From Simple to Silly…. Just Add Ace

The human has given me a lot of toys over the last couple years, but I have to admit….

This new one she brought home is eerily different.

When the human first showed me this thing, I sort of thought it might be another guinea pig that I could purr at! Ceico can be kind of boring sometimes. I mean, he just wants to sleep all the time! And he’s less than amused when I try to take initiative and get him to play with me…..

But that’s a topic for another day.

Anyway, going back to this new thing…. The human put it on the floor right away, and seemed to be encouraging me to check it out. I wasn’t exactly sure what it was, so I approached with caution at first. It didn’t smell like another guinea pig, and it wasn’t moving at all, so I figured it must be something else.

At closer inspection, it appeared to even have eyes and ears, just like Ceico and I have! It had all the same colors as me, and even the same little white marking on its head, just like me!

Strange.

What was this thing???

Once I got close enough, I started the sniff test. I hate strong smells, and I make sure the human knows that by sticking my nose high in the air and shaking my head back and forth whenever I smell something I don’t like.

This object had a less intense scent that wasn’t really overwhelming in any way. Still, I could smell something subtly sweet on it, and kept sniffing for a minute, trying to figure out exactly what it was. It smelt good in a way, but it was also distinctly different than my usual favorite scents (ie. lettuce and carrots.)

After the sniffing, there was one more obvious thing to try. All my favorite toys so far have involved either eating or sleeping, so I chose to test out my favorite option….

Eating, of course! (There was no way I was sleeping right after I got a new toy!)

Anyway, I quickly realized this thing doesn’t have the right texture to eat. The hairs don’t taste particularly good, and they tickle your mouth when you try to chew. The human definitely didn’t want me eating it either (which of course, never stops me,) but I have to admit that she was right on this one.

My next inspection consisted of everything else I could think of! I tried running around this thing, jumping over it, sniffing it some more, pushing it around…. It still hadn’t moved since I first saw it, so I figured it was pretty safe to let my guard down.

After awhile, I eventually came to the conclusion that this thing was a little boring…. after all, I still can’t eat it or sleep on it! But it did smell kinda good, and it was pretty fun to inspect this interesting new guinea pig thing.

Plus, I may be (just a little bit!) biased, but the little guy is awfully good looking too. 😉 I think I might just keep him around to play a bit more.

By the way, if you want to see my *very thorough* inspection process, check out the video my human put together below! It captures all of the most important steps I take when inspecting any new toy that the human brings home. 🙂

Thanks for reading my latest adventure!

~Ace

P.S. For some reason, the human doesn’t leave my little friend unattended with me…. I have no idea why, of course. I mean, it’s not like I would take the opportunity to try to taste the little guy again or anything….

Did you know that us guinea pigs are actually pretty talented basketball players? I mean, I don’t want to brag (too much) but I am, for sure, the most amazing four inch tall (fuzzy and all) basketball player you’ve ever seen. If you don’t believe me, check out the two short videos below.

Running up for the Dunk

Dunking the ball is my favorite thing to do! Of course, the net may be a little shorter than the professional leagues, but don’t forget! I’m only 4 inches tall after all. Piggy basketball nets are built at the perfect height for my mini slam dunks. 

I also taught my buddy Ceico how to play the game. Turns out he’s a pretty talented basketball player too! (but not as talented as me, of course!)

Two Guinea Pigs Playing Basketball

Basketball is a pretty fun game, and of course the only thing cuter than one guinea pig playing basketball, is two guinea pigs playing basketball! One of these days, I’m going to take on Ceico in a 1 on 1 game to put our piggy basketball skills to the ultimate test!

Learning basketball was a bit of a process, but it was lots of fun! First, I had to learn to pick up the ball and put it in the human’s hand. This part is a bit annoying, because sometimes the human’s hand moves. Humans are such fidgety creatures.

After I was able to put the ball in that moving hand, we started practicing with a bowl. Every time I successfully put the ball into the bowl, the human would give me a treat and move the bowl a few inches away or to the side. Once I became pretty good at putting the ball into the bowl, we switched to a braided loop (basically a big basketball net!) and the human gradually held it a bit higher each time until I learned to lift up the ball and go for the dunk!

Finally, we started practicing with the real basketball net! (well, the 4 inch tall one.) The basketball net was a bit harder because it’s barely bigger than the ball itself. I had to be very accurate in order to shoot on the net. It took some practice, but now Ceico and I can both dunk accurately 99% of the time! (OK, fine, at least 89% of the time.)

If you humans out there want your guinea pigs to hone their inner basketball talent, check out the video below or the basketball trick tutorial page for more training tips. Give it a try with your piggies at home. They might just love it as much as Ceico and I, and it sure is a ton of fun once you progress all the way to dunking on a basketball net!

