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Old 11-19-2021, 03:00 AM  
Revy
Newborn Pup
 
Join Date: Nov 2021
Posts: 1
Default Play Pen Destruction!

Hello,

I've been reading this forum for a little while but have just joined up today! So thank you for welcoming me in!

I just wanted to ask a question about my Syrian hamster, Revy. I've had her for just over a month now and overall, the bonding is going well. I'd say our relationship is very much dictated by her moods (of which there are many!), but she seems quite confident in my company. She's not a fan of petting/sitting still for more than 2 seconds, but she'll happily climb all over me, groom/stretch in front of me, take food from my hand and come out and about to see me etc.

So, she's currently in a Hamster Heaven cage - I took all the plastic stuff out, put in a lot of bedding and tried to give her a much more natural enclosure. She has a big wheel, a fly wheel which she loves and plenty of enrichment/foraging materials/toys. I'd like to upgrade her eventually to a bigger cage, but for now that's the set up.

For time out of her cage, I also bought her a large doggy paddling pool, which I let her play in with different toys etc and use for bonding time. It's been going really well, except that the last couple of times I've put her in, she's turned on the savage mode and is now just intent on biting holes through the bottom of it. She seemed happy before, but now she's just going to town on it so she can get out. I tried putting her back in her cage, but she would climb the bars to get back out again - so back in the pen she goes... and back to her destruction. If I try to pick her up and put her somewhere else in the pen to stop her, she just chatters at me.

I want her to have time out of her cage, but there's nowhere in the house that's really hamster proof otherwise, and this no longer seems a good alternative. Any ideas why she's doing this?

Thanks
Lizzie (and Revy)
Revy is offline   Reply With Quote