since these two were already bonded, altered and vet checked, we offered to bring them down to NC and offer them for adoption here, as we’ve done before with other Cave Spring piggies.
We knew that as 4/5 year old pigs, these two would be very difficult to rehome. Guinea pigs only have a 5-8 year lifespan, and we wouldn’t be able to guarantee to adopters that they wouldn’t die of old age very quickly. Also, unusually, Sadie is spayed and Chester is intact, so we couldn’t place them into a home with any other intact females. Chester is also aggressive towards other boys, so other intact boys were also out of the question. We’d pretty much be limited to adopters with no other pigs, who understood that they were taking on elderly animals and was prepared for the medical expenses that might crop up. That kind of adopter is pretty rare!
After several months of offering them up for adoption, we saw they were getting very few views on Petfinder, compared to our younger pigs. Since we were shipping up Gracie anyhow, we decided to ship them up as well, for entry into the Sanctuary. They endured the trip with good health and good spirits, despite having a leaky bottle and damp bedding by the time we made it home. They’ve already settled into the routine and learned when screaming makes the veggies come faster, and when it doesn’t.
We did have to make one special accommodation for these two: our cages are set up so that any empty cage I arranged for them would have to be next to a pair with an intact female. Regardless of how remote the possibility, we had to assume that Chester would scale the divider and impregnate the sow next door, so we had to modify the divider to prevent this. Fortunately, an advantage of having fat piggies is that they aren’t quite so athletic. He’s shown no interest in the other side of the divider at all!
We’ve got a few new residents up here at the Sanctuary. On June 19, I spent about 5 hours waiting for Midwest flight 2704 from Raleigh to Milwaukee, which had a special climate-controlled, pressurized cargo compartment carrying three new Sanctuary residents. I’m spreading their introduction over two posts, so today I’m pleased to introduce Gracie.
Gracie is a spayed female Californian rabbit, between 6 and 8 years old. She was owned for 5.5 years until a job transfer made her owner decide to give her up.
Californians are huge rabbits, in the 10lb range, having originally been developed for meat and fur production. Gracie’s size, age, and some fairly minor age-related health concerns would have made it nearly impossible to find an adopter for her, so although it’s not standard practice for owner surrenders, we agreed to a direct transfer to the Sanctuary.
This transfer would also be advantageous for us: we have an existing bonded pair of very large rabbits, Roo and BunBun. Roo is only 7 or so years old, but his partner BunBun is nearly 12. With BunBun clearly showing his age, we’ve been having to give thought to a future partner for Roo once BunBun passes. But we don’t have any other potential bondmates for Roo in the Sanctuary (our primary candidate, Jeannie, has proven beyond a doubt that she hates him and will murder him if given the opportunity), so practically any solution required bringing in another rabbit.
Ideally, it’s best to form a triple in a situation like this, so that there is no solitary grieving period when the eldest bunny passes; the other two can comfort one another. At the same time, making a triple is very difficult. The existing pair-bond is strained, and the difficulties of introduction and bonding are doubled. But I thought we might have a better than average chance with Gracie, Roo, and BunBun, because of some unique circumstances in their history:
Gracie has outlived two previous partners, both neutered males, so she has a proven track record of being able to bond with other rabbits. The members of the Sanctuary pair are both males, the most difficult pair to achieve, so adding in a female wouldn’t strain the relationship to the same extent as if they were a mixed-sex pair. Roo and BunBun also had a female third at one point early in their bond, when all three were still being offered up for adotion (Paula was later placed with one of our board members into a new pairing). Finally, since all the rabbits are members of large, mellow breeds, I didn’t expect the furious scuffling that can occasionally arise in introductions with smaller, more fiery breeds (Jeannie is an exception to this rule).
When planning an introduction, I always schedule it for a weekend when I plan to be home pretty much continuously. Rabbits do best when allowed to work out their dominance issues without too much human interference - one rule of thumb is, “don’t separate them unless you see blood”. Not strictly true, of course (see these pages for detailed HRS introduction techniques), but it gives you the idea that you want to interfere as little as possible. To do this safely, you have to be available to be home and to observe the rabbits carefully in case things turn sour.
So Friday night, I began the introduction. I decided to start by violating one of the main guidelines for intros: using neutral territory. Instead, I dumped Gracie into Roo & BunBun’s cage. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME, KIDS. It’s an excellent way to end up spending your Friday night at the emergency vet.
