R.I.P Amma

Amma, our family pet guinea pig died today, she was 4 and a half years old. She has been living with my daughter Amber in Ashburton for the last two years. She is pictured above with her best mate Ishana (longhaired one). And below with her son Fugly (on the left) who lives with me still in his apartment in my studio.

Amma was a purebred Crested Black Point Himalayan. She mated with Floyd (he passed away march 2007), who is always looking over this blog in the title banner bottom left , and they had Fugly.
Useless facts from my past about why I love guinea pigs:
Some people have cats, dogs or birds etc, but I have always loved guinea pigs. I used to breed and show purebred guinea pigs (cavies) from 1987 to 1999, where I travelled New Zealand showing and judging them and running the Otago Cavy Club. Over that time I usually had on average 200 in my caviary, over 12 years I bred about two thousand purebreds.
I kept four generation pedigree papers, selective breeding programmes, and mapped coat colour genetics to improve the standards. I studied and became a vet nurse, and wrote two scientific papers on the social behaviour of cavies, and one on skin diseases of cavies. I also ran a guinea pig rescue.