Does Your Guinea Pig Need a Bath?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s no secret that guinea pig odors can become overwhelming. What you may not realize is that the odor doesn\u2019t come from your beloved pet\u2019s body. It comes from mildewed hay, urine, and feces. Unless your guinea pig gets really dirty, or you are showing him, he really doesn\u2019t ever need a bath.<\/p>\n
If you have no real reason to bathe your guinea pig, you can give your pet a good wipe with a pet wipe. These special wipes are sold in pet stores and from online sources, and they wipe away a great deal of loose dirt and generally \u2018freshen\u2019 up your guinea pig.<\/p>\n
However, if you do need to bath your guinea pig for some reason, there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. In this situation, you most likely won\u2019t bath your guinea pig more often than every three months, as it could actually dry out his skin, and make him unhealthy. If there is a skin ailment, however, your veterinarian may prescribe a medicated shampoo, and suggest bathing more often.<\/p>\n
If you must bath your guinea pig, note that he isn\u2019t going to like you very much for a little while. Start by making sure that you have everything that you need on hand and within reach. You will need about four towels, a wash basin, a small plastic cup, pet shampoo or baby shampoo, and a hairbrush.<\/p>\n
Start by warming the house, or at least the room, up a bit. You don\u2019t want your guinea pig to get too cold, and getting wet could easily make him cold, even though the water will be warm. Use a wash basin to bath your guinea pig. The tub is really too big, and the smaller space of the basin will actually give you greater control. Fill the basin with warm
\nwater, and make sure that it isn\u2019t too hot. Ideally, the water should be the perfect temperature for a human baby. Optionally, you can have one basin for washing, and one basin for rinsing. If using two basins, fill both with warm water.<\/p>\n
Using the plastic cup, get your guinea pig\u2019s fur wet. Don\u2019t pour water over his head. You shouldn\u2019t get his head or face wet at all in fact. You will wash him from behind the ears and back, so that is the only part that needs to get wet. Once he\u2019s wet enough, use a little shampoo and lather him up. Use the tips of your nails to give him a good, but gentle scrubbing. Once you feel that he is clean enough, make sure that you rinse him well. If you have a sprayer, you might want to use that, as it will be more effective, but you don\u2019t want to use a sprayer that has high water pressure, as this will likely startle your guinea pig.<\/p>\n
Finally, remove your guinea pig from the water, and gently run your hands down his body, in an attempt to remove any excess water. Give him a good towel drying, and wrap him warmly in a dry towel. You can blow dry your guinea pig, but he most likely won\u2019t like it much. If you do blow dry him, make sure that you use the lowest setting possible, don\u2019t hold the dryer too close to him, and keep it moving.<\/p>\n<\/body>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Does Your Guinea Pig Need a Bath? It\u2019s no secret that guinea pig odors can become overwhelming. What you may not realize is that the odor doesn\u2019t come from your beloved pet\u2019s body. It comes from mildewed hay, urine, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guinea-pigs","category-pet-care"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/guru-goddess.com\/petgoddess\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}