Greetings

[amnerisryn]

Hi. :)



I'm Amneris (or Amne or Ris or whatever you'd like to call me), the proud owner of Tinklepaugh, a mislabeled Chinese hamster. He's approximately a year old and my first hamster. Tinky (or Ham*Star as my niece calls him) is a reincarnated interior decorator, a World War I soldier, and Spiderman when the mood takes him. I'll explain those later. :wink: We look forward to reading everyone's posts.

[SnuggleHam]

Welcome to the forum Amnerisryn, And welcome to Tinklepaugh *cute name*

I look faward to hearing about your chinese hamster adventures. I recently saw a chinese hamster in a pet store, they really look more like deer mice to me with a choped of tail half way down :P



How are they as pets? are they easy to handle?

[babyboos]

Oh I am very curious now :!: Cannot wait to hear about all your hamster adventures - I think sharing their mad schemes and mishaps is the best part of hamster ownership, or ownedship, as I tend to look at my relationship with my little ones. Looking forward to seeing a picture of your Tinklepaugh soon over in the Chinese Hamster Section.



Thanks for joining us :oops: I hope you have a great time here :wink:

[amnerisryn]

How are they as pets? are they easy to handle?





Tinky is a great little guy. I've been his Mommy for 3 months now and I absolutely adore him. He's very quiet except for very early mornings when I pay attention to my betta and then he'll make chittery noises and run around his cage (Tinky and my fish Lutador wage war on one another, but I'll explain that later.) Personally, I think Tinky's a great pet for me (I'm 22 and in college so his nocturnal schedule is ideal for my situation) but I can't say that I would recommend his breed for small children. My niece is 3 and loves him to death but she gets really frustrated when Tinky won't come to her when she puts her hand in and I definately don't trust her to hold him. Also he's prone to exploratory nipping especially when he's crawling across my fingers or I'm returning him to his newly cleaned cage. Of course, I could be misinterpreting it and he's really giving me a Thank you Mommy nip. :wink:



He's terribly hand-shy which I think is due to him being previously housed in an all-plexiglass unit in the middle of PetsMart (where they had mislabeled him as a Siberian Dwarf) where customers could (and did) tap on the boxes. He's pretty good when I've got him in my hands and he'll belly-waddle across them and that was misleading the first time I had him out because I sat him down on my desk and whoosh he was off and hiding under some papers in a heartbeat. Now that we're used to each other he's not as skitish but I'm still working on getting him used to being handled. As he's my first chinese hamster, I can't say if his nervousness is normally inherent or an acquired complex from the PetsMart environment.



You're right, they do look like deer mice. :P

[SnuggleHam]

They really look more like mice and they aren't supposed to be a dwarf hamster either.. But they don't look anything like the Syrian :P



Is their urine more potent like that of a mouse?

[Coco1]

Hi Amnerisryn,

Yes I'm definatly intrigued and want to hear more about his "spiderman" antics!



You wrote - (where they had mislabeled him as a Siberian Dwarf) ... this is JUST what I was telling others in a previous post of mine! The pet store down the road from me labeled their chinese hamster for a Russian dwarf!

They do look cute. I'm looking forward to hearing more about yours :-)

Owned by Nibbles...

[SnuggleHam]

I cant understand how of all people pet store owners could get the name and species wrong of an animal they are selling...



if I had my own pet store and didnt know id be very embarrased. Further more, dont the people/breeders they get their pets from know what they are lol



if so why dont they tell them! :?:

[Coco1]

I really believe that most of the time the breeders do tell the pet store but its the people at the store that get lazy and wrongly label the hamsters. Or they just put the labels in the wrong places - a LOT!

I dunno, something I'd be embarrassed about too!

[amnerisryn]

is their urine more potent like that of a mouse?



There's a noticable odor but it's easily remedied by scooping it out every few days between weekly cage cleanings.

[amnerisryn]

Actually, there were a lot of these little guys when I bought Tinky and when I mentioned that Dwarf hammies don't have long (for them) tails to one of the sales people they were surprised. The sales person had never head of a Chinese hamster. Half the time, I don't think the animal handlers (at least at my PetsMart) care to distinguish between the rodents except for 'obvious differences' :roll: *sarcasm* such as Panda, Black Bear, Teddy Bear and Long Haired Hamster--Careful BITES. But for all they're lack of information at least they do try to keep them seperated by sex and they're all as well cared for (in terms of basic needs) as the environment of a shopping outlet can provide.

[babyboos]

I think all pet shops need at least one person who does know about the animals they stock, after all the range of livestock is not huge nowadays. I can appreciate in some of the larger stores many of these guys treat it like any other retail job - they don't know the ins and outs of all the items they sell but when dealing with live animals someone there has to have responsibility and have a good knowledge of species and husbandry.

[amnerisryn]

Babyboos I second that wholeheartedly.

[babyboos]

Thanks Amneris :lol: I wish there was some way to enforce this.