Care - How to Trim your Guinea Pig's Nails

Care - How to Bathe Your Guinea Pig

Trick - The Circle Trick

"I trained Mi-Mi Wee-Wee to do this trick in three days.

HOW TO TEACH YOUR GUINEA PIG TO DO THIS:

1. First teach your guinea pig to follow a treat in your hand (not in a circle, but in any direction). You may first need to teach it to eat out of your hand and to trust your hand. This can be frustrating at times - it took me forever just to get the guinea pig to follow my hand. It helps to have a good treat - like a carrot. Don't give your guinea pig too much of the treat or it will get full. When the guinea pig can follow your hand to great lengths, you are ready for step 2.

2. Start doing circular patterns with the treat. Make sure you pick one direction (clockwise or counter clockwise) and stick with it. After a while the guinea pig will expect a circle and will begin doing them more efficiently. As soon as this happens move on to step 3.

3. Assign a key word of phrase to the trick. Now, every time you want the guinea pig to do a circle, say the exact same word of phrase. I always say "do a circle", which the guinea pig interprets as a single word - "dooasercal" and will not understand if I rephrase that in any other way. Saying "please! - I'll give you a juicy carrot" will not help; remember guinea pigs don't speak English! Also, if you pick a key phrase that is too long or confusing, or if you say too much other stuff, your guinea pig might get confused and do circles for everything even when you don't want it to. It helps if every now and then you give your guinea pig a treat without making it do a circle. A good time to do this is when it is in its cage - not in the middle of a lesson.

4. This is the hardest part. It will probably take over 50 level 3 circles to get here. Eventually the guinea pig will really expect a circle and have the ability to do them very efficiently. When this happens you don't need to make the guinea pig follow your hand for a full circle, just put the treat either to the right or the left of its face (depending on the direction of the circle), and say the magic words and the guinea pig will begin to learn how to do circles without following the treat. Make sure to always reward it for every circle.

Note that it is important that you never change the direction of the circle. When teaching your guinea pig to do a circle do not award a treat for a circle in the opposite direction you taught it (even though it is tempting at times) because this is an indication that it is just doing random stuff.

And that's it! Now look; Mi-Mi Wee-Wee is the most popular guinea pig on YouTube! If you decide to teach your guinea pig this trick, film it and post it as a video response to this. And don't forget to help out Maximum40 by subscribing to us and watching our other videos!

I also taught my dog to do this trick in less than five minutes."

Here's another circle trick I found.