Guinea Pigs - 3 Tips For Exercising Your Pet Guinea Pigs

As with most animals, guinea pigs need to stay active and healthy. The most effective way to provide this essential exercise is to let them loose to scurry around unrestricted in a large, open space. This space can be indoors or outdoors, but in both cases it's important to follow these tips to unsure the safety of your animals:

1. Try Not To Let Them Stray Too Far

These gorgeous animals can get very excited when let loose to explore, and may attempt to get into all the gaps, nooks, and crannies that they can find. In fact, if you aren't careful, you will find that your pets have managed to force their way inside a sofa, behind a cabinet, or under the floorboards!

In order to prevent this, you should fence them in in some way. Ideally you should use a special run, but if you don't have one then you can make do by fencing off an area using chairs, boxes, and other household items.

2. Make Sure They Have A Soft Surface To Protect Their Paws

Guinea pigs tend to have very soft paws. This can easily be hurt by spiky objects. Whenever you let your pets out to play, be sure that you keep their running space cleared of potentially harmful items such as nails, stones, and so on.

In order to save your pets' feet from being hurt, you must be careful to ensure that their exercise space doesn't have any sharp or loose objects in it. To be on the safe side you should also make sure it is a spongy surface, like carpet, grass, or newspaper, to give them a soft surface to exercise on.

3. Protect Their Safety

Ask most animal lovers, and they will remember a time when one of their animals bit through a wire. Not only is this inconvenient to you, it could also be potentially dangerous to your guinea pig. Clear your animals' exercise space of all cables and wires before you let them out.

As a pet owner, there's a strong chance that you may own more than just one pet. If this is the case, it is essential not to get them out together, or there's a chance that they may get into a fight and cause serious harm to each other.

For more information about how to make the most of your guinea pigs, check out Alan's blog, which covers subjects such as handling and caring for guinea pigs.