How to Handle Guinea Pig and/or Hay Allergies

Hi readers! Today we're going to talk about what to do when your human is allergic to you or your hay. We gave an overview of this problem back in 2015, but since then the humans have learned a lot more about practical ways to live with guinea pigs when you have allergic reactions to us. Here are some tips on how to make life with allergies a little bit easier:

1. Take a daily antihistamine. If your allergies aren't too severe (in other words, if being in the same room as a guinea pig doesn't send you to the hospital for a neutralizer treatment), then taking an over-the-counter antihistamine can be a huge help in reducing symptoms.
2. Place the guinea pig cage as far from the sleeping area as possible. When the humans lived in the one floor apartment, their allergies were a lot worse. Now that they live in a three floor townhouse, we have our own floor and they have theirs, and the amount of hay dust tracked through the house is greatly reduced.
3. Be careful about how you approach floor time. The humans used to let us roam all over the big area rug back at the old apartment, but now we have a concrete floor with puppy pads that can be tossed when floor time is over.
4. Use a towel or blanket when handling guinea pigs. One of the humans has allergies that are so bad that her skin will develop welts after handing us directly. They're not sure if it's the residual hay dust on our paws or if it's us, but using a blanket or towel eliminates this problem for them.

With these four adjustments, the humans are able to live pretty much allergy-free. We hope that if you have guinea pig allergies, too, these tips can have you breathing easy!