Can Guinea Pigs Swim?

If you search YouTube, you can find lots of videos of guinea pigs swimming. While this proves that guinea pigs are capable of swimming when necessary, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a good idea to make your guinea pig swim. Why not, you ask? Well, consider the following:

• Guinea pigs are not built for swimming. Our paws are very small in relation to our bodies, and our backs are delicate.  This means swimming is difficult and stressful for us, and we might hurt ourselves.
• Getting water up our noses might lead to an upper respiratory infection.
• As we mentioned in our Ask A Guinea Pig post on bathing, frequent bathing can dry out our skin and make us itchy.
• There might be some guinea pigs who enjoy the water, but most do not. 

I can't speak for other piggies, but I don't like the water!

If you think your guinea pig might actually enjoy the water, we'd recommend giving them the option to wade in water, rather than actually swim in it. You can do this by having a setup where your piggy can get in and out of the water him/herself (for example, using a gradual ramp to the water, or a building a brick staircase in a bathtub). Do not throw your piggy into a kiddy pool with no way of getting out! (We've heard there are some YouTube videos where people do this.) Only fill the water up to our legs and no higher. Some guinea pig owners use this as an alternative method of bathing. If you do have one of the rare guinea pigs that enjoys water and you decide to do this, keep in mind what we said before about how frequently guinea pigs should be bathed.

We should also note that Peter Gurney, a "campaigner for the rights and welfare of guinea pigs," discussed the use of "swimming therapy" for guinea pigs with "weak or stiff joints." He also stresses the need to introduce your guinea pig slowly to water, watch their reaction, and being willing to take them out if they are getting stressed out.

Ask A Guinea Pig: How Frequently Should I Bathe My Guinea Pig?

Reilley Turner asks: "how often should guinea pigs be bathed? Currently we bathe them once a week, but we don’t use any shampoo. Is this a problem or is this fine?"

Please, don't put me through this more often than you have to!

Answer:
Guinea pigs should be bathed infrequently, if at all. In general, short-haired guinea pigs should only be bathed 1-2 time per year, although long-haired piggies like Buffy need baths more often than short-haired piggies (perhaps once every month or two). You don't want to bathe a guinea pig too often because it can dry out the skin, making it itchy and causing us to scratch ourselves a lot. We can even hurt ourselves if we scratch too much. To avoid drying out the skin, make sure you use a quality shampoo like Gorgeous Guineas that is made with guinea pigs in mind, and lacks bad ingredients like harsh sulfates. Please, no human shampoos! (Four Paws Bunny Bath is another acceptable shampoo.)

 Certain factors can cause us to need a bath more often, including:

• If you aren't cleaning your guinea pig's cage regularly;
• If we have long fur around our backsides that is trapping our waste products (in which case, it may be time for a trim);
• If our favorite sleeping spot doubles as a bathroom (in which case, you might want to do additional spot cleanings between full cage cleanings);
• If you feed us certain foods that cause us to have mushy poops, making it easier to get dirty;
• If your guinea pigs tend to spray their urine at each other; 
• If your vet recommends bathing due to lice or other parasites. (In which case, your vet will likely want you to use some sort of special medicated shampoo.)

The best way to know if your piggy needs a bath is to use the sniff test. If we don't smell bad, then we probably don't need a bath. Lola and Broccoli have never had a bath, but since I'm a long haired pig, I have to have a bath every two months or so!

Product Review: Gorgeous Guineas Posh 'n' Go Shampoo

The humans gave me another bath today. I don't like baths at all! It's uncomfortable and scary being surrounded by water, and I still think it's no fair that Lola and Broccoli don't have to put up with these frequent baths.

The humans did something different with this bath. In the past, they used Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo on me, until the news came out that it may contain toxins. I demanded that the humans find a safer alternative if they insist on this cruel ritual of getting my fur wet. According to the guinea pig message boards, Gorgeous Guineas has the best guinea pig shampoos out there, so I told them to order it. Gorgeous Guineas has a lot of options to choose from; since I have long hair, the humans ordered the Posh 'n' Go.

