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Post by Bean on Sept 6, 2019 9:20:34 GMT
It's funny isn't it. Most of mine are really confident and never flinch at all the sights and noises of the room. But if you move it into a slightly different position in the same room and they can suddenly clock movement in a place they don't normally see it, then they definitely react!
It's good to see rescues having good standards when adopting out guinea pigs. Some go too far and miss out on great homes because of checklists, but it's better than the pet shops who sell them to anyone with a £10 note.
Your pigs are adorable, and I just love how many pictures you get of them all chilled out with those cute little legs outstretched!
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Post by amber89 on Sept 6, 2019 19:11:19 GMT
It's funny isn't it. Most of mine are really confident and never flinch at all the sights and noises of the room. But if you move it into a slightly different position in the same room and they can suddenly clock movement in a place they don't normally see it, then they definitely react! Tell me about it. Sometimes we are just sitting on the couch watching a movie or something and if I move my leg slightly to change my position they run away like crazy for cover. My in-laws left today. Luckily there were no issues with the dog and their stay was unexpectedly pleasant. I did dream though last night that the dog entered our room and saw the piggies in their play pen and tried to catch them. I have noticed that for the last 2 days Marshmallow started to really be nasty towards Cupcake, chasing her away from her resting place or from the food... Since I have moved them into their normal setting everything is back to normal and the girls are again good friends. So, my assumption is that the lack of space and the new room stressed out Marshmallow and made her lash out. This actually also made me doubt if we have enough room for another piggy. I have to say, the planning of this cage was done by my husband, but i really loved building it. Helping with cutting the wood, the Plexiglas, screwing things together and so on. And i really love painting the wood.
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 6, 2019 21:47:15 GMT
Great job on the cage, hubby Yes, even the nicest cage, if different from what they know, becomes a new territory, and dominance starts all over again. I've worked on the basis of giving them a whole lot of room, but not everyone can do that. That's another reason why I don't really want to take them to my daughters, or some place, to be cared for if we go away. I want them to be able to stay in the same cage. I know it's not possible for everyone to build a big cage, or have a big cage in all situations, so we all do the best we can. Glad the girls are friends again Also glad the in-laws visit wasn't too bad, and the dog wasn't a problem. That's always a concern, be no matter how careful we try to be, we can always forget to latch a door, or something. You must be happy to have your lives back to yourselves
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Post by Bean on Sept 7, 2019 8:43:16 GMT
I showed you the dog our builder brought when he fitted our new doors. The builder had to nip back to adjust them the other week and the night before he came (I went to sleep thinking I must make sure I woke up as he was coming very early) I dreamed that the dog came in and started climbing in the big bottom cage. I went to pull him out and he just clamped his teeth down slowly but firmly on my arm and I couldn't get him to let go! Oh well, I guess it stopped him getting my dream guinea pigs!
I hope you have peace again now that everyone's back where the rules and hierarchy have already been well established!
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 7, 2019 19:53:13 GMT
Not a good dream, Bean I can't believe he brought a dog with him to a customer site, anyway. What if the customer was terrified of dogs? That's as bad as all the perfume contractors wear to work sites, as if everyone wants that smell stinking up their houses I think, when something is precious to us, as our guinea pigs are, we tend to let our imaginations take over all the bad things that could happen, so we're prepared to stop them before they happen.
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Post by Bean on Sept 8, 2019 6:56:50 GMT
His dog was in his van (windows covered from the sun, another open for air), he didn't bring him in himself. But when I saw him, I offered that he could let him play in our garden (and quickly fashioned lids for the C&C cages, just in case!). And when he came back another day, he didn't automatically bring the dog in again, he waited for me to offer. So no problems there.
I often dream about what I've thought about last thing at night, so I try to be careful with what I watch before I go to bed, as I don't want all those pompous politicians popping up in my dreams!
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 9, 2019 0:31:29 GMT
I've found walking dreams can be totally off the wall. I once dreamed I was in a WWI foxhole, mid battle, with a Facebook friend.
It's good that he didn't assume it was okay to bring in the dog. I hope the dog had fun in your garden 🤗
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Post by amber89 on Sept 11, 2019 18:23:22 GMT
I am not sure if Marshmallow's nastiness was really just dominance behaviour. Their cage was pretty much the same, just the play pen was cut three grids shorter. Also, i am thinking, if it was dominance, then shouldn't it have been present at the beginning? Instead of the appearing later on?
I have unfortunately caught a cold.The weather cooled off very abruptly, especially during the night. Our summer blanket is actually a 1-person blanket and more often than not, i am left half uncovered. This proved to be too much for me and after 3 cold nights i woke up with a sore throat. Luckily nothing worse than that, no fever or joint pains, but since i am a bit ill, i am cutting on my interactions with the piggies. My husband has not to clean the cage and bring them veggies, i am just giving them their hay.
After moving to Austria i have started to have more and more dreamless night...but when i am dreaming it's usually nothing too pretty.
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 11, 2019 21:39:16 GMT
I seem to have stopped dreaming, too, unless I have to wake up to go to the bathroom. Then I have the strangest, and as you said not too pretty dreams. I've gotten used to them meaning I have to get up, but some of been so totally strange, I can't even imagine where they came from.
