Happy New Year!

Panda wants to spend the last day of 2012 as a wallet. Silly pig.

Woo! More food! But it's really hard to eat a lot of noms with all these fireworks going crazy. Good thing we live indoors.

Any resolutions? Not sure.. Probably still continue working on that website we mentioned in last year's New Year's resolution post. May be we could also be more active with the "pet" and guinea community (rescues, fairs...), and of course post more often. No.


Reflecting on our 2012... We could say it was so-so. We had bad times, we had good times, we lost a fellow piggy, we took in a new fellow piggy, and we gained a lot of weight (as usual). Our greatest achievement this year would probably be surviving the Mayan apocalypse. Go guinea pigs!

Good or bad , we only live on an average of 5-8 years, best to not complain and just go. Be more thankful. Eat your veggies. Spoil your pigs. Hope you all have a nice New Year, stay safe, keep all your humans in the house as fireworks might spook them. Happy New Year!

Book Reiew: Training Your Guinea Pig

Our Human found this book months ago, it's about the basics of guinea pig training *giggles*.

Click to zoom in.

We haven't really tried any of the techniques taught here, but they do sound possible to do. Not much information about the authors. We've read the whole book, and the problem with guinea pig books is that most of them aren't updated, and this one was, lets say, 80% updated.

We like how it included C&C cages, the importance of having at least two guinea pigs, and hay 24/7. The parts we didn't like so much was the "female and male guinea pigs never fight" statement, and the idea of walking us on a leash.

NO.

Guinea leashes or harnesses aren't cool, it can cause a lot of damage and stress. To start off, our skeletal structure isn't suitable for it, unlike cats and dogs, it's not flexible or wide enough to make a jacket fit. As prey animals, we like to be cautious of out surroundings, hence bringing us to the outside world with open spaces, strange noise, and even stranger humans, can stir up a lot of trouble. Not to mention we have a strange thing wrapped around our chest and a mysterious force pulling us in every direction. There are too many wrong scenarios that could happen with a harness, plus we hate it. If you want us to experience the great outdoors, we would be happier sitting on fresh grass, in an enclosed pen, with human supervision.

This is a very nice book with really cute pictures in it, and great training ideas. We love how it encourages piggy-human interaction, hopefully a revised version would come up without the leash chapter and with more updated information.

Want to teach your piggies tricks? We found this very nice site, it offers guinea pig training techniques for free, with videos. It's called Guinea Pig Agility.com

Our Second Rescue

Picture taken going home from Paco.

We already promised ourselves, no more taking in kittens! But we couldn't ignore this one. She was only 2-3 weeks old and abandoned.

It all started when our Human went on an adventure to this place called Paco Park. She said it's a place where people either get married or buried. Strange place, I know... After exploring the park, it was time for her to go home, but then she hears a tiny sound, it sounded more like a baby bird rather than a kitten meow. Then boom! We found Kitty#2 (we never officially named her) lying near a bench, crying. Mommy cat was no where in sight, all the other cats found were males and did not want anything to do with her, that's when our Human decided to take her in. Before they went, she gave kitty a little butt rub to make her pee. Judging from the amount of fly eggs on her head, it looks like she's been alone for a long time.

When we got her she could only
 open her left eye.

So cozy.

Taking care of a new born kitten isn't a walk in a park (even if that's how she was found). The first thing we did was prepare a bed for kitty; we placed a hot water bag under a towel so kitty would stay cozy and not burn her self. We then sent our Human away again to search for kitten milk and a bottle specially made for new born animals.

Both eyes open. Beautiful!

Learning how to sit up.

We had one of those moments when a vet would sell us things we don't really need. Since our favorite vet was a little far and our Human got a little tired from the park trip, she went to the nearest vet she knows (but never been to). The only baby animal milk they had was labeled for "baby animals". We did do our research before letting our Human go, and we know that getting milk specifically for kittens was important. Since we had no other choice (and the vet did recommend it), why not?

Diarrhea. That's why not. Which happened a few days later. When it did happen we decided to take her to our favorite vet, and showed them the milk we've been giving her and surprise! It was no good. According to our trusted vet, the milk we've been using is mostly used by bird owners.

We didn't know that PetAg KMR was being sold here, we could have bought that instead since it's been the most recommended among people who have nursed orphaned kittens before. It had the same price as the first milk we bought. It was a little hard to find, we had to go through a lot of pet stores but we eventually found one that has it. The milk smelled more like milk and kitty loved it. Do take caution if by any chance you're going to use this product; keep refrigerated after opening, and smell the powder first before using. It's supposed to smell like regular powdered milk, if not, return it.

