[Gpdd] Rainbow Bridge: Providence: July 21, 2005 - October 2, 2010

[ME]

Well, I no longer have any of the guinea pigs I had a year ago and I feel like I've failed them all.  I knew this morning when I tried to feed her that she was going to go.  She wouldn't eat anything and only swallowed a tiny bit of cranberry juice and water.  I picked her up a few more times and got a bit of water in, but that was all she'd take.  She passed away at 3:05 p.m.

I wish I knew what went wrong.  It seemed that the UTI was clearing, but she also started getting lethargic on Wednesday.  Maybe I shouldn't have let the vet anesthetize her on Tuesday ... it was probably hard on her tiny little body.

She was always a spirited little pig ... actually quite headstrong.  I had to teach her not to bite as she didn't shy away from letting me know her annoyance.  We eventually came to an agreement that I'd only hold her for about ten minutes and she'd sit nicely as long as I spent quite a bit of that time giving her chin rubs ... within a couple years, the nipping reflex was completely extinguished and she actually became quite cuddly.  She still couldn't handle more than ten minutes, but she cooed and percolated during cuddles.

We called her Providence because we thought it was by providence we found her.  I was trying to merge from one freeway to another, but the traffic was heavy and I couldn't move over, so I ended up continuing on the road I was on.  I could still get home on this freeway ... it was just a bit of a roundabout way ... and my path went by a pet store, so I decided to just peek in.  We already had seven guinea pigs (two new babies that summer), so I wasn't planning on bringing one home.  Well, I found this beautiful silver agouti just staring at me with her big brown eyes.  Well, my husband always wanted an agouti, so I told him about her.  We went back that evening and brought her home.