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Post by Trey carter on Jul 14, 2013 22:04:49 GMT -5
Hello everyone :) I was accepted to your old forum site and am waiting for approval so in the mean time I will post in here. I just adopted a 3 year old girl named Hurley. Real sweetie who I am steadily bonding with and learning about. One of the things I have learned is I am paranoid she will harm herself in my apartment. I want to get her litter trained and let her roam most of the time I'm home, only locking her up if there is no one home. She is prone to getting into cupboards and stealing shoes, but if I take everything off the ground, she has nothing to investigate or ferret about with.
1) what are some tips on making an apartment ferret safe yet still stimulating?
2) She is not overly fond of being held or petted, is there something I can do to make her more comfortable with being held or petted?
3) She has stubbornly refused my few attempts to feed her raw, how can I best introduce her to whole prey?
4) is she to old to learn new habits and break bad ones?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2013 22:39:36 GMT -5
Absolutely not too old! I trained a 7 year old vicious biter to love me. Though he still doesn't cuddle for long. He's too busy!
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Post by Trey carter on Jul 14, 2013 23:08:07 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2013 5:03:51 GMT -5
I put things on the floor specifically so my ferrets can explore them.  Bags filled with bags or 'rubbish' (recycling usually), tunnels, toys, blankets. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2013 10:08:49 GMT -5
Hi and Welcome to the HFF. My first suggestion to making your apartment safe, is get on the floor and crawl around looking up and under everything. make sure the fridge is pushed up against the wall, so they can't get behind it. Then follow closely behind the ferret (I call this border patrol) and watch everything Hurley checks out. don't let her disappear behind anything, she'll quickly find any unsafe spots and you will be there to keep her safe. She needs stuff to investigate, so put paper bags on the floor, leave a box or two for her to investigate, throw towels over stuff (like a kids fort) the apartment might look messy, but you can pick it up after playtime. Mine love sinks and bathtubs, throw towels over bathtub edges for tunneling. Ferrets are super smart and need enrichment and stimulation. As for petting and cuddling, they're not big snugglers, when they're younger but as they get older, they seem to like it better. And as for feeding raw, I haven't made the switch yet but read thru some of the posts and get familiar with the basic ideas. I'm going to make the switch soon, but I'm still reading how to do it. I have soft scrambled(very soft) eggs and offer that to them, by hand and they like that! And from what I've been reading on the HFF, it's never too late to make the switch. Good Luck, see you around the forum!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 15, 2013 12:23:18 GMT -5
Hi and Welcome to the HFF. My first suggestion to making your apartment safe, is get on the floor and crawl around looking up and under everything. make sure the fridge is pushed up against the wall, so they can't get behind it. Then follow closely behind the ferret (I call this border patrol) and watch everything Hurley checks out. don't let her disappear behind anything, she'll quickly find any unsafe spots and you will be there to keep her safe. She needs stuff to investigate, so put paper bags on the floor, leave a box or two for her to investigate, throw towels over stuff (like a kids fort) the apartment might look messy, but you can pick it up after playtime. Mine love sinks and bathtubs, throw towels over bathtub edges for tunneling. Ferrets are super smart and need enrichment and stimulation. As for petting and cuddling, they're not big snugglers, when they're younger but as they get older, they seem to like it better. And as for feeding raw, I haven't made the switch yet but read thru some of the posts and get familiar with the basic ideas. I'm going to make the switch soon, but I'm still reading how to do it. I have soft scrambled(very soft) eggs and offer that to them, by hand and they like that! And from what I've been reading on the HFF, it's never too late to make the switch. Good Luck, see you around the forum! (Me trey carter )thanks for the input, I can already see she is more a 'let me go and explore' kinda girl so I'm giving her some space. I'm going to start cleaning the cupboards and lining the closets so she can get into things with the smallest degree of danger. Lol I'm sitting next to her now and she's fast asleep (was out from 7-10:30 this morning). So under infact I reached in her cage and took her collar off without waking her.  |
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