Matchmaking Services

We often get calls from people looking for a buddy for their lonely guinea pig.  We're glad to help.  Matchmaking can be tricky.  There are a couple great resources we refer to often when doing this:

Cavy Spirit's Social Life webpage

GuineaLynx.info's Companionship webpage

We're still learning as we go.  We really like feedback from people who have adopted a companion piggy from us for their piggy to know how things went once they got home. We encourage people to bring their guinea pig to our home where we can take time introducing the guinea pigs to see who might get along. We'll share a few of our observations here that we've seen that might help you.

We recommend that you meet our piggies and pick out your favorite first - and then we'll try introducing this one to your piggy. We've noticed that some piggies, if the first match doesn't work, are a bit agitated and start off the next pairing a little out of sorts. If this one fails too, then sometimes they're even more riled up  for the next pairing and so forth.... So if you pick your favorite first and it works out fine, you have someone you both like.

Male vs. Females: We pair lots of males together and females together. Many people come here convinced that all males fight and it simply isn't true. We've had some wonderful pairs of males that got along great and made great pets.  Two males can be paired together but it can be a bit trickier than 2 females or a female and a neutered male. Often times, pairing an adult male with a baby male can work well, although there could be a challenge from the younger male when he goes through adolescence. That being said, the toughest, most difficult piggy to get along with at our rescue was a sow named Smudge... so you never know.

Past Behavior doesn't necessarily predict future behavior:  We've also noticed that while certain piggies have trouble getting along in general, and other piggies get along well in general, that you can't predict how the next pairing will go.  We had 2 boars - Don King and Keith.  Don King (named for his hair which looked like Don King and his tendency to promote fights) fought with many different boars we put him with. Keith came to us with 15 other guinea pigs who became homeless after an apartment fire. We were told by his previous owner (and he was right) that Keith seemed to be a trouble maker and fought with everyone.  We couldn't find buddies for either one.  On a whim, we decided to try Don King and Keith together (I actually thought my rescue partner was nuts to suggest it...)  Well - we put them together and there wasn't one problem -not a fight, not a chatter, nothing.  It was as if they had both heard of the other and respected each other and understood each other... No problems... it was amazing.

Be Careful: If the guinea pigs do start fighting (biting, etc) throw a towel in or something to pick them up.  We have seen one owner get bit by her guinea pig when she went to pick it up after a failed mismatch.

Things might change when you get home: While most of the pairings we make here work out well when the piggies get home, sometimes they don't. We had one pairing recently that went wonderful here - not one problem.  It went so well I suggested that the owner not even try another pairing. Things didn't go so well when they got home though - and despite trying the methods suggested on the Cavy Spirit website, - the guinea pig needed to come back to us. But - if they're not drawing blood, it's best to give them a while to settle down. It can often take a few days or couple weeks to get the new pecking order established, and once that's done, things go much smoother.

We want the guinea pigs to be happy: There is no point to getting a companion guinea pig if things don't work in the long run.  For that reason, we will always take back our guinea pigs if they turn out to not be compatible.  Our goal in all adoptions is to have happy guinea pigs and happy owners. And if someone isn't happy, what's the point? We will either refund your adoption fee or you can try another match for your piggy.