The shampoo costs £9.50, which, with shipping, came out to $25.55 in U.S. dollars, plus a $0.76 "international purchase transaction fee." For legal reasons, the humans also had to "sign" a disclaimer before they would ship it to the U.S.; signing it consisted of sending an email saying they agreed to their terms and conditions. After all this, here is what they got:

Is this supposed to make me like bath time? It won't work.

It smells really nice, but I'm still not happy about this.

I want out!

Time to dry off!

All dry now and in my clean cage!

Bath time is never fun, no matter what shampoo your humans use. But, if you can't avoid being bathed by your humans, Gorgeous Guineas will leave you smelling nice afterwards, and you won't have to worry about toxins. I suppose I'll give Gorgeous Guineas 5/5 stars for being a great product, even though I hate bath time.

Introducing Guinea Pigs

Back when Broccoli was neutered, we said we were really looking forward to finally meeting him. The introduction didn't go as smoothly as we hoped, though. The humans did everything right: they put us together on opposite ends of neutral territory, and let us meet on our own terms. Buffy and I wanted to take things slow, but Broccoli rushed right up to us.

Whoa! Slow down there, cowboy. Give us a few minutes to get used to the idea of being next to you with no cage between us.

Okay, little boy, you want to challenge my dominance? Are you really that crazy?

You better back down! I am twice your size.

Can you believe him? I'm the dominant pig, and I'm not about to let him take that away from me. My teeth started chattering, I raised the hairs on my back and neck, and I made my angry, low grumbling sound. He didn't back down, so I had to lunge at him and bite. That's when the humans stepped in and separated us. Having my authority challenged like that upset me so much that I chased Buffy around when I was back in my own cage (you know, just so she doesn't get any ideas from him).

I heard one of the humans say something about how they read online that bathing us all together can erase our smells and get us to bond instead of fight. Hopefully, they'll forget all about that crazy idea, but if they don't, expect to read an angry blog post here about our treatment!

Fleece Bedding For Guinea Pigs - Update

Well, humans, it turns out the fleece bedding had some unanticipated problems that we encountered by the third day. While the fleece bedding turned out to do a good job of keeping the cage neat, it did start to smell by day 3. The humans will try to add baking soda in between the layers of fleece next week, so we will let you know if that helps.

Our cage is messy! The air is not as smelly up here.

The other problem is that the humans bought a cheap dust buster from Target to clean stray poops and hay pieces from the floor of our cage, but Target forgot to include a wall charger! So we have not been happy piggies this week since that meant that we had to have baths. Go back to Target and return that dust buster humans! We expect daily vacuuming in our cage.

Finally, because the fleece needed to be washed twice weekly (instead of once a week, like the humans initially thought), that brings the weekly cost of bedding from $3.50 to $7.00. At that price, it's been just as expensive as buying Carefresh (which cost about $15 per 60L bag, which lasts two weeks, when bought online in bulk).

Still, we think the benefit of having a neater cage and plush fleece is better than Carefresh overall, so we will stick with it for a while. More updates soon.

Buffy's bath

Today I had a bath. It's been about two months and my fur was beginning to get gross, so my human decided to give me a bath. I hate baths so much. It's not fair that Lola never has to get a bath. Sometimes I wish I was a short haired guinea pig. They never need baths. But my super curly long fur needs to be cleaned. Let me tell you all about the harrowing experience.

First, my human filled a large plastic bin with about three inches of warm water. Then she added a mild  fragrance free soap to the water and put me in.

Then she added a little mild soap directly to my fur and lathered it in. She had to change out the water a few times since I was so dirty. Then once she had rinsed all the soap off, she took me out. 

Pretty and clean!

Finally, she set me on a towel to dry. I shook off a few times and after a few minutes of drying off, I was put back home in the cage.

Lola sniffed me suspiciously. Apparently she didn't recognize me at first since I didn't smell like I usually do. I'm glad that's over with. I hope I don't have to have another bath for a long time.

BONUS: Here's a video of me shaking off: