I see this board is not very active, but I hope some of you will respond to me. We have adopted a 6-7 year old female chin from a neighbor who is moving. We have had rats as pets for years and having a chin isn't that much different. I did my homework up front and learned as much as I could before we got her. Sophia is a happy, friendly, semi-healthy little sweetie. (She's going for a vet check up next week.) She has a huge cage that her previous owner made for her and she's been living off of only rabbit pellets. We started giving her hay and are in the process of upgrading her pellets to Mazuri chin food. We also gave her toys, a wheel, and a house to hide and sleep in. We have 2 problems tho. First, her previous owner did not give her sand to bathe in for over a year and she has a lot of clumpy fur on her flanks that is not coming off (we gave her sand the first day and daily for about 10 days; now we're rotating every other day). How can we help Sophia with those clumps of old hair? Can she be groomed? If so, how do we go about it? When we pull on the clumps, they do not readily come out and she doesn't like it.
Secondly, the sand dust is a real problem for us. Her bath is one of those plastic 6-sided things with the hole on the end. We have tried various things to keep the dust down because I also have pet rats and the dust is bad for their lungs. Plus her cage is in my office and the dust will kill my computer equipment -- we have no other place in our house big enough for her cage and where she can go about her life in peace at night and not keep anyone awake. We've tried putting her in a smaller temporary cage with the sand bath, but she pays only minimal attention to it and doesn't really bathe. We tried taking her out of the cage with the sand bath in another room and again, she went in/out of it, but didn't bathe. Tonight we moved her entire cage (a big undertaking) out into the living room with us and she happily bathed away for 15 mins. BUT, having the dust get into the electronics in there is not good either. If she would bathe in the temporary cage, I could take her outside when it's nice or into the garage and sit with her while she took a bath. Maybe I didn't give her enough time to get comfortable with it? Or get into the habit of it? We only tried it twice in the temporary cage. What do you think? Any ideas? Anyone come up with good ideas around the sand bath yet? I'd appreciate any help you can give us cuz we are already attached to Sophia and we want this to work out for all of us. Thanks.
Eileen in Sacramento, CA
