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Originally Posted by LonesomeTonight
Different kind of animal, but both my guinea pigs are American shorthairs. I think Lexie is technically a tortoiseshell because she has orange/tan and black markings (her face is kind of half and half). Amelia is all orange except for a tiny spot of white on top of her head.
Taking them to my parents' place at the beach tomorrow for a few days (H and D got down there a little bit ago), and I'm nervous because Lexie hid and wouldn't really eat for the first day the last time (guinea pigs pretty much have to eat all the time to stay alive). I'm trying a different transport container this time, so hoping they'll be less freaked out. Plus hopefully they'll remember the place. (I have no idea if they have long-term memory.)
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Had similar issues with my pet rabbits when I was a child (traveling always seemed to make them nervous and as soon as they were nervous, they wouldn't eat). Slightly different animal, but I googled it and the same seems to be true for guinea pigs:
When my rabbits wouldn't eat, they most often would still accept wet cardboard. And they are allowed to eat that, same seems to be true for guinea pigs. So you might want to try that. We usually just took a few inches of not too thick cardboard (without ink on it of course), soaked it in water for a short time and offered it to them. Sometimes they would nibble on it and sometimes not, just offer it every 15 minutes or so, each time wetting it again before.
If they accept that, at least they have something in their digestive system, which is important so their intestines keep moving.
As for traveling with them, we never really figured out a perfect way to do that, it would always freak them out a bit. But important parts were covering the whole transport container so they wouldn't see outside (we always used a blanket), trying to keep the container as steady as possible while driving, and we'd always put on meditation music during the ride as well (which they seemed to like).
They did sort of remember the place where we usually brought them during longer vacation times. But not completely, it'd still freak them out a little bit, but much less than the first time.