Danielle Smith
Teenage Guinea Pig
I've had my pigs for two months now and they bring a huge amount of joy into my life. I've slowly been taming them, and they'll now run over for a treat if I put my hand in the cage or call them. They hate being picked up and they despise laptime (I think they'd much rather be doing other things!). Things are moving forward nonetheless. Unfortunately, I've not been in a great place personally for the last few weeks and I've had a bit of stress with my guinea pigs as they are not bonding well at all -- this becomes relevant in a bit.
This morning one of my pigs almost fell off my lap... I had just finished feeding him and he shot off like a rocket. I gently picked him up and placed him back on my lap. After he tried to abseil down my leg again, I should have listened and put him back in the cage. Instead, I lost the rag, put him on my lap again and fondled his ears forcefully and kind of yanked his chin up with my forefinger
. During these proceedings he squealed, but it was the quiet "stop doing that" kind and not the "ow that hurts" or "I submit!" sort.
Nonetheless, I know what I did was absolutely not right, and I feel so horrible. I've read countless threads and stickies on bonding with your guinea pig, and I shouldn't have expected either of them to become a lap pig just because, and certainly not this soon if ever. I want to go back to the beginning with bonding and try to gain their trust a bit more on their terms.
Does anyone have a hierarchy of bonding activities of sorts? I was thinking of something like:
This morning one of my pigs almost fell off my lap... I had just finished feeding him and he shot off like a rocket. I gently picked him up and placed him back on my lap. After he tried to abseil down my leg again, I should have listened and put him back in the cage. Instead, I lost the rag, put him on my lap again and fondled his ears forcefully and kind of yanked his chin up with my forefinger
. During these proceedings he squealed, but it was the quiet "stop doing that" kind and not the "ow that hurts" or "I submit!" sort.Nonetheless, I know what I did was absolutely not right, and I feel so horrible. I've read countless threads and stickies on bonding with your guinea pig, and I shouldn't have expected either of them to become a lap pig just because, and certainly not this soon if ever. I want to go back to the beginning with bonding and try to gain their trust a bit more on their terms.
Does anyone have a hierarchy of bonding activities of sorts? I was thinking of something like:
- Feed in cage (or floor time)
- Feed in cage with some tiny nose strokes
- Feed in cage enticing them onto my lap (but of course they could get down after grabbing the food off me)
- Encourage them to go into transport box (they both hate being picked up, and they refuse to be ushered into a tube or cosy) with food (I know this will take a while to train, and I won't move onwards from here until they are happy to do it reliably)
- Bring transport box onto my lap and sit and talk to them for increasing amounts of time
- Stroke them in the transport box
- Encourage them to come onto my lap and sit with no stroking for a bit
- Be stroked on lap
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