How to Teach Your Guinea Pig to Play Basketball

Thanks for reading my latest adventure!

~Ace

Did you know July 1st, 2017, marks Canada’s official 150th birthday? I didn’t know what that meant right away, but the human seemed to think we should do something special for this year in particular. Being Canadian piggies, our human gets us to raise a mini Canadian flag a lot, but this year, she had something different in mind. She brought out a ton of jumps and obstacles of all kinds, all red and white!

In the mix was our Canadian flag (of course), red skateboard, red basketball net, red and white jumps…. the whole deal. She also brought a ton of veggies!!!

Ceico and I had a blast with our veggie eating day (err….I mean Canada Day) and it turned out to be lots of fun. I raised a Canadian flag, ate veggies, rode my skateboard, ate veggies, beat Ceico at basketball, ate more veggies….. You get the idea, right? It was awesome! We got to show off all our best tricks, and be patriotic at the same time! (And eat lots of lettuce!)

Here are some sneak peak snapshots from our trick day.

If you want to see our Canada themed trick video, you can check it out below. My human put all our best tricks from the day into an organized video to wish all the Canadian piggies and humans out there a happy 150th Canada Day!

Hope you enjoyed our video and had just as much fun this Canada Day as we did!

Thanks for reading my latest adventure!

~Ace

Hey guys! So my human and I have been working on all kinds of tricks over the last several months. Everything you can imagine – from doing tricks at a distance and weaving cones, to closing doors and playing fetch! I always look forward to playing fetch with my favorite ball (the human always dishes out extra food for that trick) although it’s kind of annoying when she rolls it ALL the way across the room. I mean, come on, I am a guinea pig after all! Running all the way across the room for any reason isn’t exactly on the top of my list of fun things to do.

I can also push a shopping cart, raise a flag, and play basketball, among many other tricks! I even do scent work, where I find one particular scent in a group of ten different smelling objects. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the scent I’ve learned to find – I think it stinks to high heaven! At least I get a treat when I track down the funny smelling thing.

Anyway, my human recently got all excited and told me I was officially a champion trick guinea pig! I mean, I already knew I was great, so I don’t know why she seemed to make a big deal out of it. But not wanting to miss out on a prime opportunity, I, of course, took the chance to act cute and beg for more treats (it works every time!)

She also took pictures of me with this giant ribbon thing and another shiny circle thing (the shiny circle thing tasted good by the way!) She didn’t seem to want me to chew the ribbon thing (which is a sure sign that it must taste good!) so it was harder to test that one (although I still managed to get a nibble or two when she wasn’t looking!)

My human recorded all of my champion tricks and made them into a video to show me. The video was a bit on the long side for me though. I only watched about 5 minutes of it (or was it 5 seconds?) before I started to get bored. I mean, I had a lot of eating to catch up on! Plus, I already know how smart I am!

But if you want to watch it, my human attached the video at the top of this post. Maybe you won’t have to eat as much as me and can watch the whole thing!

Thanks for reading my latest adventure!

~ Ace

Note from Ace’s human:

Ace was certified as a Champion Trick Dog (TDCH) by DoMoreWithYourDog.com. He previously earned his novice, intermediate, advanced, and expert titles before being qualified to submit a champion title. His video submission (above) was approved on January 31, 2017 and he was added to the list of official champion trick dogs/animals here. Guinea pigs can do dog tricks too! Go Acey! 🙂

One of my all time favourite tricks is where I get to run around with my human. I love to be under the human’s feet as much as possible when I see her walking around. When she has food, I discovered that chasing her around and trying to climb up her leg is by far the best way to get it!

Usually the human doesn’t appreciate “tripping” on me all the time (although secretly I know she likes when I follow her around.) Personally, I find it funny to watch her shuffle across the room to avoid stepping on me. I like to sneak up behind her sometimes too. I can make her stop really really fast when I run in front and cut her off! It’s one of my favourite past times, and a fun one when you’re getting bored of your human!

One of the best tricks the human has ever come up with is where I get to cut her off and be rewarded for it! Well, to be honest, that’s not exactly the point of the trick, but I make sure to sneak it in here and there. 😉

Weave walking is where the guinea pig (that’s me!) has to go between the human’s feet every time they take a step. I usually weave walk all across the room and back, which is about 4-5 steps each way.

Isn’t it a cool trick?

When I first started training the human to do this trick, she didn’t quite get it. She was supposed to give me the treat just for begging nicely and being cute! But since she didn’t understand, I went along with her plan and we just learned this weave walking thing together.