Whether by intuition or luck, I was right: there were no major problems. Gracie decided to show that she’s the new boss, and for all her enormous size (she’s a few pounds bigger even than Roo!), she spent some time chasing and humping both Roo and BunBun. Fortunately, both figured out quickly that they could just go into a litterbox and hide from her, and she’s too lazy and fat to follow for very long.
Once their chubby butts were all tired out and the chasing had stopped, I offered some fresh hay and some veggies and pellets to see whether they fought for resources. Not at all. They contentedly shared hay, veggies, and pellets, occasionally grooming one another’s noses or ears as they happened to brush against them. This is a very excellent sign and indicated to me that they were probably not going to escalate beyond mounting.
[Aside: In the picture above, you can see tufts of fur sticking out all over all three rabbits. In young rabbits, this could be a sign that they had been fur-pulling or biting one another, but in these guys, it’s just a result of their poor grooming habits. Failure to self-groom is a common sign of aging; BunBun in particular needs to be groomed by human hands every few days, otherwise he looks like a dandelion about to explode.]
After two full days and three nights, they’re still doing wonderfully. Mounting has almost totally diminished as of yesterday afternoon. This morning, I caught Roo and Gracie laying side-by-side (BunBun, as is his habit, was snoozing a few feet away in his hidy box). I think we have our triple, and now I have a little more peace of mind about Roo’s future when BunBun crosses the Bridge.
The next part of the “mini” Sanctuary in Morrisville are two of the boys belonging to the Jacksonville 48. I’ll leave the entirety of the Jacksonville Saga to Susan to tell, as it is largely her story, but I did end up with two of the boys from that group. Basically, a backyard breeder duped a fellow rescue into believing that they were a rescue and left her with 48 sick half-dead pigs.
I volunteered to foster, and I ended up with #20 (who became Picadilly) and #21 (who became Hobo).
Hobo’s tale is an illustrious one filled with humping and yearning after guinea pig women. He was one of the less spectacularly marked of the 48, so Susan paired with him Picadilly (an agouti satin) to help move him into a home. He got his name because of his ragged ears… we speculate that this breeder must have crammed pig after pig on top of each other and that there must have been nearly constant fighting. At his intake, he was probably only 8-9 weeks old.
They fostered with me for a good six months without any solid adoption leads, and Christmas quickly approached. They got stockings, and they got presents, and we realized that it was not in us to make the two of them go elsewhere. Shortly after Christmas 2005, Hobo’s problems began.
It started out with a scream in the night. He was screaming painfully while urinating, and was obviously in distress. He was rushed to the our current rescue vet immediately the next morning. A round of x-rays, intensive care, urinalysis, and other diagnostics revealed…. nothing. He was absolutely completely healthy. Lacking any other option, he was given a round of antibiotics and sent home.
The problem seemed to go away, but another problem had arisen. Having been separated from Picadilly, Hobo would no longer accept him. After several days of trying to rebond the two, it was given up, and Picadilly moved in with my first two guinea pigs, Gizmo and Mogwai.
A couple of weeks later, the problems resurfaced, and we went back to the vet, came back with more Critical Care (which is really good stuff, keep some in your house, seriously), more fluids, more Reglan, and more antibiotics. After a good two weeks of fighting tooth and nail to feed this poor pig (who was actually quite obnoxious when it came to being fed), I finally found the cause of the problem. He had a lump in his left testicle.
So back to the vet, and Hobo was neutered to remove the lump, which turned out to be a tumor surrounding an abscess. Then the fun began. Hobo abscessed a total of 3 times for a total of 8 weeks of antibiotics. He also rejected the suturing materials, which I discovered one horrifying morning when I found a small plastic string poking out of one of his surgical wounds. This was not due to the vet, who has performed many successful neuters for us before. Hobo is a genetic Frankenstein.
Finally, we healed him, and integrated him in with two spayed sows adopted for the purpose of being his friends, Lethe and Mnemosyne. It was decided that he was never really going to be a good candidate for adoption, given his history of aggression to males, and his extreme allergies to surgical materials, AND the fact that at the age of 1 year, he had already had a tumor removed. So he stayed with me.
