A few days ago I got my boy Ryan (approximately 11 months old) a potential friend of similar age and size, who was also living alone in a pet store before I took him home. He’s the Abyssinian and Ryan’s the shorthair. I did a lot of scent swapping on the first day, making sure they could see/smell/hear each other from a distance. They kept wheeking at each other. I swapped them between their separate habitats a few times to mix up their scents.

Now they’ve been in the same pen (large enough for both of them) for some hours, but they still squabble a lot, trying to dominate each other. They rumblestrut, lift their noses at each other, scent mark, teeth chatter, etc, all behaviors that I’ve read to be typical dominance behavior. They eat and lay down around each other, but in a way that seems… passive aggressive? It’s like they’re having an eating competition lol. Both of them have also (unsuccessfully) attempted to mount each other, to the other’s annoyance. No blood has been drawn.

Despite all this, both piggies are a whole lot more active, vocal, and confident when they’re around each other than they used to be when they were separate. The new boy is very shy/skittish around me and used to sleep all day and eat/drink very little (I was worried he was depressed), but now he’s very lively and active, eating and drinking and moving around. He also seems to be the slightly more dominant one of the pair, which is interesting considering how timid he was around me. (By contrast, Ryan is now very confident around me and will run up for treats.)

I hope they will eventually sort their relationship out and form a stable dominance hierarchy, but I’m not sure how long I should wait. Does anyone have any advice? Is there anything I can do to help them get along? I know it’s not great for my Ryan to be alone, but do you think he’d enjoy living with this piggy eventually? I really want him to have a friend but I want to make sure it’s actually good for him. Worst case scenario I can return the new piggy within 14 days if it comes to that, but I want to try everything I can to help them get along first. It’s been maybe 2.5 days so far.