[Gpdd] Smart Piggies too

Michelle Lazarus michelle.lazarus at jefferson.edu
Thu Sep 29 14:15:46 EDT 2005


First off, I would like to say that reading the digest everyday over
lunch is one of my favorite pastimes.  You all have so many good ideas .
. .and this new discussion on how smart our piggies are is
HYSTERICAL!!!!  The one about Ben and Tommy and the pigalooliterally
made me laugh out loud while at work!

I wish I had some funny anecdotes to contribute, but my little girls
just tell me that they "don't need smarts cause they look pretty".  They
tell me that they "don't need an education because one day a rich boar
is going to come and sweep them off their feet and build a tri-level
apartment on Coroplast lane".  And all they will have to do is sit at
home eating carrot bonbons and tell the maid to cook dinner :). This of
course upsets me a little because I consider myself a forward thinking
woman and I have spent a life-time perfecting being a student!  But to
each her own :)

On a more serious note, (at least a little more serious), Ella and Kayla
spend most of their days eating and dreaming about food and hay.  I keep
telling them that if they want to keep their "girlish figures" they
should cut back a pellet or two/day, but they tell me that food is their
to be enjoyed and savored.  

In the mornings I wake up to a wheeking Kayla standing at the corner of
the cage and a half asleep Ella who is all but hidden in self-designed
cacoon of Timothy hay.  As soon as the pellets are put in their bowl
they both come a' runnin.  The day starts to get tough, though, after I
add fresh hay because they are forced to make the tough decision of
which item they should eat more of and in what order:  timothy hay or
pellets . . .if only our human lives could have such difficult
questions!  Kayla does have this very curious habit of eating one pellet
at a time and having to take a sip of water in between EACH AND EVERY
bite.  She loves eating from my hand, but if I try to feed her a pellet
before she has had a chance to wash her mouth with some water, she butts
my hand and grabs her water and then waddles back to my hand to grab the
pellet I am so patiently waiting to feed her.  In fact, I have come up
with a new exercise program for my VERY lazy Kayla (she finds it too
difficult to stand and eat and has, therefore, taken to laying down in
front of the food bowl while she munches).  I have moved the bowl
farther away from the water!  Hahahaha! This makes her get up from her
reclining position to actually walk to get some water between bites!
Kayla's other funny trait is that she is a huge sniffer . . .she sniffs
everything! And she sniffs so hard that her whole head shakes as she
does it hehehe

Now Ella has some tricks of her own.  They have hours and hours of
playtime in our HUGE kitchen.  But Ella is a bit of a fraidy cat so she
always is slinking around the edges of the kitchen under the overhang of
the cabinents (quite funny).

As far as smarts . . . I have trained both of them to stand up on their
hind legs when I say "up" and upon completion of this task they receive
a fresh veggie.  What I didn't realize when I was teaching them this
trick is that it looks as if I have made them "beg for their food" which
was not the intention at all, so now I have a pair of wonderful,
well-mannered ladies who are now trained to perform the task that every
dog owner tells their pet not to do.  But my intentions were good and
dammit, they look so cute doing it:)  And . . . they did learn
something, which was the whole point of the experiment in the first
place.

Well, I think this is long enough.  I thought I had nothing to
contribute on this topic, but somehow once you start talking about these
wonderful creatures that you love so much, you can't help it.  They are
soooo cute and such great pets!

Thanks so much for those of you who took the time to read this and for
writing such wonderful stories of your own.  They brighten my day!-
Sincerely,
Michelle





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