You may be living a different type of life than before you moved to Austria, and with different people, so some of your dreams were familiar dreams, about things you knew well, including bad things. You haven't been in Austria all your life, or at your current job all your life, so you have yet to build a strong base of dream subjects. I don't know, but it seemed the further I got from what was familiar, good, bad or indifferent, the less I dreamed.
Dominance can start at any time. Something might have happened to trigger it, and even if you saw what triggered it, you wouldn't necessarily have recognized it as a trigger. Also, the cage isn't the whole habitat. You moved them from one room to another, and changed the cage. The whole room, everything they see and hear, is their habitat. If the dominance doesn't stop once they're back in their regular place for a few days/week, then you may have to do something. I hope they get back to normal quickly. It will be a huge weight off your mind.
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Post by Bean on Sept 12, 2019 9:01:10 GMT
I wish I didn't dream so much some nights - it's tiring!
Last night I dreamed I was coming home from holiday with my family and we were on a minibus from the hotel to the airport. Despite being a minibus with only 15 or so seats, we made so many stops at other hotels to pick other people up. I was dying for a wee all this time, so getting really impatient! Worse still, each time we stopped, we all had to get off the minibus and take our suitcases out of the luggage hold and then reload them?! Anyway, it went on for ages in this fashion, until I woke up desperate for the loo.... That'll teach me to drink two big old mugs of mint tea just before I go to bed!
Hope you feel better from your cold very soon, Amber. I hope you at least enjoy getting out of doing the cleaning up for a few days!
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 12, 2019 19:54:13 GMT
I also think dreams that seem to take forever only really take a few seconds. Amazing what our imaginations can do, and what it chooses to do at certain times.
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Post by bazookagoof on Sept 13, 2019 0:58:38 GMT
I used to have bad dreams about work on a regular basis, until I finally quit that nonsense. Now I seldom dream about work, if ever.
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Post by amber89 on Sept 13, 2019 8:57:18 GMT
Yes, the dominance stopped the moment they were back into the living room and they got the full cage size.
I had a talk with my husband and the decision was to postpone adopting another piggy. Both of us would want to and the shelter has again some females available, but our future is at the moment a bit unsure. We might leave the country in 1 year and moving with pets is always more complicated. In addition we are not sure that at the moment we have enough space for another piggy; we want them to have enough space to run around. And then comes the financial part; vets are not cheap and having another piggy that might get ill, might prove to be too much for us. Once we are more secure about our future, we would most likely expand the heard.
I prefer dreamless nights, than nightmares. Usually they are so bad that i can't even fall asleep anymore. Yes, i am calmer since i moved to Austria. This might also explain why i don't have that many bad dreams anymore. They return whenever my husband is away on conferences, though. The nicer dreams usually include my grandparents house and my grandparents.
Since we talked so much about dreaming, i dreamed last night. I was at my parent's apartment, with one of my ex-boyfriends. My husband wasn't even existing in my dream. That is a first, since we are together. Even if he is sometimes not in the dream, i am always aware that he exists. This time, he wasn't existing at all.
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Post by Bean on Sept 13, 2019 16:19:30 GMT
It sounds like a sensible decision not to adopt another pig if you don't know where you'll be in a year, and also have limited finances. We have six, half of which are 6 or 7, so more medical things are popping up, and even though we're more comfortable now than we were 10 or 20 years ago, it still puts pressure on the monthly budget when a few of them need appointments or treatments at the same time.
I'm sorry you had such a bad run with nightmares, but it's good you rarely get them now, I assume because you feel more secure and settled? Does you not feel as confident when your husband is out of town?
I wouldn't worry too much about your husband not being in your dream though, unless it's set you off thinking romantic thoughts about your ex?! I quite often miss out big chunks of my life or important people in my dreams. I don't generally try to work out what they mean, except in jest, or I think I'd have to take myself off to a psychiatrist!
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 14, 2019 0:02:27 GMT
I totally know I love my husband, even if I complain about him. He can be maddening. Yet when I dreamed, he usually wasn't in the dream, or even a part of that reality. So many different things cause us to dream, and dreams take that tiny bit of information, and turn it into a reality all its own. I had a dream about squishing grapes in a vat, with a male coworker, mostly because he had mentioned something about it, totally in passing, at the office that day. It was basically a remake of Lucy Ball doing it in her TV series, only instead of Lucy and Ethel, it was the two of us. Totally not something I'd ever do in real life Ooh, I hope the move is one you want, and would look forward to. I totally understand not getting another pig for that, and all the other reasons. I'd love to adopt all the guinea pigs at the rescue, but I'm not physically up to that, anymore, and know it would all fall to my husband. I also don't have the money for endless vet visits, so can totally relate to that. I did talk to a guinea pig rescue about the lack of decent guinea pig vets in my state, and they said they use one back in my old hometown in the next state. It's a good hour or more from here, but I know that vet cares for all the rescues guinea pigs, some of whom were burned in a fire late last year, so they know a lot about guinea pigs. I will travel all that way for them. The rescue said the vet was reasonably priced, too. Don't let your dreams trouble you. Dreams are not reality of any kind.
