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« on: December 14, 2014, 04:55:47 PM »
Hi! I'm Veronica and my 2 chins are Chillem (he's a grey about 3 yrs old), and Echo (he's a beige with ruby eyes and a little less than 2 yrs old). My husband and I love our chins very much and look forward to spending the rest of their lives with them.
Their personalities are so different. We had Chillem a whole year before we bought Echo. During that 1st year, we lived in a rental home and used one of the bedrooms as the play area. Chillem received lots of attention. My husband would play with him an hour in the morning, and I would play with him an hour at night. We did this everyday during the week. On the weekend, the three of us would play between half an hour to 2 hours. The rest of the time, Chillem's cage was with us in the living room or bedroom. We bought Chillem a little stuffed toy for his cage and it would come out him him during play time. We always kept an eye on him, but he never tore it apart, just cuddled with it (it was so cute!). Sometimes, he would toss it around the cage and try to jump up to the 2nd and 3rd levels with it. It was fun to watch because he could get it to the 2nd level, but never the 3rd without our help. He would fall asleep on top of it and we started wondering whether he needed a roommate.
We bought Echo sort of spontaneously. We saw him at the same pet store we bought Chillem from. They had just gotten him in and he was so small and scared. He had pee on his fur (from peeing on the wheel in his cage and running on it) and soft poops stuck to it as well. When we held him, he struggled frantically. This sounds bad as I write it, but we felt sorry for him and we wanted to "rescue" him from the pet store and any other person who would buy him for "their child". We knew he needed a loving home of adults, and that we could provide him a safe home. Later, we realized that buying them both from the pet store would only reinforce them selling chinchillas, so we will never do that again. Fortunately, the pet store stopped selling them (probably because they were expensive and not affordable to the average buyer.)
We kept Echo in quarantine for a month and let him have peace and quiet. Within the first two days, we had to proof the cage he was in because he was so small he could squeeze right through the cage bars. (On his first night, we woke up to him calling out from under our bed. On the second night, we placed a pet playpen around his cage and woke up to him calling out from the playpen, outside of his cage again.) When his poops were normal and a month had passed, we moved Echo's and Chillem cages to the same room.
After we got Echo, the landlord of our rental house told us that the chins could only play on the tile of the dining area, and not on any carpeted surface. The old house had asbestos under the tiles and we worried about the chins safety, so we placed a large rug in the dining area and surrounded it with a play pen. I think this messed up the bonding that we would have had with Echo. You see, with Chillem, we had a room where he could bounce off the walls and we could sit with him comfortably while he played. With Echo, he only had the play pen to bounce off of (not as fun, and not as high), and it wasn't as fun/comfortable for us to sit in it either. The area was more distracting being right next to the living room, and Echo seemed easily startled by all noises. He wasn't bonding with us as quickly as Chillem did, and our play times became less and less. Echo and Chillem didn't seem to be bonding from their cages side by side either, and we started questioning whether it was a good idea to get a second chinchilla. We kept their play times separate and Chillem started getting "frisky" with his stuffed toy. One morning, we had to remove a hair ring from his penis (this was traumatizing to all three us of--Chillem, my husband and myself), so we got rid of the stuffed animal and he hasn't had any more hair rings.
Eight months ago, we moved out of the rental and bought our own home. We set up the play pen in the dining area again (I know, sort of ironic), but this time the chins had one whole wall they can bounce off of. We've been trying to figure out how to chin-proof this newly constructed house (there is beautiful wood trim in every room and new carpeting). The bathrooms are too small for play areas, so I think my office will be used as the "comfortable" play area (where I can sit and play with the chins), and the dining area will be the chin-only play area (where we can observe them from the living room and kitchen). I tried out the office with Echo, but he immediately made his mark in several places on the wood trim, even with me right there. He was so fast! He would quickly run up to the trim on one side of the wall, chew it, then run to the other side of the room and chew that too (even with me gently shooing him away each time.) Of course, I also had to keep him away from the computer wires. It was a workout keeping up with him.
Anyway, that's our story for now. I joined this site because I've been reading all your posts, and I wanted to be more than just a taker. Hopefully, I can give back one day. I really appreciate all of your experiences and knowledge, and want to provide our chins with a good home. Thank you for reading this long intro and getting to know us. I look forward to getting to know you all too!
