[Minnie]

Hi

I'm having difficulty with all of the above with my new hamster. Smudge is a rescue hamster and we think she's roughly five months old. However the last two of those months were spent in a pet shop while she was waiting for a new owner to come along. Her story is that she was bought by a young couple who brought her to the vet with wet tail. They wouldn't pay the bill and didn't want her back. That's about as much as I know of her.
She is very nervous - of everything. But, she's also really curious. Sometimes she'll sit on my hand to eat from it and has no problem coming to the front of the cage to take food from me if I feed it to her piecemeal but then more often than not if I go to pick her up she runs away from me or tries to wriggle free. Fortunately I've been able to practise all of this with her in her own cage (hamster heaven) but how do I make that transition from handling her in her cage to bringing her out?

Until last week I don't think she'd ever been in a hamster ball as she didn't have a clue what to do when I put her in it. I guess that's a sign of the lack of handling she received from the previous owners. Smudge is now quite happy to roll around in the ball but to get her in it I have to put the ball in the cage for her to crawl in to and then do the same in reverse to put her back. It's so frustrating. My last hamster was just a dream to handle. This seems like such hard work. Do you think I should carry on along this track of trying to hold her in the cage before lifting her out or does anyone have any other suggestions I could try please?

Even though I've bought her this hamster heaven cage she still gnaws the bars of the cage occasionally. I don't know how this can be boredom as she has a mineral wheel, play wheel, loo roll to run through, wooden arches to dig under a reed ball to play with and the latest contraption which you hang from the top of the cage and it has two nuts for the hamster to try and gnaw through as well as natural loofah. Do you think this could be stress? If so I don't know how to relieve it as I live alone and there are no other pets around to disturb her.

Finally the potty training. She has decided to use one side of the top "penthouse" of the cage as her bedroom and use the other side as an "en suite" which doesn't fit in with my plan at all! I have a toilet downstairs for her but she just seems to use this as another digging/play area. Any ideas?

I'm all out of ideas now so any suggestions are more than welcome.