After deciding to add a pair of guinea pigs to our family, we trolled a few pet stores for a couple of weeks. In some ways, pet stores are happy places. No longer do you pass row after row of pet in confined spaces. Instead, dogs are brought in for adoption on Saturdays. A few cats linger each day, but they're rotated from a local shelter; a crew of elderly ladies come in each day to care for and hold them. But, if you're looking for guinea pigs, the situation is a bit different. The recommended space for these small, furry critters is 7.5 square feet for one-two animals. Instead, at each pet store I visited, three guinea pigs were kept in a tank the size of a fish aquarium -- as in, less than two square feet. They didn't have room to move at all, and most of them looked a bit deranged. Reading the websites, it seems as though madness does set in when these animals don't have the room they need nor properly vented cages.
At one of these stores, I found a particularly knowledgeable employee who is a veterinary technician. She gave me great advice about raising guinea pigs. At the end of our conversation, I shared with her my discomfort about buying guinea pigs from a pet store. She didn't get defensive -- in fact, I felt she was relieved at my concern -- and suggested that I contact my local vet group to see if there are guinea pigs available for "rescue." Now, I've heard of rescuing cats and dogs, but guinea pigs?
Lo and behold, there's a huge guinea pig rescue mission right here in NJ. It turns out that last year, more than a hundred (many of that hundred pregnant) guinea pigs were rescued from a barn in Pennsylvania that was raising them for food, something common in Peruvian culture but illegal in this country. Many places raising animals for food keep their animals in humane conditions, but this case was as far away from that as possible. It didn't take long for me to contact the shelter about taking in some of these critters.
The adoption application was long -- kind of funny, since pet stores require no information -- but I dutifully filled it out and was approved to adopt. Petunia and I scrolled through the long list of available pets last night, and she chose a pair of males aged about 5 and 9 months. They are somewhere in a classroom right now, so they are used to kids. This is not necessarily the pair I would have picked, as I was drawn to the cute little fuzzier babies. However, I think it's pretty cool that Petunia was okay with adopting non-baby animals. (Is this a comment on baby Dash? I'll never know.) We should have the piggies by the weekend, and after stocking up on the goods yesterday, we are ready. Pictures of our new furry friends coming soon!
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