One thing I did train her to do though, was walk faster! Humans are so slow and clumsy. I don’t think she knew how fast I could weave, so I decided to just take matters into my own paws and speed things up myself to show her how it’s done. 😉

It ended up being a lot of fun overall, although I still think it would be better to run in front of the human’s feet instead of through. But even after all my efforts to get my thoughts on the matter across to her, she’s still adamant that I’m not supposed to cut in front. Oh well, I guess I’ll have to settle for catching her off guard once in a while when she’s not expecting it.

If you want to teach your human to weave walk just like I did, all you have to do is follow what I did in the video below or find tips on the weave walk trick tutorial page.

Keep in mind that this trick isn’t always as easy as it looks though. The human says I’m a bit of an odd ball (a cute fuzzy odd ball she says!) so not all piggies would be as eager to be near a human’s moving feet as me. I mean, I understand how they feel; humans look awfully huge from down here! If the human is patient and takes slow steps for awhile, I think that would make most guinea pigs more comfortable and maybe they would enjoy this trick too!

As fun as it was, all that running made me hungry (okay, well, I’m always hungry.)

But anyway, maybe all you piggies out there can have some fun weave walking with your humans too.

P.S. If they play dumb like my human sometimes does, just remember this one thing; it can take awhile for humans to learn new tricks, so be patient with them! All humans will eventually catch on with consistent training.

Thanks for reading my latest adventure!

~Ace

Lately my buddy Ceico has been learning to paint a picture using something the human likes to call, “the paintbrush.”

The paintbrush is this stick shaped thing, with a funny looking feathery part poking out of one end. It kind of looks like a long skinny carrot, although it isn’t orange like a carrot (and trust me, it doesn’t taste like one either!)

Anyway, Ceico has been learning this new trick for a couple weeks now, but the silly human didn’t let me try it out! I can paint too, just like Ceico can!

Plus, the human knows I like to put my own spin on tricks, and there is just so much I can do with this trick! I started to think maybe there was a reason why she doesn’t want to teach me this trick, although I can’t imagine what it may be…..

*Above* A couple of Ceico’s finished masterpieces.

Anyway, the human gave in eventually and finally introduced me to the skinny carrot. As I mentioned previously, “the paintbrush” thing tasted nothing like carrots! How disappointing.

However, there was still a lot of stuff I could do with this trick. Of course the next obvious thing to try was the feathery bristles on the end! I learned quickly that the human definitely didn’t want me to chew on the feathery end.

I, of course, thought she was wrong. Those feathers look edible for sure! But it turned out that the feathers aren’t actually made of hay, and they’re pretty boring and tasteless. So okay, I guess the human was right this time; eating this new toy was out of the question.

So I resorted to picking up the paintbrush. That seemed to work, since the human offered food every time I picked it up.

So…. it was time to have a little fun. I tried picking up the paintbrush again, and put some extra energy into it, throwing the brush as far as I could. No treat. Huh. Not being one to give up so easily, I kept trying of course, thinking the human would change her mind (because throwing the paintbrush is kind of fun!)

We ended up kind of meeting in the middle. I learned that I could pick up the brush with my usual enthusiasm, but the feathery part at the end had to touch the white paper that was sitting beside me.

I still threw in an extra toss here and there to see if the human was paying attention, but she seemed pretty adamant that the brush was not supposed to be thrown across the room.

We practiced picking up the paintbrush and throwing it at the paper for a few days (pretty boring, I know!) Until one day the human decided to try something different (finally!)

This time, she seemed slightly hesitant to give me the paintbrush for some reason, but as soon as she did, I made sure to inspect the new changes thoroughly. The feathery part on the end was blue instead of its usual beige color. I got a little closer for a quick sniff, and it definitely smelled different too! Not like food exactly, but it sure was interesting!

Anyway, the human seemed to want me to keep touching the paper like we had been practicing, so I humored her a couple of times. She seemed surprisingly happy (and sort of relieved?) that I was doing the same thing we had practiced.

Then she dipped the feathers into something, and the interesting smell became even stronger! As soon as she set the brush down on the floor, I knew I only had one chance.

Snatching the brush, I turned and ran as fast as I could, looking for a place where I could inspect this new smell in privacy. The paintbrush was a lot bigger than I expected though. It didn’t quite fit through all the spaces I could, so I might have dropped it and hit it against a few more things than I intended to. After a few tries, I finally managed to get it under the table into my secret den.

The human’s eyes grew wide as she exclaimed, “No, Acey!” Seeing as the damage was already done, she surveyed the room, not looking surprised, but not too thrilled, either. Then, sighing, she retrieved my brush from under the table and ruffled my fur, saying something about “needing to cover the whole room in paper for me.”

Not going to lie, that sounds like even more fun!

Thanks for reading my latest adventure!

~Ace

P.S. Stay tuned for an update when I finally finish my painting, to see how the rest of my painting experience turns out. 🙂