Pig-sitting - Penny the Pig

I recently house-sat for a family friend, and that included pig-sitting for a Xabi look-a-like. Here is cute Penny:

Goodbye Harvey

I haven't looked at this blog for a long, long time. I was looking through and realized I had a draft from 4/19/19 titled "Goodbye Harvey". I think I was too sad to post at the time, but I want to give him a final post.

Harvey passed away last April. I found him peacefully lying down half-in his little pigloo. He died most likely of heart failure due to his pneumonia, the poor little guy. He was such a sweet pea, and I miss him. I'm glad, however, that he is at peace (by this year, he would be an extremely long-lived guinea pig!) with his brothers, Biscotti and Xabi. Thank you, Harvey, for being your cute, timid, curious, mischievous, little self. I miss you and your brothers, and will always remember the role you played in a critical point in my life. 💕

Here are some of my favorite photos of that little Harvey-Houdini:

Fresh veggies for the Harvster.

On a pignic at Fountain Park, our apartment complex in Indiana.

He loved his teepee!

This was the photo on his Craigslist ad.

Before I found out cardboard boxes can give piggies static lice. Oops!

This is the day after my mom and I drove up to Anderson, Indiana to pick up these three little pig, pig, pigs. Isn't he adorable?

Harvey's illness

Harvey had the sniffles so we took him to the vet. Luckily we were able to find an exotic vet much closer to home. I'm so glad we took him in because it turns out what I thought was just sniffles was actually pneumonia. After doing some research, pneumonia is the most common cause of death with guinea pigs. 

As you can see, his lungs are very gray. The vet said that there should really be more black. The gray means there is fluid in his lungs.

We have him on antibiotics and also probiotics (strawberry flavored Activia). I completely changed his environment so that hopefully he isn't surrounded by the bacteria that caused this in the first place/Biscotti's stuff.

Below is an X-Ray of Xabi. As you can see, his lungs show a lot more dark space (air). 

Saying Goodbye again - Chief Engineer Biscotti Pippin

Last night we said goodbye to Scotti-boy. That makes it sound peaceful. It was not. But now he is out of pain and at peace. Luckily, we caught it early and within an hour he was out of pain. We do not know what happened. Heart failure, stroke, kidney stones, bloat, omental torsion, a combination of any of those - we don't know. 

It is hard to not think of those last moments. It was scary and shocking and I was in denial that we couldn't save him. After calling three emergency vets, two exotic vets, and one the best in the nation back in Indianapolis, which would have been at 1 am EST, (I wasn't kidding when I said I was in denial), we made the decision to euthanize Scotti. His condition was disturbing, and that is not what I want to remember.

So this is my attempt at remembering the good times with my little piggy. He was the sheriff of the town - always rumble strutting his way around the cage. He was the king of the pip-pip-pip exploratory noises and the loudest wheeker of the bunch. We buried him next to Xabi and in guinea pig burial fashion, he was laid on top of a bed of timothy hay. 

I have posted my favorite photos of him below. Rest in peace little guy.

This is the first week of when we moved into our house. The grass was overgrown and I set the boys to work at mowing it down.

Curious Scotti.

Jedi Biscotti. We often would hold the piggies in our hoodie pockets. Justin, in particular, would have "study sessions" with Scotti while working on homework in grad school.

What a feast! Biscotti loooooved corn and parsley.

Classic Scotti move. Sit IN his hay bin.

Enjoying the loft and bed. 

This was when we went on a "pignic". 

Thanksgiving glamour shot.

Another one taken at our house. Here he is on the cool sidewalk during a summer day.

One of the first photos of Biscotti. I used to bring home boxes from the deli for the pigs to run around in. He's so little here!

Chilling out in the pig castle.

 Here is one of my favorite photos. This is me skyping home when we were living in Indiana. He's my buddy.

Black & Orange & White

These are a few of my favorite things.

Happy Pigversary!

Three years ago yesterday we adopted the three little pig pig pigs. We celebrated with carrot cake for the humans, and a fresh piggy salad for the boys: green lettuce, cucumber, sweet red, orange, and yellow mini-peppers, carrots, fresh parsley, and cherry tomatoes.

I'm really missing Xabi, but it was fun to clean Scotti & Harvey's cages and hear them squeak and pip around before discovering their delicious salads. 

Happy pigversary!

Happy Thankspigging!

Pool Pigs

Summertime and the Livin' is Easy

Lately I have been sort of happy-sad about getting Biscotti & Harvey out to eat grass. Happy because they are so happy to have fresh grass and clover. As soon as you set them down they start eating at turbo-speed.

