My son wanted a pet for his upcoming 11th birthday - however we were limited in the fact that my daughter (who was coming up to her 8th birthday) was frightened of literally anything that moved (dogs, cats, birds etc).
I always had the impression rescue centers were for dogs and cats - so we several lengthy chats with our local pets at home staff and decided a guinea pig would be ideal as a first time pet. What they dont tell you though is that guinea pigs require a lot of looking after (well i think so anyhow). So 5 days before his birthday we went to pets at home armed with £120 in our pocket (we'd already seen the perfect piggy the previous day but i wasn't convinced it would still be there) - anyhow he was and we called him Homer.
My daughter instantly took to him and after finding this forum we were advised to get Homer a friend - which we did around 6wks later (again a pets at home purchase) - bonding went great, mainly because some 6wks later we found out that JJ was in fact a girl :{ and a very pregnant one at that.
In between us finding out JJ was pregnant i responded to a local advert for piggies for sale (sadly advertised as ideal snake food) - turns out this was a breeder off-loading some of their stock so as i'd already got what i believed was 2 boys i said i could only take boys as i didn't want to upset the apple cart - this took my number to what i though was 4 boars.
Roll on a few weeks and JJ gave birth to 1 boy and 1 girl - Summer stayed with her mum and LB took his place with his father - now i'm at 6 pigs.
It wasn't until reading one of Vicky's posts showing off pigs she'd just had come in when we all fell in love with 'Wexford' a coronet boy who'd been bought as a companion for a cat and dog and because things didn't go to well (mainly because the dog thought he was dinner) he was shoved in to the only cage they had 'a bird cage' complete with live birds!
The original plan was to have Wexford live with my two girls JJ and Summer - but bonding failed and after me being contacted by someone pleading to take their single sow (now known as Tulisa) my numbers rose to 8 @)
A mixed bag really: 2 pet shop piggies - two pregnancy piggies - 3 semi-rescue piggies - and 1 real rescue boy x)