Ignorance is just another form of cruelty (Animal Welfare in general)

Member Name: Leolover

Product:	Animal Welfare in general
Date:	01/10/02 (439 review reads)
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Imagine an overweight squirrel with ears like a cats and the softest fur imaginable. You're picturing a chinchilla. The chinchilla is a stunningly beautiful creature. They are affectionate, playful and highly intelligent little mammals. Having kept chinchillas for years, I am passionately devoted to my five little pets and cannot imagine why anyone would want to cause them suffering and pain.

About three weeks ago, I came across an ad in 'Loot', the online advertising website. I found my first chinchilla, a beige male called Odin, through a Loot ad and I often browse through hoping to find a cheap secondhand cage or some wooden toys for my fluffies.

All of a sudden, this advert caught my eye : 'Two grey female chinchillas, free to good home. Kids have lost interest, cage included'.

This advert bothered me. It bothered me a lot. Firstly, there's the alarming 'kids have lost interest' statement. This betrays real ignorance about the animal to begin with. Chinchillas should NOT be bought for children. They are not a suitable childrens pet. A chinchilla is an exotic animal with very specialised needs that must be met in order for the animal to thrive. For example, they need constant access to a clean dust bath, which they bathe in instead of water, and they need a regular supply of hay and specialist chinchilla pellets. They need exercise outside their cage at least once a day. They need plenty of wooden toys to chew on to keep their teeth short, and a house to hide in when they want some privacy. They are very much creatures of routine, and if they aren't fed and exercised around the same time each day they will become nervous and distressed. Even with all the best intentions in the world, children just don't have the commitment and maturity to be able to look after these exotic animals properly.

Secondly, there's the fact that this person was willing to offer the chinchillas free to a
good home. Chinchillas are quite expensive. They range in price from £30 - £120 depending on colour and sex. Why would someone give their pets away for free? Not to mention the cage, which can often be twice as expensive as the chinchilla! It suggested to me that they wanted rid of them as soon as possible.

I contacted the owner, who informed me that the chinchillas were in fact sisters, one year and seven months old respectively, and that other than the fact that they'd 'lost a bit of fur', they were quite healthy.

More alarm bells...A chinchillas fur is a good indicator of its general condition. An animal that has lost fur is usually stressed or unhappy, not being fed the correct foods, or has developed a tendency to bite out its own fur due to misery, nervousness or frustration.

I couldn't ignore the warning signs. I went to see the chinchillas. At this point, I wasn't sure if I had the space to rehome them myself, but I thought I might be able to find them a new home by posting an ad on a specialist chinchilla web group I belong to. First of all, I wanted to make sure they were healthy.

Nothing had prepared me for the state these poor little fluffies were in. The older one had a bald patch on the back of her neck, the younger one had practically no fur at all. They were being housed in a tiny home made cage with no house to hide in, no toys to play with and no dust bath - they hadn't had a bath for months. They were being fed what looked like hamster food. The pull out drawer at the bottom of the cage was filled with sodden newspaper and urine soaked sawdust, and the fumes were wafting up to the poor chinchillas and making their eyes and feet sore. Their water bottle was covered in green mould. The chins themselves were lethargic and sluggish, and when the older one was handed to me she simply buried her head in my elbow and sat there, too miserable to play or investigate her surroundings. The owne
r hadn't even bothered to give them names - the biggest indication of all that she really couldn't care less about them.

I couldn't reveal my distress and anger immediately, as I was worried that she'd refuse to hand them over if I did. I agreed to take them on, took them out to the car in the disgusting, mouldy cage, drove 200 yards to the pet shop down the road and bought a carry cage to get them home in, as I couldn't bear to see them in the filthy cage any longer. As soon as I got home I smashed the cage up and dumped it in the nearest wheelie bin. I transferred them to a nice new cage and did everything I could to make them comfortable. That first evening, they wouldn't leave their dust bath, not even to eat or drink. I think they were afraid it was going to get taken away from them again.

I realised very quickly that I couldn't let them go to another home. They deserved some permanence and routine in their lives, I couldn't uproot the poor little things again. I decided to keep them, and named them Faith and Hope.

Three weeks later, they're already much improved. I had them checked over at the vets and despite their ordeal the fur loss is the only major health problem, apparently caused by poor nutrition, lack of dust baths and stress. There's some fur regrowth already, and they seem so much happier and livelier.

Why do people insist on buying animals they have no idea how to care for properly, and/or are too lazy to do the proper investigation to find out how to? Chinchillas can live for up to twenty years, they're not something you buy on a whim and then discard when you've grown tired of them. It isn't just chinchillas, of course, there are plenty of other neglected and ill treated animals, dogs, cats, ferrets, exotic birds, even monkeys, lizards and snakes. Ignorance can just as devastating for the animal as deliberate cruelty.

Please, please, think long an
d hard before you decide to give an animal a new home. Can you give it the care and attention it needs? Is your home a suitable environment for the animal in question? Are you prepared to pay a considerable amount of money for veterinary care, should the animal become ill? Most importantly, do you really want the animal, and are you prepared to make sacrifices in terms of time and money to keep it happy and healthy?

If you do find yourself overwhelmed or unable to care for an animal you've taken, on, there are plenty of rescue centres who will take the animal in and try to rehome it with suitable owners. These can be found in your local yellow pages, or via a search engine on the web. It's better to admit defeat and try to ensure some happiness and stability for your pet than to keep it cooped up in an unsuitable home, neglected, lonely and miserable.


*** This opinion is for Faith and Hope, and for all neglected animals whose story may not have such a happy ending.

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