Ryan’s coat has very similar coloring, except with short hair. I was wary of introducing the two of them because I heard that it’s hard for two board to get along, but Ryan was alone and I wanted to try getting him a friend.

So far things seem promising, at least from a distance. They can see, hear, and smell each other but they are in separate enclosures/cages, set up to prevent any physically aggressive behavior. Both piggies seem to become a lot more active in each other’s presence. They mostly wheek at each other.

The new guy had been extremely inactive before being introduced to Ryan from a distance; he wasn’t really eating, drinking, or moving much, he just seemed to want to hide and sleep all the time. I worried about him but thought maybe he was just shy and scared of a new environment, since he’d been at a pet store for a few months previously, living alone in a small space. But now that he is around Ryan (in separate enclosures), he’s actively eating, drinking, vocalizing, and moving around. And Ryan has started sleeping, eyes closed, out in the open—not underneath any hideys—on the fleece in his pen, in the half of his pen that’s closer to the new piggie. Ryan never used to do this before.

I’m pleasantly surprised. I got to thinking might this actually work out? So I’m daring to think of names for this new boy; I’d been avoiding that because I didn’t want to get attached, only to be forced to return him to the store.