Since then, Hobo has gone into stasis 6 times. He has had 3 sets of x-rays, and 4 urinalysises. He has also had 3 penis infections, and tends to produce grit when dehydrated. Because of his aggressive obnoxiousness, he has had 2 abscesses removed. We finally figured out that he was pinning the girls inside of pigloos and then marking them constantly until they finally bit him to escape. We removed the pigloos. Today, Hobo is 3, and he has already had more surgeries than many other elderly pigs.
Picadilly, his counterpart, has had less problems, but is in worse shape.
Pica (as he’s known) is a satin pig. Satin is a coat type on guinea pigs (much like teddy pigs, who have curly fur, or peruvians, who have long fur). The hair shafts of a satin guinea pig are hollow, which makes the pig especially “shiny”. Unfortunately, the price of having a pretty, shiny pig is an unpleasant death for them, in many cases. The gene which causes pigs to have these hollow hairs is very frequently accompanied by a disorder known as osteodystrophy. When a guinea pig has osteodystrophy, their bones begin to lose calcium. Their joints can “collect” this calcium, and become thickened, and it is often painful for them to walk and/or eat.
At one year of age, Picadilly began showing symptoms of osteodystrophy. It has progressively worsened, but he is now managed with pain medication and calcium supplements. Today, Pica lives in relative happiness with the addition of daily pain medication. Without his medication, he painfully hops, and becomes lethargic, refusing to move from his cuddle cup, even for his favorite foods.
Many intentional breeders, even today, deny that their guinea pigs have problems with osteodystrophy, yet none that I have talked to do baseline x-rays or screen for it. I noticed Picadilly’s hopping one winter afternoon. At that point, he showed no signs of weight loss, and was still speeding around with excitement after food. But I knew he was a satin, and I knew what the hopping was a portent of. It wasn’t until nearly another year later that he began showing severe painful symptoms. Had I not already had my baseline x-ray, I wouldn’t have thought it was osteodystrophy. But comparisons showed severe bone loss.
Very limited studies have been done because of the specialty nature of both the disease and the species it occurs in, but what limited research that is available points to extremely high statistical occurrence of this disorder in satin guinea pigs. Even sadder, at least as his adopted mom, is the fact that Picadilly is such a sweet guinea pig. He has the personality of a feather bed, and gets along with everyone. He and Mogwai truly love each other, and they have ever been tolerant of newcomers. It’s heartbreaking to watch such a kind animal going through such suffering, and knowing that there is no end to it. Not only is there no end to it, but that the suffering was purposefully produced, just so that someone could have a pretty shiny guinea pig.
Although the main sanctuary of ACR&S is up in Wisconsin, I do have several animals classed as Sanctuary living with me in North Carolina. They were adopted into my household because they were unadoptable, and because I am a sucker and couldn’t let them leave. Although these animals are officially part of ACR&S, as part of sanctuary care I provide them with all of their food and vet care to ease their burden on the rescue.
I have a total of 4 guinea pigs, and 2 rats that are classed as sanctuary residents due to their long term health or behavioral problems. The rats were my most recent addition, after the last time I officially said “no more ‘keeper’ animals”. (You would be surprised how few times “no more animals” actually means “no more until the next one that has nowhere to go”. Or maybe not.)
Phedre entered my life shortly before Christmas 2007. She had a pretty typical story for a rat. Someone had bought her from Petco to feed to their snake. Unfortunately for that person, she was way smarter than they were, and escaped the snake, and then the tank, and ran amok in their house for a couple of weeks.
When she was inevitably captured, they decided to take her back to the Petco and chuck her back into the bin with all the other rats. Fortunately for her, one of our volunteers overheard the saga at work, and agreed to take her (thinking that the rescue could find her a home once she was rehabbed a bit).
Unfortunately for Phedre she had (like most pet store rodents) a rather severe respiratory infection that had raged untreated while she was fending for herself in their house. Once our volunteer got her, she was immediately put on antibiotics. Because of this, she stayed at my house during the Christmas holiday so I could medicate her. That’s always how they get you.
The second night she was there, I headed to the bathroom to medicate her, and then realized I had forgotten to bring the syringe. I plopped her down in the tub to run and explore while I went to fetch it, and she stood on her back legs, reached for me, and let out a heart-rending cry. I knew she wouldn’t be able to leave my house.
