Scooter & Pepper - A New Beginning

After Pookie passed away my daughter wanted 2 guinea pigs to take Pookie’s place. I read that they love company and are lonely when housed singly. So, I agreed that we would adopt two pigs to share our home this time.

I knew that we didn’t want to adopt a male and a female for obvious reasons. It was time to study the book to learn how to identify the males from the females. The book tells you that it was easy to tell the difference between the two sexes. In boars (males) to identify the sheathed penis, gently press on the lower abdomen and this will cause the penis to protrude from the sheath. Sounds easy! The females (sows) will have a skin fold in a Y-shape above the anus. OK! Study the pictures of the two sexes closely some more and I will be an expert at sexing guinea pig pups. The book says it is easy and not hard to tell the difference between the sexes. WRONG!

I feel I am prepared to pick out two females to share our house with us and we make the trip to the pet store. We immediately fall in love with a cute black and white American Short hair pig. There are two other Abyssinian black and white pigs that are adorable too. The Abyssinian breed has rosettes or whorls of tufted hair all over its body. We determine what we think is the cuter of the two Abyssinian pigs and check to make sure it’s a female. Yes! Then we check again the other American Short hair pig with the unusual markings that we immediately knew we wanted to take home with us. Yes, it looks like she is a female too. Perfect! We have our two female pigs that should be very compatible. Sometimes if two males are housed together they can be territorial or fight with each other, especially if there is a female housed with them. If the two males have been littermates and no females are present they can peacefully live together. However, we have two females so they definitely should be compatible and no chance of extra piggies running around in the future.

We eagerly arrive home with our two pigs and temporarily house them in Pookie’s old pet store cage, which is way too cramped for two pigs. However, until we can construct their new cage it will do for a few days. We decided the black and white American Short hair pig would be called Misty and the Abyssinian would be Pepper. It was strange but after a few days Misty started acting like she was a he. Misty started doing what some people call the male “rumble strut” to impress Pepper. Could Misty be a boy? I went on-line to look at more pictures to determine what female young pups look like compared to males. OOOPS! I think we have a male. A quick trip to the vets and we get the news Misty is a MALE. How can this be? The book said it was easy and I had studied the pictures for a very long time.

Well, Misty became Scooter after that and we had him neutered when he was 4 months old. After a long 30 days had gone by after Scooter was neutered, the “wall” came down that divided them and they were reunited again. And as the story goes they lived happily ever after!

To Happy and Healthy Pigs!
Nancy from BluestoneCommerce Cages and Guitars (Your Guinea Pig Cage eBay Store)