|
Post by moletteuk on Sept 9, 2023 18:55:47 GMT
I certainly think they are very intelligent and I think the complex social structure must involve empathy. Playing devil's advocate, could Pulla have just learned from Pipari that the soft toy rats are comfy for resting on?
Are they still together full time and doing well?
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 9, 2023 21:16:36 GMT
Yes, they've been together full time since wednesday. No fights or even squabbles at all, they seem to be totally at ease with each other. Sometimes when Pipari is focused on something she shoves Pulla out of the way, but he's fine giving her room and waiting until she's more sociable. It all looks very routine and regular already. I've been very careful about it and actually took a day off on Thursday since they would have been by themselves for much of the day, but it's been very smooth sailing. It's funny how these things often take a long time, but seem to suddenly fall in place when everyone is ready for it.
The only real danger or issue seems to be their wheel. We had a bit of a situation today when she jumped into the wheel when he was already waddling in there (he doesn't run in the actual sense, but he likes to move in the wheel anyway) and wanted to run with him. He couldn't keep up at all, and since she was heavier and stronger, he almost started tumbling in a really dangerous way. I managed to stop her (it's quite interesting that she immediately heeds when someone tells her to stop whatever she's doing, even from across the room) before he got hurt, but it looked pretty dangerous. I'll probably have to take the wheel off when there's nobody to supervise them, since there's a big risk of injury there.
I don't think there's anything else in the cage where her not realizing his limits might become really dangerous, fortunately. Other than that, things have been well. The demeanor of both of them has changed noticeably after they got together, and they're both much more energetic and much less dependent on us humans for attention and cuddles. I've noticed that it tends to go like that. Pulla still wants to get out of the cage to sit on my lap and all, but they're both much less interested in accepting grooming from us. It's a good thing, since it just means that they're able to behave naturally and don't feel the need to look to us for basic needs like companionship.
(And yes, I do agree that he might have just understood the purpose of the rats from following her example. In any case it's a big relief that I don't have to worry about taking them away.)
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 12, 2023 13:38:47 GMT
I've noticed one rather problematic change in Pulla's behavior, and I have no idea why he's doing it. He's demanding to be let out constantly, and the reason seems to be that he really, really wants treats. He doesn't want to be held (he sometimes comes out for that, but this is different) and is not particularly interested in getting out of the cage as such. He just wants treats and attempts to get them very tenaciously when I have him on my lap. He knows that I have a treat box on my table, and he just attempts to rush it every time, and even physically attempts to wrestle my hand away if I prevent him (he doesn't bite or anything, just seems to very much think that it's his right and he is being unfairly restricted). And if there are no treats in sight, he just goes through my hands and starts getting really frustrated when he can't find anything. I really don't know why he's like this now. He still gets treats the same, and it's not that Pipari is stealing his food, because he still has free access to his pellets and hay, and eats them like normal. When he gets treats with Pipari, she never attempts to steal them from him (I make sure they don't get into fights over it). And I don't think he's getting less than before. But he's just absolutely starving for treats. He's now banging on the cage door very often and demanding to be let out, but going back in immediately if he gets no seeds, nuts or other treats. It's becoming a bit of a problem because he is actually just very standoffish when there are no treats. It's a really big change in his behavior, and I don't know what to make of it. I can't help but feel a bit bad when he's just outright giving me a wide berth and picking fights with me over this. Would be fine if he was just more aloof now that he has company, but this is more of an active development. I've tried telling him off and clearly saying no when he gets really out of line, but it feels like he just starts sulking since he feels I'm being mean to him...
|
|
|
Post by moletteuk on Sept 12, 2023 16:04:42 GMT
This sounds a bit weird and frustrating for you, it's not nice to be at loggerheads with a degu in a time of flux. Could he just be acting out at the changes? Throwing his weight around in front of Pipari? I can't really think of anything else.
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 16, 2023 20:46:19 GMT
Well, we've kind of found over the week that taking him out of the cage to exercise does manage it somewhat. It might be that he is a bit frustrated and feels like Pipari hassles him too much, and just finds outlets like demanding treats for that frustration. Or it might be that it simply tires him out a bit so he doesn't have the energy to keep it up. Either way, he's been much better about it now.
It also seems like Pipari is capable of learning how to handle all kinds of situations, but always needs to be very carefully trained for each kind of a situation. We've discovered that it's really not a great idea to bring them out to the kitchen together because it's exactly the same kind of awkward touch-and-go as it was initially in the cage. She just gets such a sensory overload and forgets herself. Everything has been going really well in the cage, though, and at this point I'm basically not monitoring them actively any more.
