Guinea pig reference book

LMPigs

LMPigs

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We have a guinea pig book that we bought before we got our guineas as well as a couple that other people have purchased us. Unfortunately they all contain conflicting advice (with each other and with the forum!). I think this is because they are all varying degrees of out of date.

Is there a good up to date guinea pig reference book that anyone on here would recommend?

I find the guides on the forum very helpful and, of course, they are always up to date. The main reason I want to get a book though is because my very keendaughter tends to find all sorts of "helpful" information on guinea pig you tube channels and so forth, and if it doesn't agree with the advice here I have trouble explaining to her why one internet source would be better than another. I'm hoping that maybe a serious looking reference book would be a good way to solve this issue, but not if its also out of date of course!

We've also signed up to Guinea Pig magazine as recommended on here which I am confident will hold plenty of useful info, but I guess the format is less easy to use as a reference if one has a particular topic to look up.
 
I don’t know of any books I’m afraid, I’ve never actually looked for any either.

Could you print off the guides on here for her? Or summarise some things for her and print off?
 
The problem with books is they go out of date so quickly, where as the Forum is updated all the time. Printing off the Forum guides sounds like a good idea, maybe make it a project for your daughter to put them in a folder with the coloured card subject partitions, she could perhaps do some drawings for it as well.
 
I wonder if writing the guides out, rather than printing them, might be a good exercise. Sometimes it can help info stick better, but if she's writing them out she doesn't have to do it word for word. Maybe she could summarise it in a way she understands, keeping all the information but more...concise?

Not that I think our guides are wordy, because they aren't, they're great.
 
Thanks. I do get the point of the updating, and this is a clear advantage on the forum guides.

The issue with the guides is not that she is to young to read or understand them, it is that I believe, based on a number not factors, that they are more reliable than many other online sources. But it's hard to explain why this is.

I will provide an example to better illustrate the issue:

She has identified a number YouTube videos explaining how you can introduce and bond 3 or 4 guinea pig boars together and they will all live happily ever after. So, I point her to the guide on this forum that says that it is very unlikely that such a grouping would be a long term success. She can read and understand the advice here, but, from her perspective this is just one person's suggestion on the internet, and there are plenty of other people around in the internet saying something different, so who is to say which is correct?

Of course I can see that the forum advice is based on real know-how and many years of experience. Its just persuading a rather independent minded young person that is the difficulty. I'm sure we'll get there!
 
The key here may be making her understand it's not just one person's suggestion. A good portion of the guides don't just come from users' personal experience and know how, but from vets, from animal welfare advocates, from people who make things like this their job and their life's worth. I mean that can come across as heavy I know, but it is an important thing to lay claim to. Many things work for one person that don't work for someone else, and that's true in the guinea pig world as much as it is anywhere else, but while someone on YouTube can claim it worked for them, does the RSPCA? Does a vet well versed in guinea pigs and other small/exotic etc animals?
...yeah, that's still a tad heavy. There's gotta be a way to explain it better, but explaining things was never my strong point.
 
Some books we loved when we ran the rescue 10 yrs ago were ones by Peter Gurney and we found guinea piglopedia really good too. There will always be conflicting advice and so research further is needed but they were great.
 
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