Unfortunately for poor Phedre, her respiratory infection was so severe and had gone untreated for so long that it scarred her lungs, and now she permenantly wheezes. She gets a steroid/bronchiodialattor combination daily to help her breathe more easily, but we knew it would be nearly impossible to find a home who would buy her medication, especially since she was already around a year old by the time we exhausted our supply of antibiotic treatments. Rats with lung scarring also typically don’t live as long as ‘normal’ rats. Their expected lifespan is 1.5-2 years, in general, instead of the longer 2-3 years for a healthy rat.
So she did get to stay with me. Typical rats are very effusive and friendly. They like human interaction, and most enjoy being held and played with. Because of her early days, Phedre is afraid to be out of her cage. She’ll cower in your arms until she can return, and actively tries to climb back in if you take her out. She shakes in fear at being let loose on a couch, and ignores all food until she can go back to her safe place.
But she is still a rat, and she needed a companion. Rats are incredibly social creatures, and regardless of how much love, attention, and spoiling she received, one of her own kind to snuggle with, lay on, and share food with was essential. It took several months to find her a companion, but we did finally find a person doing private rehabilitation of rats, and I adopted Cecilie to live with Phedre.
Cecilie is about as opposite to Phedre as day is to night. Phedre is calm (by neccesity, with her poor breathing), demure, and careful. She grooms herself extensively, and makes sure that every single hair is in the correct position. Cecilie stampedes around like a bull, often falls into her food, and is frequently stained odd colors by the day’s treats. But they do love each other, and they’re frequently found curled up in a big rat ball snoring away. They follow each other everywhere, and Cecilie is helping Phedre to become more outgoing, and enjoy her treats (as seen to the left).
We had to euthanize Dora and Daphne last Friday. These are two rats who were pulled from the OCAS last summer. They had persistent illnesses and ended up never leaving foster care.
Sometimes it certainly seems like there’s more bad days than good in rescue. By and large that’s true - by the very nature of what we do, we see more negatives than positives. But overall, the good outweighs the bad - when that changes, you usually get out of rescue.
Partly, you keep the good on top because you’re constantly trying to make good out of the bad. Fr’instance: although Cinnamon died of lymphosarcoma last Monday, we were able to let the Pathology Club at the UW-Madison vet school use her body for a teaching session led by none other than Dr Steinberg, the author of the lymphoma article I cited a few weeks back. Hopefully some of the students will get interested in guinea pig medicine and down the road we’ll have a few new vets!
Sometimes the good is unexpected: This weekend our NC coordinator Jenn did a “Bunny Party” for a 5 year old girl who is rabbit crazy. The mom is one of those rare and wonderful people who are teaching all the right lessons at the right time. She knows that a child that age isn’t a good match for a bunny, but wanted to direct her daughter’s fascination into appropriate channels. So she arranged a bunny themed party where all the kids played HRS-inspired learning games, and Jenn visited with one of our adopted bunnies, Doc, for some supervised real-bunny interaction. Jenn was surprised at how quickly the birthday girl started repeating the important messages: don’t pick up bunnies to hold them, just pet them on the ground, etc. Personally, I wasn’t surprised at all. With a parent modeling the right behaviors that way, this girl is bound to be a perfect future adopter!
We also can make good by taking pleasure in what we do all the time. We had the good fortune to bring in two new piggies, one as a pet pig and one as a new Sanctuary resident. Honi came to us in the middle of February. She was going to make up a triple with our pet pigs Stinky and Cinnamon.
Honi was an owner surrender to the WI-GPR. She had lived for over two years in a 12″x12″ rubbermaid container. Occasionally, she was let out to run around on the floor with the owner’s other pigs, allowing her to get pregnant. It was after the second pregnancy that she was surrendered.
Due to her confinement and her poor diet, Honi developed into a soft, blobby little pig. She feels like she’s made out of soap suds and would just ooze right out of your hands. She’s not at all athletic and doesn’t have the muscles for the cage sprinting that some of our piggies have. However, her activity level has definitely gone up since meeting Stinky! She also had a heart condition, and is on a permanent blood pressure medication to help this.
Stinky was immediately in love (both with Honi, and with the idea of having two girlfriends), but Cinnamon, who was just starting to show her lymphoma, wasn’t so sure.
Honi and Stinky are alone again, but hopefully we’ll find another needy girl and finally be able to get them back into a triple. But it’s really wonderful to see her blossoming and running and playing with Stinky. Her 3′x7′ is a far cry from that pathetic little box she spent her last two years in.
