Whether you want to clean a wound, tie a leash or simply put a guinea to sleep forever, anesthetization is the best way to do it. However, it can be difficult (and costly) for a normal person to obtain anesthetic substances.

If you only need about one to two minute to perform your operation, you can use a common household object to achieve the same effect.



Simply put the guinea pig into a plastic bag, and use an airduster (aka canned air or compressed air) to pump gas into the plastic bag. Keep the exhaust away from the guinea pig as it will freeze burn the skin. You only need to press 2~3 times. Since the gas is denser than air, guinea pig will be paralyzed after inhaling the gas for about 15 seconds. You can remove the guinea pig from the bag after it loses its conscious for about 10 seconds. The guinea pig should still be breathing but unconscious (like in a coma). Depending on the size of the guinea pig / amount of gas it inhaled / ventilation of the area, you will have 1 to 2 minutes to perform the operation you want to perform without the guinea pig struggling.

If you want to put the guinea pig to sleep forever, just keep pumping the gas without removing the guinea pig form the plastic bag. The guinea pig will remain unconscious and eventually die after 5 minutes.

The major concern of guinea pig assassination is not the guinea pig itself but its owner. There are a million ways to kill a guinea pig but the difficulty is not raise the suspicion of the owner.

One of the best ways for guinea pig assassination is alcohol poisoning. Simply add sake (Japanese rice wine) or colorless alcohol into the drinking bottle of targeted guinea pigs, and you are done. You do not need to add pure sake as the smell is too strong, just mixed it with water so the overall alcohol percentage is above 5% (the stronger the better, but also the smell, so you have to adjust between the concentration and the smell).

Since water bottle is the only source of water for caged guinea pigs, they will eventually consume the “alcohol mixture.” Once the guinea pigs drink enough of the mixture over a period of time, they will suffer diarrheic symptoms and eventually die. It will look like contagious food poisoning, and no veterinarian doctor can know the cause unless they test the blood sample for alcohol level, which is very unlikely.

If you even have a thought of punishing your own guinea pig, your guinea pig is already in good hands; at least you are not spoiling them. There are plenty of self-proclaimed guinea pig experts that often leave comments on Youtube and popular forums stating that you should treat your guinea pigs like gods (maybe the wording is different but basically means the same thing).

Guinea pigs are not as fragile as you think. It is the over-protective man-made environment that made them fragile. If loud noises can scare a guinea pig to death, then guinea pigs should have been extinct thousands years ago with a lightning stroke. Peruvian raise guinea pigs as stock animals without intensive care, and, yet, those guinea pigs are still healthy.

Now, why would you want to punish your guinea pigs? It is because you want to train them to do something or simply because they did something bad? Guinea pigs are layback animals that simply eat, drink, poop, pee, sleep and procreate, so if you want them to behave differently by punishing them, they will not understand. For example, if you want to punish the guinea pigs because they did not poop in the designated area, they simply cannot link the pooping behavior and punishment together, thus render the punishment useless.

So guinea pig punishment is completely useless? Not really, it is still an effective way to change power hierarchy of the guinea pigs. Usually guinea pigs have their own ways of determining “Who is the boss” in their pen. The boss guinea pig has the territorial control and is bossy to other guinea pigs. The power hierarchy also affects guinea pig / human interaction. Spoiled guinea pigs are more likely to think their position is above human, and are more prone to have unfriendly behavior or even attack unfamiliar human they encounter.

However, guinea pig punishment still cannot change the nature of the guinea pigs. Two male guinea pigs will always fight in a territorial confrontation. Female guinea pigs will still attack horny male guinea pigs that they are not interested in.

The following scenarios are examples that guinea pig punishment is more likely to be effective.

1.    You have two female guinea pigs, A and B, living together for a while, but A is bossy to B, even attacks B occasionally. You, however, want B to reign.
2.    Your sister owns a guinea pig C and she spoils C in everyway she can. Now, C is arrogant to people. C even viciously attacks you when you touch its butt. Guinea pigs, especially females, usually do not like their butt being touched. However, biting a human being is never an acceptable behavior.

In the first case, you need to consider that A is dominating for a reason. It usually indicates A is there longer, stronger or smarter. If you punish A, B will become the dominating one and A will become the victim.

In the second case, the source of the problem is actually your sister. It is like a problematic teenager usually comes from a problematic family or over spoiled parenting.

Now, before we discuss the DOs, we should first know the DON'Ts.

• Do not punish the guinea pigs by starvation because their simply cannot correlate the starving to their behavior.



• Do not hit guinea pigs; not with your hand, a stick or even electrical wires. Bones of guinea pigs are fragile. Their body is evolved to be an escaper, not a fighter. You can easily break their ribs, hands or legs with a simple slash using a stick or piece of wire.



• Do not hang guinea pigs; not by the neck, waist or legs. If you hang a guinea pig by the neck for about five minutes, it will die. If you hang a guinea pig by its waist for a day, its lower body will suffer cyanosis depending on its weight (adult guinea pig cannot survive 24 hours of hanging while young guinea pigs can last longer because they are lighter in weight), and the guinea pig will die eventually. If you tie or hang a guinea pig by its legs, it will try to escape and may result self-inflicted injury and they will be limping for the rest of their lives.. Unless you tie the guinea pig in a way that it cannot move completely (e.g. in a crucifix position), it is just not worth the risk.

One of the best techniques to punish a guinea pig is to use a month gag. You do not need to buy or make a gag. Simply use a rubber band and tie it around the guinea pig's head and its mouth. It does not need to be very tight; as long as the rubber band can stay behind the teeth and around the edge of the month. Make sure the tongue does not stuck in between the band or it will suffer cyanosis. A gagged guinea pig will have a forced open mouth; it cannot eat or drink while being gagged, so you should not gag a guinea pig for over 12 hours or it may have unrecoverable conditions. Gagging is an extremely unpleasant experience for the guinea pig. It will first struggle viciously and then give up eventually and gasp. If you gag a guinea pig tightly for hours, the guinea pig will not be able to close its month right after being released due to over strained muscles, but it will recover in a couple hours.

For first mentioned scenarios, if you put a gagged A back to the cage where B resides, A will struggle while B will try to help A to escape. After a couple times, A will become less aggressive to B.

For second mentioned scenarios, C will first become scared of you, but will eventually accept you again, but C will not be as aggressive as it used to be. Best of all, your sister will not even notice if you do it while she is away, because gagging does not cause permanent physical harm (unless you gag it for too tight or too long).

Leashing is also a good way to change the power hierarchy of the guinea pigs. Leash the boss guinea pig to the cage (make sure it has access to food and water) while other guinea pigs can run around freely. The boss guinea pig will lose its power quickly.