Last year, the wife and I built a new home for our guineapigs. We already had a big cage for them (4m2), but it was over three floors, and 1) guineapigs aren’t chinchillas - they don’t love to climb, and 2) the wife and I are not twenty anymore. I have a bad back, and can’t lean over for three hours to clean the cage. So we decided to build a new, bigger, better home for the gang. With sunny places for them to chill, enough space to run and hide, and many many hammocks.
The new home has 7m2, which is 75 square feet. Enough for seven pigs. We technically built three tables, put two boards on the front, and covered the whole thing in a waterproof inlay.
As you can see, we put thin boards to the walls, too, to save them from being completely drowned in….you know what. When the ground floor was finished, we built two platforms for each side, to give the pigs a huge space to hide, and at the same time, get more room out of the ground floor.
The pigs can enter the platforms with ramps, and up to now, every new pig learnt how to use the ramps after a few days. UP TO NOW. Lucy, who is with us since November, still has no clue how to get upstairs. The others have shown her how to walk up and down a bazillion times, but she won’t do it.
We placed Lucy upstairs and as you can see, Maggy and Moritz tried to get her to walking down - with no success. Lucy sat there for about half an hour, until the wife felt sorry for her and helped her get down. Whatever, maybe Lucy is just a ground hog. :)
The new home is awesome. So easy to clean, and veeeery big. We have three hammocks, up to four different houses and three places to feed them. It came out better than the wife imagined, and we are still proud of it. Also, we have gained a lot of space under the thing. Great for hiding Cat Litter boxes, guinea pig litter etc. etc.
@litarutherford I hope you got a nice impression of the cage :) I´d love to hear if you like it.
yesterday my first table at work was 4 complete shitholes who yelled at me twice before i even took their food order and almost made me cry. before they ate, they all bowed their heads to pray.
so on the top of their receipt i wrote “hebrews 13:2″ and they went WILD. they LOVED IT. they tipped me over 20% for my “education fund”.
hebrews 13:2 is “do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it”, and i really hope they got home and looked it up and realized that i am, in fact, a petty fucking bitch
I’d just like to add, see how they behave when they’re angry/frustrated/exhausted, and if you see something that concerns you, wait until they’re calm, and then talk to them about it.
My husband used to yell when he got frustrated, but after I explained to him that I found it upsetting, he stopped yelling and started consciously working on asking for help before he got to that level of frustration.
When I’m upset over something, or just in a bad mood, I tend to withdraw. My husband explained to me that it makes him feel like I’m mad at him, so now when I need some space, I’ll tell him what I’m upset about, or that I’m in a bad mood for no particular reason, and I need to be alone for a little while.
See your friends and partners at their worst, but don’t assume that their worst is immutable. If someone loves and cares about you, they’ll try to accommodate you to the best of their ability.
^^^^ This is the best advice I’ve ever seen on this site, and it is so important. Communication is everything, and is 80% of the reason my husband and I have such a healthy, strong, and supportive relationship.
