Toys!

Because Quentin is super smart — he can find a timothy hay treat in record time — we got him two toys.

The first is a set of stacking cups. He loves to pick up things and throw them, and stacking cups felt like something he could spend hours stacking up and taking apart.

The second is a wooden puzzle with six circular pieces. You can hide a treat under the piece, and the pig has to remove the piece to find it.

We also bought him a new food dish because one of the things he loves to throw is his dry food dish. He flips it upside down immediately after I fill it, sending the food everywhere. He’s pretty good at snuffling around and eating the pieces off the ground, but it creates a mess, so we wanted to remove bowl privileges.

Unfortunately, the new bowl was terrifying. TERRIFYING. He cowered in the corner when I put it in his cage, shaking all over. Even after I removed it, it took him a good hour to return to normal.

The stacking cups last one hot second. I put a treat between each cup to teach him to stack and unstack them. He ate the top treat, then took the rest of the cups and threw the whole stack in the air. This released all of the treats at once, and we made the mistake of laughing when he did this. He ran around, collecting all of his treats.

But the wooden puzzle is a big hit. The first piece or two is difficult to get out, but once he creates some space, he removes them in order of most favourite snack to least favourite. He also cleans it up and puts the pieces back and removes them again, checking to see if something new appears. He can easily play with it for an hour without getting bored.

He’s ready for Guinea Pig Harvard.