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Post by Bean on Sept 17, 2019 9:51:07 GMT
Just before I went to sleep last night, I'd seen some news report form the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, which my husband and I visited a few years ago. I spent a couple of seconds recalling how, instead of my usual technique in galleries and museums of standing near the back of a crowd so I don't block anyone's view (because over here, I'm usually among the tallest), in Amsterdam I did that and found I couldn't see a thing because they're all so blooming tall over there! Anyway, that night, I had a dream that I spent an evening with friends, who were suddenly all a foot or so taller than me! I was a bit miffed to be honest haha!
Amber, is the German accent/ dialect/ language massively different in the north and south of Germany? I just saw something with a German woman saying that she finds people from southern Germany hard to understand, especially Bavarians. Just keeping things in mind for when we get round to planning our trip!
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Post by amber89 on Sept 18, 2019 7:13:01 GMT
I don't worry about having a dream that included my ex, even if it was some romantic element involved. He treated me actually quite bad during our time and right now I can't even recall his name. I did have a nightmare last night which kept me awake from 2 to 5 AM...and at 6 AM I had to wake up for going to the library... I feel like I was ran over by a bus. I dreamed that I stabbed in the stomach my own sister and female lover, and for my lover I even broke the knife blade into her, just to be sure that I kill her. It really disturbed me...I never dreamed something so violent, and definitely not with me as the perpetrator. Not to mention that I don't have neither a sister, nor a lover. Amber, is the German accent/ dialect/ language massively different in the north and south of Germany? I just saw something with a German woman saying that she finds people from southern Germany hard to understand, especially Bavarians. Just keeping things in mind for when we get round to planning our trip! YES! YES! actually each region in Germany has a different dialect. What is thought in school, the so-called "Hochdeutsch" is spoken mainly in the Berlin area. South Germany has a multitude of dialects, historical Bavaria has its own dialect, while the area of Nürnberg has again a different dialect (even though administratively they belong to Bavaria). I believe that in the big cities and the tourist areas one should be able to come along well enough with the formal German. Bavarian dialect is closer to the Austrian dialect, even though, strictly spoken there is no Austrian dialect...it is a collection of (sometimes extremely localised) dialects.
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Post by Bean on Sept 18, 2019 7:23:02 GMT
Ooh crikey, I can imagine that did leave you feeling rather upset - not a pleasant thing to imagine at all. I hope you can shake it off, and that the unsettled feeling doesn't stay with you all day.
I know some people who dream a lot, whether good or bad, keep a diary of them. It just helps get it out of their head and leave it behind. It's okay if you can just forget about them, but if they stay on your mind, it can be helpful.
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Post by 3piggles on Sept 18, 2019 21:30:05 GMT
Amber, do most Germans, regardless of their dialect, understand formal German, even if they don't speak it? I know here in the states, while all regions have their own accents, and some dialect differences, not everyone can even speak formal American English, if they want to. Makes it hard to get very far off the main routes, to get the tourist dollars. The thing about dreams is that they are representative of something totally different than the actual topic of the dream. Dreaming you are out in public naked doesn't mean you want to do that, or are afraid it might happen, but that you're feeling very vulnerable for some reason. It could be an interpersonal relationship, a situation at work or school, even a change in commuter schedules that's making you feel less capable of handling a situation, so more vulnerable. That dream, while definitely disturbing, doesn't mean you want to kill someone, or that you are basically a brutal person hiding in the persona of a nice person. I googled killing strangers in dreams, and most of what I found said the person or people you kill usually represent situations you really want to stop. The more violent your attack, the more you want that situation to stop. It may be about wishing you could return to Romania, a decent Romania, not the real one, so you could spend a lot more time with your mom. Every source said dreams are the minds way of working through issues, problems, even hopes or disappointments. They're not real. I know you are upset by it, but it's not the real you
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Post by amber89 on Sept 20, 2019 16:57:49 GMT
Yes, i know that the dreams represent the sub-conscious part of our brain. Yeah...there are many things that i would like changed, mostly regarding my studies.
It will sound weird, but I think that those knives also had something to do with the fact that mom had an eye operation the day after my dream, even though i had no idea. I talked to her shortly afterwards and she told me she also dreamed knives for two nights before her scheduled op. I have this connection with her...also i have this feeling when something is wrong with her.
Actually it depends a lot on the people. Older people or the ones without much superior education might not be able to speak formal German. They might understand it, with the occasional raised eyebrows when words really mean something different, but generally they would understand it. The problem is in the answers you get...you might not understand a word.
The boyfriend of my sister-in-law can only speak Bavarian dialect. He understands my formal German just fine, but when answering it's only dialect...and quite a strong one also. The first few times when we met, when also my dialect understanding skills were really low, i used to ask him to speak formal German. It was a lost cause, he would speak formal German for 30s and then switch back to dialect. I simply gave up asking and had no choice than to ask my husband for a translation, when there were questions for me. Also, my husband's grandma and uncle speak only Viennese dialect. Also with them i needed translations. Now, after 8 years it's better. At the beginning though, it was a nightmare
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