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 24, 2023 14:55:48 GMT
Strangely, Pulla totally calmed down a couple of days ago, and has been acting very normal, even calmer than usual. At first I was actually worried he was sick since he wasn't running up to demand freedom, but he has just been very nonchalant and acting more, I suppose, normally now. He eats and drinks and seems to do all the usual things when prompted, so he's very likely not suffering from anything.
I wonder if Pipari might have been in heat and that made him act up. He doesn't really mount girls any more, I think the castration in the long term kind of just took the interest out of him, so it's a bit hard to estimate, especially since Pipari does not really have notable heat symptoms. But that's the only thing that I can think of that could obviously explain why he suddenly amped up and got all bratty and standoffish for a bit and then stopped just as suddenly. Looking at it, it was a bit under two weeks, so quite long, but I suppose it might have taken him some time to calm down afterwards.
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 25, 2023 21:23:01 GMT
Well, no, it turns out that what was going on was him feeling poorly. I gave him a dose of painkiller today since he seemed to be huddling a bit, and he perked pretty quickly and got very bullish again.
I think he may have had some pain issues for some time, as he huddles a lot in the corner. I thought that it might just be him feeling lonely, and now with the introductions him feeling defensive, but at least some of it is probably pain-related. Unfortunately, this is very likely related to his dental roots. He had a checkup just some time ago and was the picture of health, other than the dental (which can't really be helped, sadly). Or it might have to do with that abdominal scarring I've suspected. He has had bouts of looking somewhat miserly before, but they usually go quite quickly. I'll have to see if this does as well, or if it looks like his condition is getting worse.
Still not sure what is causing him to act so bullishly, but at least now I know he's going to need painkillers. Possibly not every day, he has been quite energetic lately, but I'll have to keep an eye on him. I don't think his pain levels are huge yet, since he was still behaving quite normally, very interested in food and running in the wheel and so on. Just, much quieter than usual.
(Or he just perked up again and it isn't actually pain-related. I'll have to keep an eye on him in any case.)
|
|
|
Post by moletteuk on Sept 26, 2023 9:01:08 GMT
It sounds tricky to figure out with so many variables!
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 28, 2023 13:40:07 GMT
Yes, it's been a bit hard to pin down his exact situation. He seems to be making do without the painkiller very well right now, so I have not given him more for a couple of days.
I think part of this might be that he seems to suddenly have become a lot more energetic and mobile again. He can stand up a *lot* better now, and when I take him to kitchen, he can even jump up the scratching post I mentioned earlier. Not very spryly, but he does it multiple times each time he goes to play. I'm really not sure what that is all about, but I guess his behavior might just be due to him having a lot more energy and wanting to get out more.
It's strange. It can't just be him feeling more keen on life now that he has company again, because he obviously had physical issues just getting up or moving around. Maybe some more lingering injury from a tumble or a fall than I thought at first? He's still absolutely flatfooted, but he was already before any of these mobility issues started to really crop up. If it's really just him feeling a lot better now (aside from the odd day where his dental roots are bothering him), and wanting to get out and about more, then that is of course a very good thing. Luckily it's not like with Suti, who's just absolutely ballistic all the time. He's still an older boy, so getting to run about for an hour really tuckers him out and he's happy to just chill out for the rest of the day.
Things have been good with Pipari. The only situations where I've had to intervene have been due to food, and it's probably just me being too careful to jump in as soon as they start fighting at all. Tends to be that when there's treats available, it's a really bad time if either comes near the other, and they start shoving and shouting really quickly. I've just learned to make sure that they're in different parts of the cage when they receive anything. And for whatever reason, if the treats are about the size of half a peanut, Pipari will just start running around like crazy and often running directly over Pulla (which makes him freak out and start defending his treats...), and it's all a bit of a chaos. So I've learned to either give them smaller seeds or to split everything down into pieces about the size of sunflower seeds. Then she just eats it right where I put it and everything goes well.
(Limppu and Suti are even worse about food, since Limppu has developed really tyrannical food habits. I should maybe make a post about it...)
|
|
|
Post by moletteuk on Sept 28, 2023 15:11:29 GMT
I think exercise and company can be good for lots of chronic conditions, but maybe some days the activity takes a bit more out of him than others, or maybe he has something that gets tweaked some days, or perhaps having Pipari around takes more out of him some days than others? Metacam will take a couple of days to buil up and then to leave his system, could that be disguising how much benefit he was getting? Might a smaller ongoing dose be useful to even him out?
