My tooths

Quick note from Melon: There is actually some much bigger news that Cocoa will tell you about in the most recent post, but since he put in so much effort to make these other posts recently I'll let him share them first as well. Over to Cocoa...

So what's been happening with me lately? Well, my hooman has been pretty busy lately and her moods have been up and down. But a couple Mondays ago Melon came over to give me a hug, which she hadn't had much chance to do in the week before, and she noticed I kept dropping my treat. And other foodables she offered me. Looking into my mouth, she realised I was missing a tooth.

See, we guinea pigs have four front teeth, two on top and two on bottom. They're called 'incisors'. For some reason, my teeth fall out sometimes. I don't know why, they just do. It sure makes it hard to pick up food sometimes. And  one of my bottom teeth has never grown back after I lost it ages ago, I don't know why.

Now, we guinea pigs have to eat all the time. Yeah, I know, you're saying I just love my food. Well, yes, I do. But apart from the fact that food is the most wonderful thing in the entire world, it also keeps my gastro-in-test-in-al system going and my teeth from growing too long. I just gotsta eat eat eat all day long to get enough energy and for everything to keep going.

So because I was having trouble eating my foodables, Melon has been sticking some foodables in my mouth for me. I can't say I like it all that much, but I have been letting her do it 'cause I know she's just trying to help, in her hooman way.

Here's the little stick she uses:

The foodables in the stick don't taste that good either, so I have been trying my best to eat as much of yummy stuff on my own as I can. I must be doing a good job, because she hasn't stuck that stick in my mouth all day, even though a few days ago my bottom front tooth got wobby and fell out too. I've been wondering, have you guys ever had your foodables stuck into your mouth for you?

We went to see that funny man the other day, the one who sometimes does icky things but smells really kind. I sit on his table in a towel while he and Melon talk talk talk. They talked for ages the other day, something about my teeth having grown way too much and needing me to grind down my teeth. See, most people know about our four front teeth. But you probably didn't know that we actually have twenty teeth - we have sixteen others, called molars, at the back. They overgrow easily too - and that's what's happened to mine. The funny man said I must be chewing funny because of the funny stuff going on with my front teeth, so my back teeth aren't wearing themselves down properly.

So anyway, all this stuff basically means Melon and her family are stuffing me with food. Everyone's been handing me food all day, I guess 'cause I've been munching all of it, and every once in a while they put me on this thing:

This tells them whether or not I need more foodables through the stick.
The hoomans are hoping that the machine will keep telling them good things and that my teeth can wear back down through all the munching. If they don’t, I'll have to have a den-tal pro-ce-dure to grind down my teeth. And even if we do they can grow back real quick. But Melon says we should stay opti-mistic, because I had one of those four years ago and it hasn't really been a problem again until now, so between my eating well now and the backup plan of the pro-ce-dure, things should work out okay for me.

Thanks for reading. Melon and I are going to try and catch up on blogs soon.

Wheeks,
Cocoa