u/ptolover7

She just likes to pop her little head out and be adorable sometimes

I'm in the Omaha area in the US but I'm willing to drive a bit to get her to a good home. She's super sweet and the tidiest guinea pig I've ever encountered so she'll make a great addition to anyone's home, but I don't think she wants to be housed with other pigs. She was immediately defensive with my girl Elouise and despite 2 weeks trying to get them to bond, she had no interest in it. She seems very happy to be alone. I love her so much and it breaks my heart that we can't keep her, but I also don't want to let her sit in a tiny shelter cage again so I'd rather her stay here until I can find her a home, but I have no idea if there's a way to do that

Within this last month, 2 of my 3 guinea pigs passed away leaving my girl Elouise by herself. We gave it a little time to see if she was one of those pigs that settled into living alone, but as expected she seemed lonely and scared by herself so we adopted the pig pictured above: Donna.

Donna was extremely nervous so we gave her quite a while in her own separate cage to get used to us before we tried introducing her to Elouise. When we finally did introduce them, it didn't go great. I was prepared for some rumble-strutting and nervous wheeking, and there certainly was some of that, but my bigger concern was when they had what I saw described once as a "pig tornado" moment where they started fighting in a tight circle. No blood but there were tufts of fur flying so we ended the introduction session and they went back to their own cages.

I looked up tips and trick and saw a few suggestions like scent swapping and holding them in our laps close enough to sniff but not fight. We did those things a few times and it seemed like it was going well so we put them back in a cage together and it was their first meeting all over again with the rumble-strutting and the fighting. Last night I put a cage wall up through the middle of the cage where they're meeting and put one on either side, and Donna spent the whole time rumbling and trying to pee on Elouise through the bars and Elouise spent the whole time nervous-squeaking.

We've absolutely fallen in love with Donna so I really want to make this work and to not bring this poor sweet old lady back to the shelter, but is this a lost cause or is there something I'm not doing right or another tactic I can try? As much as I want them to eventually get along, I don't want to do anything that's only going to make Elouise distressed and will accomplish nothing else.

Please enjoy this compilation of my favorite Gloria photos, most of which feature her not quite understanding how to lay in beds

We just lost one of my 3 girls and one of the remaining 2 has been on her way out for a while. When we're down to just my girl Elouise, I don't want her to be lonely but I'm not planning on getting another herd nor do I want to give her away. Because this lady is particularly laid back and friendly for a guinea pig, I wondered if a possible solution could be to foster pigs until she goes too so she always has company but I'm not sure if there are issues with that that I may not have considered. Obviously even if I decided to do that, it would be dependent on her getting along with any fosters, but are there issues outside of that? Does it stress guinea pigs out to have a rotating cast of cagemates?

It's not like I want any of them to go, but she was my heart pig so it's going to hit particularly hard. The third photo I've added is of a time where she spent the entire day laying by me and always making her her little foot was touching mine. She loved me very much and I love her 10 times more

The vet was very impressed with how well she's done. I'm very proud of my little nugget. A huge chunk of the credit goes to my husband's friend who kept the pigs at his house while we were on a 10 day trip and gave her all 7 of her meds twice a day the whole time we were gone. No eyepatch for this little chicken!

We did 6 meds up to 4 times a day for a week and got no improvement at all. The vet says she's lost vision in that eye and we'll try to keep trucking along with these meds but we're about to get to a point where the eye will need to go, or (because of her age and additional health issues) she may just have to be put down