Wow I can't tell you how happy I am to bump into this thread. I have tried looking for a guinea pig thread since last year and before but couldn't find a satisfactory one or it's mostly long abandoned...so I just stopped coming into this thread...until now! I was searching for something and bumped into this. SO COOL!

I have a guinea pig called Pepiku which I bought and brought back from India back in early 2005. He was born on Christmas Day 2004. It was meant to be a gift to a Czech classmate but she couldn't bring it back to Czech Republic due to Lufthansa's policy for rodents(yeah poor Pepiku's considered a rodent) on airplane...so he ended up having a Czech name and coming home with me through MAS Cargo(very good service). That's also the reason why I ended up only having one gp rather than two for company coz if I get a male, I was afraid they might fight to death and I can't get a female coz my mom was already freakin' up when I brought him back.

And now he's going to be 5 years old which is quite old for a gp. He's not as active as before, not popcorning much. Most of the time he just squeaks for food or sleeping/relaxing with his head tilted or making his body look really really flat out... Ever since I changed his cage to a bigger one(long long time ago), he couldn't recognize the water bottle or wanted to get near it. No matter how I coaxed him, he just refused. So I just just give him adequate vege to give him enough liquid in his body. He loves to be pet on the head and under the chin gently but hates it if you touch below his waist or carry him.

Since last year, he suffers from impaction. Because he's getting old, his bowel muscles got weak and he wasn't able to poop properly, so all his poo poo just form into a huge ball and come out as a huge well...shit ball... Timothy hay helps ease it.

For some time now he's been shedding a lot of fur, in patches so I suspected parasites. My sister brought him to Dr Yeoh last year but it wasn't a satisfactory experience. According to my sis, the doc asked a female assistant to scrape Pepiku's skin(he was in pain) and used torchlight to check his body then just said there's nothing and gave him an injection. And now Pepiku still has the same problem and getting worse. I tried looking for good vets but found out that in Malaysia, it's usually just vets for dogs and cats but rarely good ones for guinea pigs. So I just saw a recommendation here for Dr Jenny so might try going to her. I hope she's good(and I mean professionally good) at treating guinea pigs.

Another thing that's been bugging me for some time now, has any of you thought about how you're going to manage a gp's dead body? One day they're all gonna die, what do you do? Is there somewhere to bury our beloved gp? I was thinking of my garden but afraid I don't have the strength to dig deep enough...

Yeah that's what I've heard as well, the pet cemetery can be very expensive...I'm also considering garden but the soil is so hard at home and when my imagination goes wild, I will think that when my gp dies, then if I don't bury him deep enough, I might suddenly have a gp skeleton sticking up or maggots climbing up the soil........ the only thing to do is to keep digging...just keep digging...just keep digging...

Here's some Pepiku pics I'd like to share with all of you...

When he's a baby...


he loves to hide in boxes...


now he's all grown-up...


Will share more another day...

That's a good idea. I can ask some workers around here to help me dig a hole if I can't dig deep enough...and IF the workers are around when the time comes.

Brown butt so cute. Pepiku has a mini brown patch under his right eye. He got it from his mom who was brown. He looked more like his dad who was also black and white.

He is...it's quite sad he's getting older...but that's life for every living being.

RIP kumo-chan. But congrats on those new babies. Hope they'll be healthy! What's a 'spin' technique?

It's so sad to see pets being put into such small and unsuitable spaces in pet stores in Malaysia. Even the bigger pets like dogs and cats have to stay in restricted spaces while waiting for customers to buy them. I guess it's either coz of ignorance of the pet shop owners or they're unethical. I also saw the piggies in Pet Safari in bad condition. That was last year, then after a few days, they don't sell them anymore. I wonder what happened to them. Looks like the situation didn't improved.

And it's so good to see that Tesco is selling those cubes(good price too). I remembered going through a frenzy around town looking for these cubes when I was making a C&C cage for Pepiku years ago. I couldn't even find those huge pieces of Cloroplast, not even in art shops. I finally had to improvise my own cage by making a large square wire cage and combining the largest pieces of Cloroplast I could find.

Btw, Nubby's soooo cute and adorable.

Agree. I put a cold tile for my gp just in case he feels hot so he can sit on it.