Taming & Bonding With Your Guinea Pig
It can be challenging to tame a skittish guinea pig when they’re bolting away and hiding every time you enter the room. Teaching your guinea pig to trust you can take some time and patience, but bonding with your guinea pig is worth every moment.
Tame guinea pigs are so cute and make excellent pets. They can learn tricks, come when you call them, and wheek happily when you walk in the room. A super tame guinea pig can be almost dog-like in personality and can even learn to follow their person around like a little 2-pound puppy.
The best way to tame your guinea pig is to spend lots of time with them in a positive manner. Talk to them in a happy voice and hand-feed them their favorite veggie treats. Sit down on their level and let them come to you. Avoid sudden movements and sit quietly so you can show them there’s no need to be scared. Create positive associations by hand-feeding treats frequently.
These positive food associations will help your guinea pig overcome their fear of you and associate you with good things rather than just being scary. Spending positive and consistent time with your guinea pig is key to forming a solid bond and having a sweet and social guinea pig.
12 Best Ways to Bond With Your Guinea Pig
1. Find Your Guinea Pig’s Favorite Treats
The best way to a guinea pig’s heart is usually with food! Therefore, an excellent first step to taming a skittish guinea pig would be to find treats that your piggy loves.
Vegetables are the best treats for taming your guinea pig because they are healthy and can be fed in higher quantities than store-bought treats.
You can find a list of good veggies to use for training or taming on our Guinea Pig Training Treats page.
When introducing new foods to your guinea pig, they may not eat them initially. This doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t like the treats. Often when guinea pigs are unfamiliar with new food, they don’t really recognize it as food right away and will hesitate to eat it for a while.
Keep offering it in their food bowl every day. Eventually, they will decide to try it out. Put a few different veggies in their bowl and take note of which ones disappear or get nibbled on most often.
2. Hand Feed Your Guinea Pig Their Favorite Treats
Once you have some veggies that your guinea pig likes, try offering some food from your hand. I like to start with bigger pieces (like a leaf of lettuce or a full-size carrot), so they can nibble on the food without needing to come too close to your hand at first. Hold the piece of food still and let your guinea pig nibble on it while you hold the other end.
As your guinea pig becomes more comfortable eating from your hand, use gradually smaller pieces of veggies. This encourages them to come a little bit closer to you each time. Eventually, your guinea pig will be able to confidently walk right up to your hand to take a smaller treat from you.
If your guinea pig is skittish, you’ll probably want to hold the food close to the entrance of their bed or hideout at first so they’ll feel comfortable enough to eat in front of you. Try to break up your hand-feeding sessions into short 5 minute periods once or twice a day.
Once your guinea pig is comfortable eating the food from inside the hideout, start holding the food just an inch or so outside of their house, so they need to poke their nose out a little bit to eat the food. Don’t try to lure them out at this point; just hold the food and wait for them to poke their head out and eat it.
The more time you spend hand feeding, the more your guinea pig will start to relax in your presence and begin to form positive associations with you approaching their cage.
3. Floor Time With Your Guinea Pig
Floortime is a great time to bond with your guinea pig. Floortime is basically where you set up a guinea pig safe area (a foldable exercise pen is great for this purpose!) and give the guinea pig time to free roam outside of their cage. This is also a great opportunity to sit with your guinea pig at their level and bond with them.
At first, your guinea pig may not want to move around or leave the security of their hidey house. This is totally normal! Guinea pigs usually take a bit of time to adapt to a new environment or routine. Stick with it, and eventually, your guinea pig will feel comfortable enough to start exploring.
Scattering some veggie treats around on the floor sometimes helps encourage the guinea pig to venture out of their hiding place.
Sitting quietly with your guinea pig on the floor is a good way for them to learn that you’re not a threat. You can get the guinea pig used to your presence simply by sitting near them and reading a book or scrolling social media.
Have some veggie treats ready to offer the guinea pig for when they start to venture out and approach you. You can also try lying down on the floor perfectly still. Guinea pigs are curious creatures and will often come out to sniff you and investigate.
4. Put Treats in Your Guinea Pig’s Cage Throughout the Day
Many skittish guinea pigs will run into their hidey house as soon as you open the door or approach their cage. You can change this reaction by changing your guinea pig’s mindset about what happens when you approach their cage. A simple way to do this is by putting a piece of your guinea pig’s favorite veggie treat in their cage and walking away.
