[Gpdd] Re: Misc. Quiet Pig

[Janna Willard]

Hi Ty,

I've had a couple of quiet pigs. The first was Princess, and the second was
my Guido.

I took in Princess in October of 2003. A friend had rescued her from a
school where the children had not been treating her well. My friend is a cat
person, not a guinea pig person, so she brought Princess (then named Rose)
home with her and then set about finding her a home. (She's not a guinea pig
person, but she definitely has a big heart!) Princess came to me in a tiny
cage with no place to hide and "small animal pellets" (alfalfa based) to
eat. I gradually improved her living situation with hay, proper pellets, and
an igloo to hide in (eventually I was able to provide her with more living
space and a friend, but that was a bit down the road). But Princess was
completely silent for the first month that I had her in my home, except for
a couple of teeth chatters. She didn't even make a sound when we went to the
vet and she had her temperature taken! She would hide in her igloo and
figured out how to get her food bowl in there with her, and then she would
position the opening so that she could just poke her head out in order to
drink from her water bottle. I figured she had PTSD from her former living
situation and let her be, though I did make sure that I cuddled with her
once a day.

Princess' first wheek came one night when I sat down to watch TV before bed.
Her cage was in the living room. I would usually watch M*A*S*H at that time
of day, but that night I decided to watch Friends instead. When the theme
music started, Princess came out of her igloo, looked right at me, and
started wheeking at me. I guess she liked M*A*S*H better than Friends! :D

Guido, on the other hand, came to me in August of 2008. Another friend was
moving and had to find homes for her family's pets, as the place they were
moving to at the time didn't allow them. I gladly took in the guinea pig, of
course! He'd been in a good home, though he didn't get as much attention as
he perhaps should have, but he had quality food and lots of space to run
around in, so he wasn't traumatized. I had Isabella at the time, as well,
and she was a very noisy guinea pig. She wheeked at every sound in the
kitchen and seemed to think that if we were walking around we should feed
her. Guido never really needed to wheek with Isabella around! Now that she's
gone (she passed last winter), he speaks up more often, but he's still a
pretty quiet little guy. He actually chats with himself a fair amount during
the day, just quiet little murmurs of contentment that make me smile when I
hear him.

Both Princess and Guido, when they did/do wheek, had/have very raspy, quiet
voices, probably because they didn't/don't do it very often. But it's a
lovely sound when it comes, especially when you've been waiting for it for a
long time!

I'm sure your new little one will wheek when she's ready. She may just be
getting herself acclimated to her new surroundings. :)

-Janna

"Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be
normal." Albert Camus
"I want to remake the world; anything less is not worth the trouble." Karen
Cushman