Contents Overview
1 What This Collection Is About
2 Guinea Pigs as Pets
- Family and Classroom Pets
- Sourcing Your Guinea Pigs, Common Pitfalls and Your Customer Rights
- Pet Owners with Anxiety: Practical Tips for Sufferers and Supporters
- Naming your Guinea Pigs and Finding Out the Breed
- Guinea Pigs as a Species: Facts, Development and Social Aspects
3 Living Environment
- Housing (with sourcing tips)
- Bedding (with sourcing tips)
- Enrichment, Safe and Unsafe Toys and Member Recommendations
- Lawn Time and the Outdoors
- Irritants, Weather Extremes and Fireworks
4 Diet and Drinking (with sourcing tips)
5 Settling In and Handling
6 Grooming and Life-Long Health Monitoring
- Grooming Care
- Vital Health Monitoring
7 Companionship and Behaviour
- Companionship
- Understanding Behaviour
- Gender Specific Aspects
8 Illness
- Early Signs of Illness and Spotting What Is Normal or Not
- Wiebke's Guides to the Body: Normality and Common Illnesses
- Vet Visits Info and Tips; Insurance and Payment Support
- Serious Illness and Emergency Care Support
- Owner Illness/Pregnancy/Immuno-depression and Inter-Species Contagion (incl. Covid info)
9 Further Helpful Information
1 Welcome and What This Collection is about
Hi and welcome to our friendly forum
New pets and new pet ownership are always both a very exciting but also a rather anxious time.
The information guide links below have all been specifically written to help you to a good start in terms of your piggies' environment and diet as well as settling them in and making friends with them; understanding their behaviour, caring for them and learning how to spot what is normal and not as well as being prepared for any necessary vet care. We have also included information on the most common pitfalls with newly bought pets and your customer rights in this case as well as practical family advice and considerations.
The guide links contain all the practical little how-to tips and step-by-step information that will help you in navigating all the little tricky details and questions that we cannot necessarily explain in every single thread but that many new owners often don't have the courage to ask about.
You are of course always very welcome to ask any questions you have (however seemingly insignificant or strange) in our various Care Sections with the confidence of getting a friendly, factual answer and in the knowledge that there are quite a lot of readers that would love to know the same thing, too!
We have a much more extensive owners information collection for all the little and large problems that can come up along the way. The larger collection also includes more in-depth information on guinea pigs as a species in their own right. It may be worth bookmarking for later use: Comprehensive Owners' Practical and Supportive Information Collection
The guides format for our extensive information resource on this forum allows us to constantly add to and to update our information as needed. We are all still on a learning journey and are still in the process of learning to understanding and caring better for our beloved piggies, after all... and the guinea pig world as well as our knowledge and concept of welfare are also constantly developing.
Please accept that we are a rescue-friendly pet owners forum and do not support any form of intentional breeding or competition showing.
Since we are a public space that is not part of social media, we cannot accept members under 18 years due to international protection laws. If you are younger, you can still read our information and are welcome to join once you are legally old enough. Anybody lying about their age will be banned with immediate effect in order to protect our forum.
1 What This Collection Is About
2 Guinea Pigs as Pets
- Family and Classroom Pets
- Sourcing Your Guinea Pigs, Common Pitfalls and Your Customer Rights
- Pet Owners with Anxiety: Practical Tips for Sufferers and Supporters
- Naming your Guinea Pigs and Finding Out the Breed
- Guinea Pigs as a Species: Facts, Development and Social Aspects
3 Living Environment
- Housing (with sourcing tips)
- Bedding (with sourcing tips)
- Enrichment, Safe and Unsafe Toys and Member Recommendations
- Lawn Time and the Outdoors
- Irritants, Weather Extremes and Fireworks
4 Diet and Drinking (with sourcing tips)
5 Settling In and Handling
6 Grooming and Life-Long Health Monitoring
- Grooming Care
- Vital Health Monitoring
7 Companionship and Behaviour
- Companionship
- Understanding Behaviour
- Gender Specific Aspects
8 Illness
- Early Signs of Illness and Spotting What Is Normal or Not
- Wiebke's Guides to the Body: Normality and Common Illnesses
- Vet Visits Info and Tips; Insurance and Payment Support
- Serious Illness and Emergency Care Support
- Owner Illness/Pregnancy/Immuno-depression and Inter-Species Contagion (incl. Covid info)
9 Further Helpful Information
1 Welcome and What This Collection is about
Hi and welcome to our friendly forum
New pets and new pet ownership are always both a very exciting but also a rather anxious time.
The information guide links below have all been specifically written to help you to a good start in terms of your piggies' environment and diet as well as settling them in and making friends with them; understanding their behaviour, caring for them and learning how to spot what is normal and not as well as being prepared for any necessary vet care. We have also included information on the most common pitfalls with newly bought pets and your customer rights in this case as well as practical family advice and considerations.
The guide links contain all the practical little how-to tips and step-by-step information that will help you in navigating all the little tricky details and questions that we cannot necessarily explain in every single thread but that many new owners often don't have the courage to ask about.
You are of course always very welcome to ask any questions you have (however seemingly insignificant or strange) in our various Care Sections with the confidence of getting a friendly, factual answer and in the knowledge that there are quite a lot of readers that would love to know the same thing, too!
We have a much more extensive owners information collection for all the little and large problems that can come up along the way. The larger collection also includes more in-depth information on guinea pigs as a species in their own right. It may be worth bookmarking for later use: Comprehensive Owners' Practical and Supportive Information Collection
The guides format for our extensive information resource on this forum allows us to constantly add to and to update our information as needed. We are all still on a learning journey and are still in the process of learning to understanding and caring better for our beloved piggies, after all... and the guinea pig world as well as our knowledge and concept of welfare are also constantly developing.
Please accept that we are a rescue-friendly pet owners forum and do not support any form of intentional breeding or competition showing.
Since we are a public space that is not part of social media, we cannot accept members under 18 years due to international protection laws. If you are younger, you can still read our information and are welcome to join once you are legally old enough. Anybody lying about their age will be banned with immediate effect in order to protect our forum.