Our new Sanctuary resident is a little intact boar named Freddie. He was being advertised on Craigslist - “Free pig with aquarium”. Apparently that owner got him from Craigslist too, along with the same aquarium, but now that her son had learned to walk, she was afraid he’d stick his fingers in the aquarium and get bitten. Apparently a lid was a foreign concept. So we expect that Freddie is probably 3 or so yeas old, and he has lived all his life in an aquarium.
For all this, he’s in surprisingly good shape. He had a bit of an URI when he came in, but that was treated by WI-GPR before he came to us. He was put in a side-by-side cage with two other single boars, and this weekend, we introduced them. They get along surprisingly well! Gonzo, there in the back, is another intact male, and Aragorn (hogging the water bottle) is a neutered male, and we expected some problems because both have always been very dominant, and we had no idea how Freddie would react. However, he was ecstatic to finally have a friend. He sleeps and eates very close to Gonzo. Also surprisingly, Gonzo has ended up on the bottom of the pecking order - he never threatens or challenges anyone, and if challenged, always backs down. It’s Aragorn who has turned out to be the big cheese. Freddie mostly defers to him, but Aragorn is always trying to remind the other two that he’s the boss. Maybe he has a complex about being the only neutered boy in the cage!
We’re still keeping their 2×6 totally empty of toys, just until we’re sure that they won’t fight if two of them unexpectedly walk around a corner and come face to face, but Freddie doesn’t seem to mind. All three of these boys have been alone for a long time, and it’s wonderful to see them enjoying each other’s company. Thus we find the silver lining!
Friday: Pictures of the Sanctuary and of the Plush Pets. F’real, the post is already written!
Knowing that you’ve made an animal’s life better, is the one thing that makes all the other crap in rescue bearable. A couple weeks back I had the pleasure of introducing one of our Sanctuary bunnies, Noelle, to a new potential partner.
First a little backstory:
Noelle came to us from our friends at the Cape Fear Rabbit Rescue in 2005. A elderly but gorgeous little grey agouti dutch, she was supposed to be bonded to one of ACR&S’ bunnies and then adopted, but she didn’t get along with either her new boyfriend or her foster mom. CFRR wanted us to keep working with her to find a bunny friend, and asked if we could keep her at ACR&S, rather than sending her back - she never left!
Noelle was probably about 6 years old when CFRR got her, and had been living alone in an outdoor hutch her whole life. She was incredibly fiesty, and didn’t really get along well with other rabbits. However, social interaction and companionship of their own kind is crucial to the health and well-being of rabbits. No matter how much we love our bunnies, humans just cannot take the place of having a bunny friend who sleeps, eats, and plays with them 24-7. So despite the fact that rabbit introductions can be dangerous and time-consuming, and despite the fact that we tried Noelle with partner after partner, with no luck, we were committed to continuing to try to find her a friend to live with.
In early 2007, we did an introduction with another older Sanctuary bunny named Flax. Their first date didn’t go as poorly as Noelle’s previous ones had, so we settled in for the long haul. After nearly seven months of living side-by-side and having supervised meetings, Noelle and Flax bonded!
Sadly, Flax passed away after just a few short months with Noelle. After allowing her to grieve for a short period, we once again started looking for a friend for her. We introduced her to CB, a 10-year-old chocolate dutch belonging to one of our volunteers.
They didn’t merely “get along”. Noelle’s reaction to her new friend was stunning:
She binkied and danced for a good 20 minutes solid, interspersed with the occasionally flop-and-roll, displaying her adorable fuzzy belly. The honeymoon didn’t last (CB, once he recovered from the shock of meeting a whirlwind, tried demonstrating his dominance, and they are still working out who’s the boss), but the two bunnies live happily side by side and enjoy daily playtime together.
Was Noelle perhaps afraid of being left alone for another 6 years, and demonstrating her relief? Did she just really like the change in scenery? We can only speculate, but it’s hardly even anthropomorphizing to say that she reacted with joy to meeting a new friend. It clearly demonstrates that providing companionship for these gregarious animals is critical to their happiness.
Adopters - do you have video of your adopted pets? Send them over and we’d love to feature them on the blog or on our YouTube channel! Next Tuesday: Advice for adopters on how to be picky about selecting a rescue!
