Ok, so this might be a bit of a weird one
This isn't a problem or a confusion, just a point of curiosity. As far as I was aware, Syrians could be toilet trained and dwarf hamsters just sort of... go wherever they want. Cadmium definitely backed this up as
nothing I tried would coax her into not peeing in her nest, whereas Hydrogen pretty much instantly took to using a designated toilet except when he was stropping and protest-peeing.
When I first brought Carbon home I wasn't surprised that initially he seemed to pee in his nest quite a lot and I was having to spot clean that area every day, and honestly, his cage was getting just a
little bit whiffy. I'm aware that over cleaning can make rodents scent mark more, so I just maintained the spot cleaning and tried to leave him otherwise alone so he could settle in (huge new cage full of new smells might take a while to settle into).
But in the last few days, maybe the past week-ish he seems to pee mostly in one or other of his sand baths, (though he won't accept a corner toilet inside the house and digs all of the sand out and puts his hoard there instead
) and while I have checked around his nest, he doesn't
seem to be peeing there anymore and his whole cage smells less as long as I spot clean the sand areas - there's still a bit of a musky smell (I mentioned this when I was asking about male vs female dwarf hamsters) but that isn't as strong and it's definitely not a dirty smell, it's just... his smell, I guess.
So basically, the point of this ramble was: is it unusual for dwarves to use a designated toilet spot like that, or was Cadmium just chronically lazy? :P Have your hamsters changed their habits (other than for a medical reason)? Does your hamster have a strong opinion about where a toilet should and should not be?