Thank you to all of you who had encouraging words for my children it helped a lot. To clarify my children are not without pets. In fact I would say they are pet rich. I think if we were to leave it up to them we would have a petting zoo by now. We have 2 new kittens that we have had just over a week. (to keep the mice at bay)
A few years ago we had 1 rabbit and then a friend gave us their guinea pig. Unfortunately he died shortly after we got him. So I agreed to look for a replacement guinea pig. Well… we ended up with 2 we didn’t know if they were girls or boys so the kids named them Edmund and Lucy.
Another friend of mine has said if you get 2 guinea pigs you have about an 80% chance of getting a male and a female.
One was bigger than the other so the kids figured he must be a boy. Oddly enough despite my hopes otherwise they were right and we had a baby, Twinkle. Making it 3 guinea pigs. So we did some reading and found out that guinea pigs can go into heat right away after giving birth. A little over 2 months later and we had more guineas. This time as soon as we discovered the babies we separated the guineas only to discover a few months later that Twinkle who we thought was a boy was a girl. More guinea pigs.
You can go online and it shows you how to tell which is which (male/female) but on some guineas it is harder to tell than others. If you can believe it we had it happen one last time. Our son Joshua named his piggy Josh and Josh had babies too! So at one point we had 12 guinea pigs we were able to bless a number of families plus sell a few to the pet store. For about the last 2 years we have had 4 guinea pigs 2 male and 2 female Edmund and Marble were our males. We still have Lucy and Josh who are looking very healthy. Of course, Bunny is still going strong, apparently they are hard to figure out gender when they are young as well, because the lady who sold us our bunny said she was a girl. We named her Princess Buttercup only to discover she is not a princess. We tried different names and nothing has really stuck so he is just called Bunny.
You would think 2 kittens, a rabbit and now 2 guinea pigs is a lot but that is not all there is one other little guy named Geico a gecko who we have had for about 7 1/2 years.
I think it would have been very devastating if they had no other pets but as you can see they have a lot. I think it was hard for them to see them ill and not be able to do anything for them. Our guys spend a lot of time playing with their pets and loving on them so it was hard to say good bye to these two little friends.
As I mentioned yesterday I was worried about the hole I dug not being deep enough, first thing this morning I looked out my window to check on it. I saw my 3 oldest sitting outside on camp chairs around the grave site with fresh flowers on the grave. Later in the day when they went out they were of playing in a different part of the yard, I don’t think they will continue to sit and pine for them. There has been talk of them today but I think with each passing day it will become a bit less until it is just fond memories.
An already fond memory from our past baby guinea pigs! Again thank you all for your prayers and kind words. Proverbs 12:18 …but the tongue of the wise brings healing.