For a confident guinea pig, a stay elsewhere is an interruption. For a shy rescue pig, it can feel like the world has been replaced: new smells, new sounds, new hands, and none of the hiding places she has painstakingly learned are safe. Rescue pigs often carry a history that taught them caution pays, and a first stay away tests exactly that learning. You cannot make the place home, but you can pack enough of home — its smells, its routine, its hiding architecture — that her nervous system gets the message that this strange room runs on the same rules.
Rehearse the stay before it counts
If the stay allows any lead time, shrink the unknown in stages. Visit the sitter's home with her first, even briefly, so the room's smell and sounds exist in her memory before she has to sleep among them. If the sitter can host a single overnight before the real stay, take it: one short, survivable experience teaches her that this place returns her home again, which changes how the longer stay feels. Introduce her to the sitter at your home too, ideally as the person who occasionally delivers her favourite vegetable, so the new human arrives pre-loaded with good associations rather than appearing at the moment you disappear.
Pack her home in miniature
Smell is her map of the world, so send the map with her. Her own hidey houses — ideally more than one, each with an entrance she can bolt into — her fleece or bedding carrying home's scent rather than freshly laundered fabric, and a familiar blanket to drape over one end of the enclosure so she has a dim, covered quarter to retreat to. Send the same hay and the same vegetables she eats at home; a first stay is no time for menu experiments. If she has a bonded companion, they travel and stay together, without exception — for a shy pig, her companion is not company, she is the confidence itself, and separating them undoes everything else you arrange.
Instructions that protect a shy pig
Brief the sitter for restraint, because the kindest impulses — picking her up for a cuddle, coaxing her out to say hello — are the ones that frighten her most. Day one should be near-invisible care: hay and water refreshed, food delivered, no handling beyond necessity, and a human presence that talks quietly while doing other things nearby. Handling, if it builds at all, builds at her pace, in the open, with an exit always available. The pen belongs in the quietest room available, away from resident dogs and cats entirely and away from television noise and slamming doors; floor time, if offered, happens in that same room with her hides in reach, and only once she is eating confidently.
Reading how she is coping
A shy pig coping adequately still eats, and eating is your gauge. Ask the sitter to report honestly: is hay disappearing, are vegetables taken — even if only once the room is empty — and are droppings appearing normally? A pig who hides all day but eats overnight is managing. One who refuses food entirely across a full day, or whose droppings dwindle to nothing, is not, and that is the point at which plans change: a vet call for advice, and if the stay has days to run, a conversation about bringing her home early or moving the sitter into your home instead. Knowing her favourite emergency food — the one vegetable she will take from a hand — gives the sitter a tool worth more than any tonic.
The paperwork of reassurance
Write her down for the sitter: her routine, her hiding habits, the foods she trusts, how she likes to be approached, and your vet's number, so nothing about her care depends on the sitter guessing kindly. Putting that brief into KinsLe's Care Pass gives the sitter temporary, clear access to her routine and key details while you are away — the familiar instructions, at least, arrive in the strange place exactly as you wrote them.