Faolan's Thread

[Tazius]

I fed Faolan his first treat today!!! T has been doing it for a few days now and has gotten I the point where Faolan will happily take treats from his hand and put his paws on his fingers. I haven't felt confident enough to yet as I had a really bad experience with the last hamster I had that bit me really badly, so I've been really nervous... It went really well though, he just came over and took it from me to eat

[ayemee]

Lovely! Sounds like great progress.

[cypher]

Well done, that's real progress for both of you!

[Tazius]

We went out and got Faolan some new substrate today, as we'd originally bought pine wood shavings without realising it wasn't good and was causing him to sneeze a lot. We ended up getting carefresh (in white for the christmas theme!).

He squeaked a bit when we first put him in it and looked a bit annoyed, even though I'd kept his entire nest in tact mostly and spinkled a layer of sawdust throughout the cage so he still had some of the old material in there.

In the pics you can see where he dived right into it and then hid behind his cup for a little bit but now he seems mostly okay. Back to being super obsessed by his wheel as usual...

We've also ordered him some new bedding (blue to look like icey water), a boredom breaker fruit roller toy, little igloo, and a snugglesafe to keep him warm! We're also hoping to finish building his cage and put the rest of the mesh around the sides over the weekend, and then go on to start decorating it for christmas!

Still slow progress on the taming side as we're being quite cautious so we don't frighten him.

[cypher]

Aww bless him, he does look a little bit as though the change took him by surprise, I'm sure he'll soon get used to it if he hasn't already.

[Tildauk]

Aww so pretty, I love it when they burrow and forget that their bum is sticking out

[Tazius]

We haven't been able to update in quite a while, but now we actually have some proper pictures for you guys!!

After we recently changed his bedding to carefresh we noticed he started to get swollen patches over his eye and on his nose.. We've since changed the bedding to aspen for the time being which has helped, and also got given some eye ointment to put on him every day (which is proving an interesting challenge, but also great taming opportunity!)

Today is the first proper day of putting on the ointment. The first time he happily ate a peanut and sat still, the second time.. not so lucky and had to try and smear it on clumsily while he tried to shove the cotton bud away with his tiny little paws!

We were lucky enough to get to stroke him a few time, and he didn't mind AT ALL (apart from when he starts getting sulky and wants to go back home). He quite happily ran around the little area on our bed and climbed all of my leg!

We've also decorated his cage for Christmas, what do you think??

[cypher]

Good luck with the eye ointment, they soon get wise to what you're doing but I hope he's all better soon.
Love those first two photos of him, he's such a beautiful ham, the cage looks very festive too!

[flowerfairy]

Love the festive cage!

[Thin Lizzy]

Goodness Gracious Me, Faolan is absolutely stunning! My heart melted looking at his pics.