Our human will miss you the most.

During her last days with us she
learns how to walk.
We will miss you little kitty...

Our human had to stay awake the whole time, taking really short naps since kitty needed to be fed every 4-5 hours. We'll be honest, it was a very stressful job, but as cliche as it may sound, it was worth it. We placed an ad in Cat Care Philippines asking for someone to adopt or foster our kitty, we needed help as soon as possible because we're not even allowed to have cats here. Luckily it only took less than a day for someone to take interest.

Kitty's new human is very nice, and a huge cat lover. If that isn't enough, she also has a nursing mommy cat. Legit Milk? New playmates? Sounds like heaven for our little kitty!

Myaw!

Visiting The Philippine Animal Welfare Society's Rehab Center For Rescued Cats and Dogs

Our Human wanted to help other animals who needed it, so she visited PAWS HQ to get a signing up form. Unfortunately she forgot that PAWS do not hand out forms (we have to print them out ourselves). After an hour of commuting, she didn't want to go empty handed so she took a tour around the shelter.

Our Human likes to tell us about her day, like it or not, we have no choice but to listen. According to her, she was first greeted by a volunteer walking a rescue dog up and down the drive way. Then she spotted a human sized snoopy.

There were cats everywhere! Interesting how they don't stray away, although most are placed in cages (they probably take turns on who gets to roam around). There were a lot of beautiful cats who had their own unique personalities. Some were playful, others were very vocal, all were very tamed and friendly.

Cats in cages in front of PAWS office
under quarantine.

Some of the cats have chipped ears. Not sure if the same applies here, but we remember reading about stray cats in Singapore. It's common in Singapore to see cats with the tip of their ear missing because it serves as a marking that the cat has been spayed/neutered. If a cat has been caught by the local pound, the marking can save the cat from getting euthanized.

Behind the PAWS office, there are different stations for different kinds of rescues; trying to recall there were the usual cats, not yet socialized dogs, sick cats, special needs cats, and socialized dogs. Not the official names of the place, but that's how our human remembers it.

She wanted to get near the dogs, but they were barking like crazy. Playing with the dogs that had a bright red "warning" sign on their cage didn't sound like a good idea anymore, so she moved on to the next kennel, the special needs/disabled cats.

She finally found the kennel of dogs-ready-to-go. They were barking as much as the first doggy kennel but they eventually calmed down when they get to sniff our Human's hand. I guess they were just excited to see another human checking them out.

Each kennel contains a bench inside for visitors and willing adopters to rest on while interacting with the animals.

Right across the dogs was another kennel (or cattery) of ready-to-go-cats. They have their own kitty condo, scratching post, beds, litter box, a tunnel bridge connected to the next cattery, and a comfy looking couch.

  They were all very friendly and laid back. 

Not all rescued animals here are of native breed, our human has reported seeing a dalmatian and two shih tzus. She remembers seeing a husky too.






Our favorite rescue would probably be this guy:

We love scruffy looking macho dogs!

We recently found out that his name is Navy. Checked again,

he's not Navy. But we still love them both!

We're actually not sure if Navy and scruffy macho dog's
the same dog. May be he got himself groomed for the
2013 PAWS calendar which is for sale at the PAWS
Rehab Center, and at any Bow&Wow outlet for only
P150! 100% of the proceeds will go to PAWS.

So... You come here often? Well, you should.

Piggy Update 12/21/2012

We're back! Woo! It's been a long time since we've made any post, and we blame it all on Blogger and Facebook (where we upload all our pics). We're busy with college stuff, so we didn't have the patience to learn the where's and how's of their new layout. We did learn to love the new Facebook, but we still hate new Blogger. Boooo!



We're currently preparing for the holidays. It's Mochi's first Christmas with us, hope she likes the noche buena more than she dislikes fireworks. Loki and I don't really mind fireworks, probably because we have each other, unlike Mochi, all alone, no idea where the strange noise is coming from. We'll make sure that our human keeps her comfy during the eves.

What have we been up to?

During our hiatus, we found more books on guinea pigs, I think we have three, which we'll do a review on soon.

We rescued another kitten and successfully adopted her out. More stories on that later.

Our human has been planning to dedicate her time in volunteering for the Philippine Animal Welfare Society, unfortunately she couldn't make it to the orientation this year, but! She did manage to take a lot of pictures when she visited the she rescue. We'll post about that later too.

Glad to be back ol' chap!