[Gpdd] MISC - why the guinea pig?

[Andrew]

I got my first guinea pig about 21 years ago.  I'd had various other pets - hamsters, gerbils, rabbits, etc.  One day we went in a pet shop and one of the shop assistants was holding a guinea pig.  I'd obviously seen them in the pet shop before but we'd read about them in our pet book and it appeared they were more difficult to look after than, say, a rabbit.  That's what we thought at the time anyway.  This little guinea pig was making little noises and I commented that he sounded a bit like Gizmo, the mogwai from the film Gremlins.  Gremlins was one of my favourite films at the time and the fact that the guinea pig reminded me of Gizmo made me interested in them.  We talked to the shop assistant and she said that guinea pigs really weren't that much different to looking after a rabbit.  Mum said we'd have a think about it and maybe she'd let me have one.  We bought a guinea pig book and read all about them.  My brother is a carpenter and said he would make me a hutch so I !
 could have one.  I'd started to get a bit impatient, my brother was taking ages to make the hutch and we'd read all we could, I just wanted to get a guinea pig.  We went in the same shop I'd first become interested in guinea pigs at and they had several in at the time.  One was a black long haired sheltie.  I've always liked black animals and really wanted this guinea pig, but I had no hutch to keep him in.  The shop assistant said he'd be fine in a box for a week or two so we got him.  I couldn't call him Gizmo as I already had a hamster called Gizmo, but his munching on his food and hay reminded me of a rabbit so I called him Bugsy.  Bugsy spent the first few weeks in a large box in our sitting room until his hutch was ready.  He then spent a very brief time in his hutch in the garage, we were under the impression at the time that outdoors was the best place to keep him.  However, he was so nervous that he was soon moved back into the house with us and stayed there for th!
 e rest of his life.  Since him I've lost count of how many guinea pigs
 we've had over the years.  It started off with just a couple, then we did a brief spell of breeding - not to make money, just for the enjoyment of it.  Then we found it very difficult having to get rid of the babies, the not knowing what happened to them after they left us was just too much, so we stopped breeding and just kept them as pets.  At one stage during the early to mid 90s we had 40 or more.  We're now down to 9 - a much more manageable number.  Although it was nice having so many, I think the smaller number is much easier.  They seem to be staying much healthier, a lot less problem with mites and things like that and they can all have more attention.