How to Train Your Guinea Pigs: Easy Tricks to Try

We all know you can train a dog, but what about guinea pigs? It might seem impossible to teach your piggies tricks, but I promise it’s not!

Guinea pigs can learn simple tricks like following your hand, coming when called, and even spinning in a circle. They can also learn to use a litter box to keep their cage cleaner, though they likely won’t use it 100% of the time.

In this article, we’ll talk about how to train guinea pigs and what tricks you can teach them!

Can You Train Guinea Pigs?

Guinea pigs can be trained to do tricks, accept handling, and more! The key is to keep your expectations realistic (they aren’t dogs or cats!) and to use positive reinforcement.

For guinea pigs, this means using their favorite thing: food!

How to Train Guinea Pigs

Most guinea pig training involves luring, which is when you use food to guide your guinea pig into a certain position. This is the foundation of tricks like spin or following your hand. It’s similar to how you’d guide a dog into a “sit” using a treat above their head.

Of course, your guinea pig is never going to be a circus performer jumping through hoops, but teaching them simple tricks is a great way to spend time together.

What Can You Train Guinea Pigs to Do?

Before you train your guinea pig, it’s important that they’re comfortable with your presence. If you just adopted your piggy, give them time to settle into their new home first.

Then, you can work on bonding with and taming your guinea pigs so that they’re comfortable around humans. This takes time–years in some cases!

Remember that your guinea pig isn’t in the place to learn if they’re too anxious and scared to even approach your hand. They need to get past the fear, first.

We’ll talk about how to tame your piggy before everything else, then get into the fun tricks and even litter box training!

How to Tame Your Guinea Pig

As with all training, the best way to tame your guinea pig is with food. It also takes time, patience, and understanding.

Guinea pigs are prey animals, so they naturally avoid predator species like humans! Because their main predators in the wild are birds of prey, they especially don’t like being approached from above.

Therefore, it’s best to always approach your guinea pigs from the side–or, even better, let them come to you!

• Inside of the cage, you can do this by holding treats in your hand, talking softly, and waiting for your piggies to approach. If they’re too timid, just let them see you put their veggies down so that they learn that you’re safe and bring good things!
• During floor time, you can gain trust by lying or sitting on the floor. Don’t walk around or hover over your piggies, but stay low to the ground. Place veggies nearby, bringing them closer to you each time until your guinea pigs will approach you for a treat!
• When picking your guinea pig up, you can get them more comfortable with the process if you move slowly and approach them from the side. Another way is to coax them into a cuddle cup using a treat, like a small piece of fruit. The more exciting and rare the treat, the more they’ll want to climb in right away!
  You can then pick them up inside the cuddle cup. Make sure to support their weight and keep a hand in front of them, just in case they try to jump back out. Piggies can be hurt even by short falls!

Remember to have patience with your guinea pigs. It can take a lot of time to gain their trust, especially if a human has broken their trust in the past.

How to Train Your Guinea Pig to Follow You

It’s pretty easy to teach your piggy to follow your hand around the cage or even during floor time! To start, you’ll be luring them, but over time they can learn to follow without the treat.

• Get some small treats, like shredded veggies.
• Use a treat to lure your guinea pig to your hand. Treat them for coming!
• Then, move your hand a small distance. Wait until your guinea pig follows and give them another treat when they do!
• As they get better at this and begin following faster, move your hand further away each time and space out the treats more. You can also move your hand multiple times before giving them the treat.
• Once your guinea pig follows your hand consistently, start saying “follow” as you move your hand. This way, you’re pairing the command with the action.
• Put the treats down somewhere very close. Say “follow” and move your empty hand around the cage just like you did when you were holding the treats. When your guinea pig listens, grab the treat and reward them immediately.
• Practice until your piggy has it down. You can phase out the rewards if you’d like, but your piggy will enjoy training more if you keep the food coming!

