habitat upgrade: success!

We did a little renovation of the chinchilla cage, and they love it! It's a tall cage but not too wide and when we got it from the SPCA it only had one extra level in it. We got some wood and made extra shelves and installed them last night. Cecilia and Fernando, the bolder of the two boys, were zooming and jumping all over the place on the new levels. Even Ramon, who is more reserved than his brother, was zooming and bouncing back and forth on the original shelf, caught up in the excitement.

Cecilia is getting to know us and will let me pet her on the back now with no fuss. She is quite shy of being touched around the head or neck which I found odd, as chinchillas normally like being scratched behind their ears. It may be due to the fact that, until the SPCA took her in, she lived life with a metal plate around her neck. This was to keep her and every other female confined to their own little cages. There were openings between all the cages so that the males could have free run among all the females, but due to the metal collars the girls were confined to their own quarters.

It's amazing how many miserable things happen to animals - but it's also amazing how many people there are out there who are trying to make a difference and make things better.

So we have one more level made that we haven't put into the cage yet. I'm a bit hesitant. The boys are so young and the cage is so tall - I don't want to give them the opportunity to fall from too great a height, so we may just leave it alone until the boys are back at the SPCA.

Cecilia came out of her cage for a while this evening and went running around the room. Arlo the dog was in with us and he was soooo excited watching her run around the floor. He knows how to treat the foster animals though, and laid still on the floor watching her. She ran right up to him a few times and gave his nose a good sniff. She also jumped onto his front paws, which made him nervously shuffle backwards. Poor wimpy puppy! These chinchillas have no fear whatsoever of the dog. Even the two babies will run up to him and sniff his nose through the cage bars. Weird!

fuzzy wuzzy critters

We picked up an adult female chinchilla and two babies from the SPCA on Sunday. The funny thing is, the adult is probably not the mother of these guys. These two young ones were running amock in the general population so the shelter staff, having no way of knowing who the mother might be amongst the dozens of female chinchillas, just stuck the two youngsters in with a random female and they got along fine, so they left it at that. The little ones are eating adult food and look like they are thriving so all is well. Here's a pic of one of the babies, Fernando:

As a size comparison, below is a pic of the adult, Cecilia, behind Fernando.

As you can see, Cecilia is quite large. We normally let the chinchillas take dust baths in one of those big round four-litre ice cream containers, but she just barely fits in so we're going to have to find something bigger to put the dust in. Cecilia is quite shy still but we're working on making friends. Chinchillas are not as skittish as, say, mice or hamsters, and she'll eventually become more outgoing if we spend enough time with her. Fernando and his brother Ramon aren't that concerned. They are already to the point where they will hop onto my hand when I put it out for them, and it'll be no work at all to make these guys completely tame.

Chinchillas are athletic little things that act more like bouncy rubber balls than rodents. They love jumping around and will ricochet off the walls for the fun of it. Unlike rabbits and guinea pigs, they don't always have much patience for cuddling so they're not really an ideal pet for children. They are also more fragile than rabbits or guinea pigs.

Anyway, we have out three little guests in a nice quiet room for the time being, and we'll continue to work on making friends. The two little guys will only be with us for a couple of weeks, and then since our female is likely pregnant, we'll keep her here and wait and see if any more chinchillas appear in the cage.

I'll put up some more pictures soon if we get any good ones.

Chinchillorama

The Victoria SPCA has taken on 50 - 60 chinchillas from a person who no longer wanted to care for them. Just to make the situation more fun, out of that number, only nine are male and it is expected that the vast majority, if not all, of the females are pregnant. Niiiice.

I'm working tomorrow so if any have babies overnight we'll take home a momma and litter and play with them--err, I mean, take care of them 'til they're old enough to be adopted. I will keep you posted!

Frivolous puppy pics

This is Rouge. He's not a rescue - I'm just putting these pics up because they're cute. He's a 16 week old Pharaoh Hound.

Enjoy!


Doesn't he look like a little alien? So cute...




He came to our house to play with Arlo for a few hours. He belongs to Arlo's obedience instructor - but I don't think she likes him very much! He's trouble. (Just kidding. She likes him a little.)

dogsitting & a Zerra update

GREAT news - Zerra is out of the SPCA kennel and settling into her new foster home in Vancouver! She's sooo much better off in a foster home. Thanks to Bully Buddies for finding space for her - this is one dog that just couldn't stay in the shelter.

We dog-sat for a Hugabull foster dog this past weekend, because her foster mom was going to be out of the house for the majority of the weekend. It was fun - Paris is a high-energy, goofy pit bull puppy who wanted to zoom all around our house and jump on top of our dog Arlo at every opportunity. Arlo was not sure what to think of her at times, but they got along well and played quite a bit on walks.

She was fun to have around - she has a really nice personality and, as we find with so many of the pit bulls, was really eager to make us happy. We haven't had a puppy in the house for so long that I'd almost forgotten what it's like. She is definitely a Princess, but not in the nasty "I have to have my own way and everyone else can stuff it" kind of way. She just has a plus-sized personality that dominates any room she is in. At the end of the day, despite the huge dog bed on our bedroom floor, Paris decided that she needed to keep us company in our own bed, and snored the night away contentedly while occasionally kicking me in the face. (But not very often.) She added much hilarity to the weekend and it really was fun to have her around.

Mark tried to take some pictures of Paris, but she thought he was playing and kept growling and howling at the camera. Can't you just hear the growl when you look at this picture?


Anyway it made for an interesting weekend. We might get her again this coming weekend, too. If we do I'm sure there will be funny stories to post.

P.S. - I know Paris looks a lot like Zerra, but they're two different dogs! Really!