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Sept 28, 2023 21:08:12 GMT
Yes, I'll be trying to gauge his pain situation more actively now to see what kind of an arrangement would benefit him the most. It should be quite easy to notice when he's feeling poorly, now that I'm actually paying attention to it and know what it is. Since I interact with him so much, I'll be able to gauge it quite closel. One thing that I am slightly worried about is that now that he's moving very daringly again, it might aggravate something. He's always been quite bad about actually realizing his limits, and that was ostensibly the reason he hurt his leg earlier this year (since he just couldn't stop jumping as soon as it was at all better). I think part of his behavior could certainly be that he feels a bit too cooped-in with Pipari and wants to have some alone time. He tended to be really annoyed if I took Pipari out with him (and it didn't really work out anyway). I think their relationship has become very stable, but Pulla's behavior really makes me think that he regards Pipari as a "second wife" and doesn't really like her as much as he did Posso. But that is of course me putting really human sentiments into it. Ultimately it's just that Pipari is a handful and Pulla is older and has less patience. He obviously does not mind her being in the cage and they sleep together more or less always and hang out together often, but it's also quite a bit more... "cool" than how he interacted with Posso. He also ignores her often, even when she's nearby.
Still, they clearly both feel a lot happier like this than alone, and I'm happy for them.
(I think part of it is also just the fact that Pipari behaves in strange ways, so it is probably hard for him to even know how he could interact with her like that, him being kind of socially inept as well...)
|
|
|
Post by moletteuk on Sept 29, 2023 13:31:02 GMT
Is there much scope to rearrange the cage so they can put more space between each other, maybe some single degu perches, or could you add an extra shelf or increase the size of the cage somehow?
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Oct 4, 2023 16:31:35 GMT
Things have been somewhat similar. Pulla mostly gets cranky during the evenings, probably because he's kind of tired but also not yet tired enough to go to sleep. He usually settles down in a corner and gets really annoyed if Pipari tries to interact with him.
There are single degu spots in the cage, but it also kind of seems that Pipari gets really distressed if Pulla goes somewhere like that, and then she basically just forces herself in there as well. I don't necessarily think it's unreasonable for Pulla to get annoyed at that point! But of course since Pipari has trouble understanding why he's suddenly pushing her away, it gets awkward and messy...
Fortunately, bringing him out to the kitchen for some time in the evening, until he wants to go home, resolves the situation. I guess he gets the frustration out of his system that way. I can also give him his extra feed during that time without having to monitor whether Pipari comes too close and makes him feel threatened. She doesn't even like the food he gets, but Pulla gets quite cross about it anyway.
In any case, I'm starting to feel that even if they do get into minor shoving fights like that sometimes, there is no real risk of things breaking down. From all I can see, Pulla just wants her to go away for the moment, and Pipari has never showed any desire to push back any longer than he does. She mostly seems a bit scared and alert about why he's shunning her right now.
I think Pipari is very slowly learning why Pulla sometimes acts like that, but she loses focus and gets pretty incoherent far too easily. Strangely, one of us telling her off often seems to focus her and make her realize what's going on. I don't think she's "simple" at all, but it's clear that she has some issues with things like this.
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Oct 12, 2023 22:51:34 GMT
I think Pulla has started to learn that he is never going to actually measure up to Pipari physically. He's been a lot less ready to start slapping her if she does something he doesn't like, and instead just kind of puts up with it. I think that's kind of the best that can be hoped for, being that Pipari genuinely just doesn't really seem to get what the fuss is about. I guess you could say that Pulla has finally started to actually accept that Pipari is the dominant one in the cage, and he should just not make a big deal out of it? He no longer even really resists if Pipari comes close when he's eating. I have seen Pipari actually mounting him once at least, and he only really opposed when she was actually about to push him off a ledge with that.
I've also started using the heat pad again since it's getting colder, and they spend a lot of time just lying down side by side. It might actually be a pretty good bonding experience for them, since they don't really fight or squabble during that time. Not that they squabble most of the time in general (it might seem like that since I talk about it a lot, but that's just the exceptional situations worth reporting. They're very well-behaved about 75% or 80% of the time, I would say), but they look really peaceful just enjoying the heat together.
One issue that seems to keep popping up is that Pipari gets these weird moods where she seems to be very unhappy with how things are in the cage, but doesn't really know what to do about it. She starts pushing things around and fighting with the wheel (it seems like she gets frustrated with how she can push at it but it only spins, and goes nowhere) and throwing things, and she gets very frustrated if Pulla is nearby during that time, to the point of shouting at him. One day she seemed to just suddenly decide that their wooden hut house was simply too close to the wall and spent a good few hours just digging away the bedding so she could really start wedging herself behind it and pushing it out. I don't really blame Pulla for not understanding what's going on at all during all that. Fortunately she can be distracted to forget what she was doing, but it's one of the more volatile situations. She doesn't actually attack him, but she can start shoving him away really harshly if he doesn't move immediately.
