Trouble in Guinea Pig Paradise

Sometimes the smallest things in life can bring about the biggest joys and heartaches.

Our kids had a couple guinea pigs, Max and Leo, in their kindergarten classroom this past year at Broken Arrow elementary. One weekend, our kids got to take them home. What followed was a weekend-long love-fest. They danced with the pigs, kissed them, sang to them, and pushed them down the sidewalk in a toy shopping cart lined with blankets. The pigs didn't seem to mind this at all. They squeaked a lot. When Monday came, the girls already were asking when they could do it again.

The adults in our house figured the novelty would wear off during another weekend visit from the GPs. We were wrong: during Max and Leo's next stay, the pig preening reached new heights. The kids swaddled them in blankets, fed them cilantro, and rolled them around the living room floor in a toy school bus. We decided it was time to get our own.

We knew a person at the kids' school who breeds guinea pigs, and she agreed to give us some for free on the condition that we buy our supplies at Pet World, which we would have done anyway because it's a family-friendly local business that supports the kids' school.

It cost around $100 to buy the cage, feeding bowl, water bottle, and first package of bedding. The kids named their new pigs "Cresty" and "Tufty," both of which refer to the furry crests on the pigs' foreheads.

We quickly learned that guinea pigs are largely hassle-free pets, with two exceptions:

1) they make noise at night by chasing each other around the cage at lightning speed, with the apparent goal of trying to bite each other's butts.

2) you have to change their bedding every four days or so or the cage will start to smell like Redd Foxx's underwear. The bedding can be expensive, too.

Everything went smoothly until the day in late May when we noticed that Tufty was walking a little funny, dragging one of his hind feet behind him. His nightly butt-chase with Cresty had become more subdued, almost nonexistent.
Upon further questioning, one of our daughters admitted she had dropped Tufty on the concrete-- four times in one day -- while carrying him outside. No lecturing was needed to drive the point home: this was the thing she loved more than anything in the world, and she had maimed it. (Of course, being parents, we lectured anyway.)

After spending a couple days wringing our hands and watching the 1/4-lame pig limp around his cage, we decided to be responsible pet owners and take him to the vet. An X-ray revealed that his femur (or whatever the guinea pig equivalent is) had been broken clean in two. Fixing it, the doctor said, would require a high-risk surgery that would cost hundreds of dollars. In the meantime, Tufty had to be isolated in a separate cage, which meant no holding, no swaddling, and no basket rides.

For the next two days, the emotional framework of our family seemed to be on the verge of collapse. We first decided that we would do the surgery and that the kids would have a lemonade stand to raise money. We went as far as printing fliers and distributing them in the neighborhood.
Then, when we found out how much the surgery actually would cost (@#$^#$&!!), we decided we maybe wouldn't do it, especially given the long recovery period and the risk that Tufty wouldn't survive. We cancelled the lemonade stand and broke the news to our daughters. They cried, reminded us that Tufty was in pain, and said we were cruel. Dinner that night was bleak.

In the midst of all of this, we realized that our kids' single-biggest fear was that, if Tufty didn't have the surgery, they would never be able to hold him again. They had been imagining him spending the rest of his life in pain and in guinea-pig solitary confinement. We assured them that wouldn't happen, decided there would be no surgery, and left Tufty in a separate cage for about three weeks.

His leg healed. Today, he's back to zooming around his cage at night. We have a new rule: no carrying the pigs outside without a carrier. Also, one of our daughters has sworn off pork products in a sign of solidarity with Tufty. In her developing brain, this makes perfect sense.