Look into the care required for guinea pigs and take time to consider whether you will be able to provide the kind of care that guinea pigs require. Guinea pigs require a lot of attention and care and dine on grass based foods, to which some people are allergic thus making it impossible for them to care for guinea pigs. (Please check that you are not allergic to guinea pigs and the kinds of foods they need to be provided with when considering whether you want to adopt.)

We provide a list of good and reliable resources on guinea pig care on our website (here). Please note that resources not on our list may not contain accurate information about guinea pigs and how to care for them.

Please note, we have a "pairs policy". If you own a guinea pig, we are happy to help you find a compatible friend amongst ours. If you don't own a guinea pig, you may adopt a bonded pair or create a pair from our single guinea pigs. When you don't already own a guinea pig, we highly recommend adopting one of our bonded pairs - that way you know you have a pair that gets along, and won't run the risk of them not getting along once you get them home.

When you are sure of your commitment and ability to care for guinea pigs over the entire life-span of the guinea pigs (typically 5 to 8 years), submit an application to adopt. You will be contacted within 7 to 14 days via email at the email address you provided on your application. Please keep an eye on your spam box as our responses sometimes go there. On occasion, we may choose to contact you via the phone number you provided on your application, but we primarily correspond via email.

If you receive a response asking whether you are ready to initiate the adoption process, please respond. Once an affirmative response is received, you will be emailed sets of questions to check on your readiness to care for guinea pigs. These questions are asked both to those new and to those familiar with guinea pig care. We use your responses to educate or re-educate you or affirm your knowledge on how to best care for guinea pigs. We DO NOT require a certain number of questions to be answered correctly. We DO require that you demonstrate a sincere willingness and the ability to care for guinea pigs properly, which we will teach you through the question and answer sets, in order for adoption to occur.

Once you have shown a sincere willingness and the ability to care for guinea pigs properly, you will be asked to purchase the supplies needed to care for guinea pigs appropriately. MGPR will let you know what supplies you should and should not purchase. You will need to purchase the appropriate supplies and have them at home before your application can be approved.

Once your application is approved, you will be invited to one of our adoption meets. We cannot guarantee when you will be invited. You may be invited in the same month your application is approved, or you may be invited a month or more afterwards. It all depends on: the timing of approval (which may be just after the one and only adoption meet for the month has occurred); the number of applicants ahead of you and the pigs we have available to meet the requests of those applicants; and any extenuating circumstances that MGPR recognizes  as being pertinent to the timing of adoption. MGPR will not make any accommodations to make adoption happen by a birthday or holiday. (Please note, MGPR does not allow guinea pigs to be adopted as gifts.)

At the adoption meet to which you are invited, you will work with an MGPR volunteer to find the perfect pair/pairing of guinea pigs.

Please note that MGPR creates male-female pairs because opposite-pairings tend to work best. On occasion, MGPR has bonded pairs of the same sex available. MGPR otherwise does not create male-male pairings and only rarely will allow female-female pairings to be created. All of our guinea pigs are fixed so there is no need to create a same sex pairing so as to prevent reproduction.

If you don't own a guinea pig already

• If you do not already own a guinea pig that you have requested to find a friend, you will be required to adopt two guinea pigs (as guinea pigs are social animals and thrive best in pairs). If you are adopting two guinea pigs, MGPR highly recommends adopting one of our already bonded pairs. (You can see and read about our bonded pairs on our website here .) If you choose not to adopt a bonded pair and are not bringing a guinea pig to find a friend for, then you will have the opportunity to create a male-female pair from our available, single pigs. If you choose to create your own pair (again, we recommend adopting a bonded pair over doing this), we ask that you pick one pig that you are interested in adopting and letting MGPR find a compatible friend for that guinea pig. Doing this will ensure that you go home with at least one guinea pig that you have become attached to.

If you own a guinea pig already

• If you already own a guinea pig and have requested to find a friend for it, bring that guinea pig to the adoption meet to which you are invited. A MGPR volunteer will work with you on adoption day to find a compatible friend. A compatible friend will be found by allowing your pig to interact with one of ours (of opposite sex since male-female pairings work best). A MGPR volunteer will observe that interaction and will determine whether the pairing is good based on the behavior of the two pigs. Good pairings are marked by an absence of combative behaviors. In other words, guinea pigs that are good together won’t show any intent to harm one another.  The two piggies may or may not snuggle and groom one another. Some pairs do this and some do not; the presence or absence of snuggling and grooming is not a determinate of a good pairing. The MGPR volunteer will work with you until a good pairing is found. Sometimes the first pairing works; sometimes it does not. If the pairing does not work (i.e., if the two pigs show an intent to harm one another), the MGPR volunteer will allow your pig to interact with a different one of ours. Up to three guinea pigs can be tried. After that, the MGPR volunteer will ask that you come back to a future meet as your guinea pig will be too stressed to meet any other pigs that same day. Having to come back to a future meet does not happen often; typically, a successful pairing is found before the third try. If a successful pairing is found, MGPR asks that you do not request to try another pig.

All piggies will travel home in the same carrier so as not to disrupt the bond between the piggies. When you arrive home, you can put the guinea pigs in the cage together. No quarantine is necessary as all of our pigs have received a health check. If you adopted just one pig from MGPR to pair with your own pig or created your own pair of pigs at the adoption meet (i.e., did not adopt a bonded pair), put the pigs in the cage in the following order:

• Had a male, adopted a female:  put male in first, followed immediately by female placed down right next to the male. While cage should not be a mess to start, no need for it to be perfectly clean.
• Had a female, adopted a male:  Start with a perfectly clean cage (better yet, a new cage in a different location - at least temporarily). Put the male in first, wait about 15 minutes or more for him to get the lay of the land and get some of his odor around, then put the female in next to him.
• If you adopted a bonded pair of pigs from MGPR, put the pigs, in any order, in a clean cage with fresh bedding.