Breed: Abyssanian/Silkie mix
Style: Dutch
Sex: Female
Weight: 3.1 lbs.
Hershey was my first cavy, and she will always have a place in my heart.
Hershey was basically a Christmas present for 1997. My mother and brother got me a guinea pig starter kit for Christmas, and a check to go out and buy one. I had been talking about getting a pet for some time, partly as a means of putting some variety into my otherwise drab existence. Still, I was quite reluctant to take in a small animal. Now, I don't know why I hesitated! I bought Hershey in mid-January of 1998, from a pet store in Aspen Hill, Maryland (just a few miles north of my home in Silver Spring). I've since learned that getting cavies from a pet store isn't very good form, since it can encourage careless breeding, but at the time I didn't know any better. So, when people ask I tell them that I rescued this brown and white beauty from a miserable existence as a piece of merchandise (even though this particular store was pretty clean). It has since gone out of business.
Hershey and I had a rough start. The night I brought her home the first thing she did was jump out of the travel box, run across the coffee table, then jump to the floor, where she promptly hid behind the futon. I took me most of the evening to catch her again, and for a couple of days she was afraid of me. I was on the verge of despair, but that weekend I offered her a baby carrot, and she ate it right from my hand. The ice had broken. I couldn't know it at the time, but her running about would become her trademark.
Oddly enough, for the first several months that I had her, I thought she was a boar! The pet store told me that Hershey was a male, and I believed them, though after a few weeks I was beginning to wonder. When I took her in for a routine physical exam, the vet quickly settled the issue. Other than the gender bender, Hershey was given a clean bill of health, which was a relief.
Hershey was a wonderful companion, and she had a great personality. She didn't like to be picked up, nor was she a fan of being petted while in the cage. But once picked up and in your lap, she was very affectionate. She had a wide vocabulary of soft squeaks and gurgling sounds which she made while being petted, and she liked to lick people she likes ("Hershey kisses"). Hershey also had a very shrill, high-pitched call that she made when demanding attention or a treat. She was always opinionated and finicky little pig, and could be downright prissy when she wanted to be. She also suffered from a chronic wanderlust, so rounding her up after floor time was often a real challenge.
She was about four months old at the time this photo was taken. The other side of her body was largely brown, with a white patch on her shoulder. When she was smaller, her coat was almost perfectly symmetrical; brown on one side and white on the other. I called her Hershey because she reminded me of chocolate-vanilla marble ice cream.
During her third year, she developed a bit of a weight problem, which occasionally made feeding time a problem. I had to watch a lot of her food intake, and while she didn't eat more than the other pigs, she was always rather pudgy. On the morning of March 22, 2002, I noticed that she was lethargic, and not interested in food. Considering how much she loved to stuff her face, that made me worried, so I took her to the Wheaton Animal Hospital later that morning. Their exotics specialist, Dr. Gary Schwartz, just happened to be in that day, handling surgery cases on some other exotic animals. He agreed to look at Hershey between his other cases, which he did. He called me at my office later that morning, and he could tell immediately that something was very wrong with her. An x-ray implied a blockage in her digestive tract. With my concent, he put Hershey on a series of medications and special foods, in the hope that the blockage would clear itself. When my girlfriend and I went to visit Hershey that evening, she didn't look that bad. She was groggy and not quite herself, but she seemed to be bouncing back. The vet techs wanted to keep her overnight so they could monitor her medication; things looked OK.
When Dr. Schwartz called the next morning, she had gone downhill. When we arrived at the hospital an hour later, she had declined even further. Even Schwartz was surprised at how far she had declined in such a short time. When I saw her, she looked terrible. She was very bloated, could hardly move, and was clearly in a great deal of pain. Perhaps I'm attributing too many human characteristics to her, but the look in her eyes was heartbreaking.
"Daddy, it hurts so much..."
I asked Schwartz for his honest medical opinion. Considering how week she had become, he didn't believe she would have survived any corrective surgery. In fact, he wasn't sure that surgery wouldn't have helped anyway. She declined very, very quickly, and a second look implied something that can be a death sentence even for humans: peritonitis.
I agonized for a few minutes, then asked the doctor to end her misery.
In spite of what some people advised, I opted not to have an autopsy. The only question that mattered to me was "Could she have been saved?" According to Schwartz, the answer was no. Peritonitis is usually fatal for small animals; nothing could have been done. Furthermore, I didn't want her to be cut up like a side of prime rib. She was a beautiful little pig up until the end; I wanted her to stay that way. The specific details didn't matter to me anymore.
Hershey was cremated, and her ashes were returned to me in a wooden coffer, which now rests on the top shelf of one of my bookcases. Specifically, the bookcase she used to hide behind, and where she would periodically chew on the books!
She was my original furry friend, and I'll never forget her.
Last Updated: June 17, 2003