Do this a couple of times throughout the day without interacting with or handling your guinea pig. Over time, they will come to associate you approaching the cage with bringing them a treat and will be less likely to spook and run away every time.
5. Avoid Acting Like a Predator
As prey animals, guinea pigs are naturally cautious of any strange or loud noises, sudden movements, shadows, and anything coming at them from above. The more nervous your guinea pig is, the more sensitive they will be to these things. Guinea pigs also have poor eyesight and tend to spook easily.
Whenever possible, try to move around quietly and slowly. Avoid looming over your guinea pig and stay as still as you can whenever your guinea pig is approaching you or eating food from your hand. Talk to them in a quiet, calm tone, so they get used to hearing your voice.
6. Make a Blanket Fort For Your Guinea Pig
You can also make your guinea pig feel more comfortable around you by giving them a place to hide when they’re hanging out with you. This is especially helpful to start bonding with guinea pigs that won’t eat veggies in your presence at all.
Try draping a blanket over yourself and onto the floor so the guinea pig can hide underneath the blanket and feel secure. This gives the guinea pig a place to hide and feel comfortable while also getting used to being near you.
It’s also a good idea to put some veggies under the blanket with them. When they start eating, you know they’re beginning to feel more comfortable around you.
You can also put your guinea pig on your lap with a blanket or towel that they can bury themselves in to feel safe.
7. Avoid Chasing Your Guinea Pig
It can be challenging to get your guinea pigs out frequently for floor time when they’re panicking and running away as soon as you reach in to pick them up. Running away is normal for guinea pigs and doesn’t mean they don’t like you.
Guinea pigs have poor eyesight, and when a large shadow reaches over them, it’s their instinct to run and hide from a potential predator. However, it can be quite stressful for piggies and people alike!
My favorite way to move my guinea pigs to and from the cage is using the carrier method. All you do is take a small pet carrier (a little soft-sided carrier works perfectly) and place it in their cage.
If you don’t have a carrier, you can also use a closed bed or cuddle cup and just pick them up in their bed (be sure to cover the entrance so they don’t try to jump out in midair!)
To get your guinea pig to go in, show your piggy some of their favorite treats, and then put the food inside the carrier.
If your guinea pig is too skittish to follow the food into the carrier, you can place the carrier in their cage and take all their hidey houses out of the cage. A nervous guinea pig will quickly gravitate to the carrier. Draping a blanket partway over the carrier door can also make it more inviting for a skittish guinea pig.
All of my guinea pigs now run straight into their carrier as soon as I put it down in their cage or on the floor. Super easy and so much less stressful! The carrier also makes it really easy to get the guinea pigs back in their cage when floor time is over.
8. Use Routines and Consistency
Guinea pigs thrive on routines and consistency. They quickly begin to associate times of the day with activities. For example, my guinea pigs always start squealing half an hour before feeding time every night. They also wait at the front of their cage to come out for floor time in the evening.
Creating a routine for floor time or hand-feeding can be helpful, especially when taming skittish guinea pigs. When they know what to expect, they’re more likely to relax faster and settle into the routine.
While it’s not necessary to pick the same time every day, it may take more time to tame a very skittish guinea pig if there’s not a set routine.
I found routines especially beneficial when taming my most skittish piggy, Ceico. Once he knew what to expect, he started settling into the daily routine, and bonding became much easier. Before that, it would take several minutes just to get him to start eating food and truly relax outside of the cage.
If you’re able to stick to a daily routine for the most part, it’s always a good idea to set one for your piggies.
9. Use an Older & Confident Guinea Pig to Set an Example
If you already have an older and more confident guinea pig (for example if you are bonding a new baby guinea pig with an older piggy) you can use the older guinea pig’s confidence to your advantage.
Feed your older guinea pig some treats right in front of the hidey house where the young guinea pig is hiding. This will often pique the interest of the baby guinea pig and encourage them to venture out as well.
Seeing another guinea pig eating and approaching you without fear sets a good example and shows the baby that there’s nothing to be scared of.
Even if your guinea pigs aren’t bonded yet, you can still use this method with a fence or cage between them. Move the hidey house of the skittish guinea pig close to the fence, and feed the older guinea pig right beside the fence on the other side. If the skittish guinea pig pops their nose out, offer them a treat as well.