my guinea pigs had a fight

hey, its been a while since i posted anything, but that was actually good cuz everything was going fine.....

three days ago my guinea pigs had their first and i really really hope its their last.

i already posted about how they sometimes had some little confrontations but it was the usual boar dominance thing, until last saturday.....

i was at work, my gf told me that they were making a lot of noise (running around the cage noises) and chasing each other non stop, they were being very loud with their angry noises and chattering their teeth non stop too. all of that stuff is agressive dominance behaviour, and thats the moment u should separate them if u dont wanna see how they start fighting.

i was leaving work when my gf told me that it really was concerning n that i should get home right now, so i did. i told her to get one out of the cage, nugget, just bc he's the smaller one and could get hurt easier by aguacate (i mean, aguacate is 1.5kg and nugget still doesnt reach a kg) so she did.

i arrived home and aguacate was trying to find nugget desperately, chattering its teeth and making his angry noises. we both thought that it was aguacate the one who was chasing and trying to fight with nugget, but for surprise, i inspected both of them and found a pretty ugly wound on aguacate's little mouth😬😬😬 so it was nugget the one who wanted to fight, which makes sense because aguacate already was the dominant one, but now that nugget is getting older (he's 4-5 months) and he's getting into guinea pig adolescence he wants to become the dominant pig.

we prepared a separate cage for aguacate and checked if he could eat (he could thanks god), he just ate slower poor little guy.

since they started to get little confrontations, i could see that it was nugget the one who "challenged" aguacate's dominance. he was pretty submissive at first and sometimes he even was scared of aguacate when he wanted to get him away from food or his space, but little by little he cared less and stopped being submissive until well, they ended up fighting🤷‍♂🤷‍♂

i want to believe that aguacate didnt hurt nugget (i mean, if they had continued fighting they would both end up injured) because he knew that he is much bigger and he was already the dominant and does not see nugget as a threat, but maybe im just humanizing them lmao

after checking the seriousness of the matter (aguacate's wound), we looked for an emergency vet  on the city because the bite cut him pretty deep, it split his upper lip, it looked painful and not cool, and it was like 12.30am and my trusted vet was already closed.

i called like the first one, they did not answer. i called a second one, they told me to visit other vet they knew, i contacted that vet and sent them some pics of the wound bc they asked to see of bad it was.

they told me that it i could go the next day bc there wasnt active bleeding so it wasnt an emergency, but that i still could go to get him checked.

i decided to go to my trusted vet the next morning bc they already know me and my guinea pigs and it would be way cheaper (emergency service + the exotic animal's vet displacement to get to the vet is expensive as fuck).

me and my gf got to the vet the next morning, they checked the pig and said that it was okay, nothing to worry too much. i just have to give him some antibiotics and clean the wound two times a day. its already healing and it looks little inflamed already.

aguacate is eating, drinking and pooping normal.

now they have been living in separate cages, i dont really know what to do. i just know that aguacate has to heal first, and then ill think something.

for now the only solution which i dont really think it will work out (at least now) is to bath them together and get them to decide the hierarchy again (avoiding them to end up fighting). they say that bathing boars together makes them be in a neutral state because of the stress of the bath, the smell and some other stuff i dont remember anymore but i read in a forum lol

i said that i dont think it will work bc when some of them gets floor time (individually) they try to reach each other and start to chatter their teeth n make angry noises......... so im thinking that they MAY get along again when they get a bit older bc their hormones will not be peaking like they are rn (specially nugget lol).

i dont like that bc they live separated now, they cant see each other (but i also dont think it is a good idea to let them see each other neither cuz they get angry and stressed and they could actually get hurt just thru the cage....) and that may get them depressed bc their hormones start to be on chill mode from a year and a half, that means i would have to wait at least a year..... and living alone a year.... i just dont know........

i dont know what else i want to say or if im forgetting smth but whatever haha

ill read any advice or comment about the situation or unrelated topic, you can ask or comment anything !!