But it's also bittersweet because Xabi never got to fully experience eating grass. When we were in Indiana, it was too risky to set them down on grass that had ticks. Then, while in Utah he got a little taste but it was in mid-March and too chilly to stay outside very long. Once it warmed up he was too weak and sick to be taken outside. Even if he had a burst of energy, he didn't have the ability to eat anything that wasn't in liquid form. So although it's really fun to take the two pigs out, I always feel a twinge of grief for Xabi.

Anyway, I didn't actually mean to make this a sad post, so I'll continue to the happy parts of the post. When we first moved to the house we're now in, the lawn had not been mowed in a really long time. In other words, it was piggy heaven! Here are some photos of Biscotti and Harvey in their dream environment.

Saying Goodbye

I haven't been able to bring myself to write this post until now. Six days ago we lost Xabi to surgery. We were given the option to either try a risky surgery where we could lose him that day, or he would just get worse and die slowly. We chose the surgery. Part of the saddest part is that he did actually survive the surgery, but died the next morning. I miss him so much, but I'm glad he isn't in pain anymore and I'm glad we gave it one last shot to improve his life.

I don't want to dwell on his death. I want to write this post to celebrate that sweet, curious, feisty, smart little pig. Here are some of my all-time favorite pictures of our little Xabster.

Cute Biscotti

He's all tuckered out!

Xabi: Answers

We have finally gotten some concrete answers for Xabi. I noticed that his eye was really bad and that he started having discharge in his ear. He was losing weight and was making pained noises quite a bit. We took him to the specialty vet. This time we were able to see the real specialist, not just the vet tech. We dropped him off at 8 am and didn't get to take him home until around 5pm. This is what we found out.

We already knew he had a nerve deficiency on the right side of his face. We were told this could have been a birth defect or from a traumatic injury. The vet told us that she did dental work because his teeth were very overgrown and uneven. The reason they are overgrown is because he is unable to grind them properly due to his TM Joint being partially deteriorated. His TM Joint is partially deteriorated (as she could view by dental X-Rays) because he had an ear infection (hence the discharge) for a very long time. The ear infection has actually been around so long that it has progressed into a bone infection. His middle ear bones are deteriorated. In fact, so long, that she believes that is what has caused his nerve deficiency.

The vet gave us an option. The only way to treat the bone infection and his hollowed out middle ear is with surgery. Without surgery, the vet indicated, we will just be temporarily throwing antibiotics at a bigger problem. However, there are only 4 known cases EVER of this particular surgery on a guinea pig. 3 of those cases resulted in the death of the guinea pig within days of surgery. 1 of those 3 cases were performed by this vet. If the surgery was successful, it would be an open gaping wound on Xabi's head. The fact that this vet visit was 1 week before we were moving, the fact that there was only a 25% survival rate, that it would have cost easily $3,000 when all was said and done without the guarantee of him even surviving, plus the fact that it wouldn't solve his nerve or dental issue, made us decide to just do the best we can.

So, the vet did the dental work to grind down Xabi's teeth, and gave us antibiotics, pain medication, and critical care, which is like a little piggy hay malt-o-meal that I feed him with a syringe. We also do physical therapy with him to keep his teeth from overgrowing again. Luckily we do have a resource of a good exotic vet who actually trained under the vet specialist we saw right here in Utah.

After taking care of Xabi under this new medical regiment every day at noon, he actually is doing really, really well. In fact, he has gained 60 grams already and is much more active and curious than before. He is eating on his own a lot more, and he is also making a lot less croaking/grunt noises, and back to his happy wheeks. It's fantastic. We know that it won't last forever and at one point in time, we'll decide that maybe it's time to say goodbye, but I'm really happy that he seems to be thriving.

In fact, the vet said most baby guinea pigs don't survive ear infections that aren't treated right away. I'm hoping that he really did have a birth defect that explains his nerve deficiency/jaw issues, and that his ear infection was more recent/can be completely treated with the antibiotics we have. Crossing my fingers!

Road Trip!

We did it! Justin graduated with his master's degrees and we packed everything up, including the piggy boys, and moved back home. I was really worried about moving 1500 miles with these little guys, but they actually did mostly well. Harvey was pretty stressed, though, and dealt with a lot of bloating as a result. In fact, it wasn't until the 3rd day of driving that he even moved off of his little cushion. Poor little fella.

 "Hey. Hey, heyheyheyheyhey. Hey guys."

"Are we there yet?!"

Biscotti, resting on his cushion. 

 Poor Harvard, for about 2 days he just stayed glued to his little bed. I think the rumbles in the road scared him. 

 We set up their full cage with hay, water, pellets, veggies, and beds. 

 Little Xabi had his own cage. Partially because 3 pigs wouldn't work in the larger cage (Which was divided in two in order to separate Harvey and Biscotti), but also because he needs extra care. More details on that in the next post.

Xabi got cuddles when I took him out to handfeed him. Cute little guy was sleepy here.