Xabi's Health

Okay, I'm turning into that crazy guinea pig lady constantly posting about her guinea pigs as if they were children, buuuuuuut, this is big news!

Since the day we got him, Xabi is a little "off". His head is slightly tilted, his ears seem more dirty than the other two, one eye is slightly closed and dull looking, he also kind of has a "wheezy" sound when he runs around, when he eats his food falls out of his mouth, and his teeth look just slightly uneven.

My theory was that he had an elongated root problem. Well, we took him to the vet and she thought the same, but wanted to keep checking. Turns out, Mr. Alonso Kazoo has a nerve deficiency in the entire left side of his face! Poor little guy doesn't have any motor control on that side.

 Hence, his head is tilted, because he can only see out of one eye, so he rotates one side of his head to look at you. His ear is more dirty because he can't feel it get itchy or gunky, so he doesn't clean it. His one eye is slightly closed and dull looking because he can't see out of it, he has a wheezy sound because he probably can only breath out of one nostril, he can only feel one side of his face when he eats and that is why food falls out, and because he probably tends to chew on the side he can feel, his teeth are uneven.

All symptoms of one problem! Unfortunately, of course, there is nothing we can do. Everything else about him is fine. This is just a disability he has. The vet said it might be genetic or he had an accident.

That's the update! And now a picture of the cute widdle piggy.

Xabi likes to jump up into the hay rack. 

Haircut

I've been wanting a haircut for a while, but that isn't what this post is about. This post is about Xabi "Chops" Alonso Kazoo's haircut!!!

If you don't know, Xabi aka Xabster aka "Dozer" aka "Chops" aka "Kramer" aka "Ru-fi-ooooh!", is one of our three guinea pigs. He is notoriously difficult to photograph. He is very dark and you sometimes can't tell which end is which.

Here is his before picture:

And after!!! It helps that his after picture is much better lit, just like those extreme weight loss pictures are. It is like those infomercials where the "Are you tired of not being able to tell the front end of your guinea pig from the back?" and it is black and white and overdramatic, then "WELL NOW YOU DON'T HAVE TO!" And it is all color and super smiley!

Pigs in a Basket

I put the pigs in a laundry basket, with their new (but already dirty) Goodwill fleece blankie,  while I cleaned their cage. They were really freaked out at first. Harvey burrowed, like he usually does, but Scott and Xabs stayed on top of the blanket and then unwittingly were stepping on Harvey, which caused him to squeal like crazy, which made them get panicked, so then they wore themselves out and all napped. Biscotti was laying down until the camera zoomed in and put him on high alert!

                                     Xabi sleeps weird. He puts his entire head sideways. Which I guess isn't weird for humans, but it looks really weird when he does it.

Biscotti curled up after getting worn out.