Always keep training sessions short so your piggies don’t get bored, and walk away if you’re getting frustrated as well.

Progress takes time, so don’t rush the process. Repeat the steps above for days or longer before moving onto the next. This will make sure your piggy gets enough practice and doesn’t get confused!

How to Train Your Guinea Pig to Spin

“Spin” is another super easy trick for piggies to learn! Again, we’ll be using a luring technique to teach this one.

• Get some small treats, like cut up veggies.
• Guide your guinea pig to your hand with a treat. Then, hold it above their head and make a slow, wide circle around them, encouraging them to follow the snack. Give them a treat for following you!
• Practice the above several times.
• As time goes on, pick up the pace! Your circles can get faster and looser as your piggy learns what you want from them. The quick, loose circle you end up with at the end will act as a hand signal that tells your guinea pig to spin.
• Once they have the trick down, pair the vocal command “spin” as your piggy turns around.
• After a lot of practice, try giving the hand signal without a treat in your hand. Be sure the treats are close by so you can reward them immediately! (If they don’t listen, practice more using treats first.)

Again, keep training sessions short. This is especially important for this trick so your piggies don’t get dizzy!

How to Train Your Guinea Pig to Come When Called

Training your guinea pigs to come when called is very similar to having them follow your hand! This time, we’re going to hold treats out in the cage until the piggies come up to us.

• Grab some small treats, like pieces of vegetables.
• Hold a treat until your guinea pig comes and takes it. Practice this repeatedly until they reliably run up when you put your hand in the cage. You can also tap the ground or add another hand motion during this step.
• Start calling your guinea pig’s name, saying “come here,” or whatever else you want your guinea pig to respond to.
• Gradually increase the distance your pet needs to travel to get to you. Once they have lots of practice over several days or weeks, call them with an empty hand. Use the hand motion and command word you chose. When your piggies listen, treat them immediately!

If you’d like your piggies to learn their names, you might need to train them separately during individual floor time. This way, there’s less confusion and you don’t have multiple piggies running up when you call for someone in particular!

How to Litter Train Your Guinea Pigs

I know what you’re thinking: guinea pigs can be litter trained?

Well, maybe not in the way you’re thinking! There are ways to get guinea pigs to use a litter box fairly reliably, but they’re still going to pee and poop outside of it as well.

Litter training can still make cage cleanings a lot easier, though. So, let’s learn how!

• First, get a litter box. It should be plenty large enough for your piggies to climb fully inside of at the same time and shallow enough for them to get into easily.
  You can make it yourself out of Coroplast or buy a shallow cat litter box. The ones made especially for guinea pigs are almost always way too small.
• Next, you’ll need a guinea pig-safe litter. Don’t use cat litter for this! Instead, pick your favorite guinea pig bedding type and add it to the litterbox, making sure it’s at least 2-3 inches deep.
• Add hay! This is what’s going to entice your guinea pigs to use the litter box. You can use a safe hay rack or bag (make sure the holes are large enough for your piggy to climb fully inside of to prevent injury or difficulty eating the hay). However, I prefer to pile the hay into the litterbox and I think piggies tend to like it better as well!
• Clean the litter box at least once every few days. Daily is best. Be sure to top up the hay regularly as well.

That’s all it takes on your part! Once the litter box is all set up, your guinea pigs will go inside to eat their hay.

Guinea pigs use the bathroom while they eat, so keeping their food and even water bottles inside the litter box will cause them to go there naturally.

You can also toss stray poops into the litter box to tell your guinea pigs that’s where you’d prefer for them to go.

Likely, your guinea pig will also poop and pee a ton where they sleep. This is why I recommend pairing a litter box with pee pads under hides, which can be swapped out more easily than an entire fleece liner.

The combination of the two will keep your cage cleaner for much longer, even if your guinea pigs don’t use the litter box every time.

As you can see, guinea pigs are smart little critters! They’re very food motivated, which makes it easy and fun to teach them simple tricks.