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Originally Posted by harmless
The taming has been slow and sometimes there will be several days on which I only see him for a couple of minutes before he runs back to his burrow. The last few days there seems to have been more progress. Yesterday I came into his room when he was out in the the middle of the day, and he didn't seem to be afraid of me. He wanted his sunflower seed! He's gotten used to hopping onto my hand to get them. I had just put out his seed/pellet mix and he went over and sorted through that after the sunflower seed. I quietly left so as to give the episode a peaceful ending. Then last night he was out earlier than usual and that went well too. At night he just keeps playing on his flying saucer when I come up to the tank, although he stops for the sunflower seed. I don't stay with him extremely long, maybe 5 minutes, in case it's stressful for him. I've been lengthening it some as his fear level has seemed to go down.
This has been 17 days and I think we've made a lot of progress, but I still don't think he's really thrilled with the contact, just okay with it. I may be wrong though. He just doesn't jump up and down like a dog.  |
It's reassuring for me to read this. We've had Holly for around 6 weeks now, and taming has been very hard. I knew to expect this with a robo, and actually thought we were making a little progress when she finally took a sunflower seed from my hand, albeit through the struts of her bridge. But that's only happened once, and some days I don't get to see her at all. If I get closer than around 3 inches to her, even armed with a treat, she zooms off, apparently terrified. I'm trying to teach her that I'm not an ogre and I don't eat hamsters, just feed them, but she doesn't seem to be getting the message.
Fortunately our dwarf, Enigma, who we brought home with us at the same time, is now proving to be less enigmatic, and can usually be relied upon to turn up for food. He will happily take treats from the palm of my hand, and is gradually getting used to being stroked a little, although he tends to be slightly suspicious of this.
Aren't hams just gorgeous?