Other than that, things have been pretty much the same. It's a daily routine that Pulla goes to the kitchen to run around a bit, eat and so on. He does it for about half an hour and then just climbs onto me and wants to go home. It's strange how energetic he is during that time, when in the cage he often seems rather tired. In general it seems like he becomes much more active towards the evening and night, before going to sleep.
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Nov 4, 2023 16:54:03 GMT
I've noticed that Pulla often sleeps in a different place than Pipari. Not pointedly much, I often see them together (they're not purposefully avoiding each other), but they're also sometimes napping in different places. I don't think they initially did that. Both would huddle up on Pipari's soft toys. Nowadays Pipari almost always prefers that as her napping place (when the heat pad is not in use), but Pulla seems to have returned into using his nest box often as well. I do see him with Pipari on the soft toys too, but I've started paying attention to how nowadays I often look into the cage and only Pipari is anywhere to be seen.
Their behavior has not really changed towards each other (they have maybe become less squabbly over food, which is good), but I'm wondering if I should read anything into this. Pulla often slept in the box before Pipari came along, and the soft toys are Pipari's favorite thing in the world, so maybe they're just incidentally ending up in different places when they feel like napping? I don't see any real issues with them when they are together, sleeping or otherwise.
|
|
|
Post by moletteuk on Nov 5, 2023 18:46:40 GMT
Do they sleep together at night time? Could you put a soft toy in the nest box that Pulla likes to try to get them together? I suppose if they are otherwise harmonius, I don't suppose it really matters, I guess it just seems a bit odd, or like they are missing out, and it's making you second guess their relationship? Only other thing I can think of is if one of them likes to be on guard and keep watch, which is often location specific?
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Nov 6, 2023 16:05:13 GMT
Often they do sleep together, especially now that I have the heat pad out. It mostly seems to be kind of random as to when they sleep together and when they happen to find different places to nap at. Other than that I think they've been doing really well. They've definitely gotten better about being together, and especially Pulla doesn't get as annoyed with Pipari any more or try to push her away if he feels that she's getting into his personal space. He seems to be warming up to her strange ways. Lately I've often seen him letting her just lean on him or even coming to hang out near her himself. So I don't think anything else looks off at all. And ultimately I suppose that it's pretty normal for degus to not always be totally synchronized about everything. Their cage is pretty big, after all, so they might not even really be paying attention to the fact that the other is already napping somewhere.
The only real issue is when Pipari gets into one of her moods, like I described earlier, and just seems to get really annoyed about how things are in the cage or really fixated on something, so that she really doesn't want Pulla getting in the way. Last month she noticed that there is a screw hole in each of the cage doors where the lock is attached to the frame, and for whatever reason that is just absolutely enthralling to her, and Pulla has definitely had to learn that he should not come too close when she's on that. She sometimes spends half an hour or more just... nibbling at the hole. Almost as if she's trying to figure out what it is, or as if she was convinced there's something special inside. Aside from scratching the coating around the hole(I don't think she's eating it or anything, it's similar to how the cage bars sometimes get some wear if you have a bar chewer), there's really nothing she gets out of it, but it's a source of endless fascination. Just odd, but then so are many things with her!
|
|
|
Post by teemu on Dec 7, 2023 14:43:12 GMT
As an update, things have been steady. I've observed that the main issue with any squabbles that occur is just that Pipari is really oblivious. She sometimes manhandles Pulla without even paying attenting. She doesn't attack him, but I've seen her just shoving him aside if she's doing something so hard that he almost falls over, and sometimes she just decides that she HAS to be at the exact spot Pulla is sitting at right then. Pulla is often a bit intimidated, it seems to me. But the thing is that it really doesn't look like she's attempting to bully him. Often she seems confused and alarmed if Pulla actually takes offense or runs way, and runs after him right away chirping and attempting to placate him. It just really seems like she doesn't have a good handle on even obvious social offenses like that.
The "lucky" thing is that since Pulla is smaller and just wimpy in general, he doesn't really try to fight back or lash out over it. He just either takes it or moves away. I think she may have slapped him down at some point for retaliating. Sometimes, when he does protest and push her, she reacts in a very outraged manner, as if she doesn't totally realize that it's her own actions that pushed him like that. But the good thing is that she isn't actually aggressive or violent as such, so as soon as Pulla backs off, she just ignores the whole issue. At this point it seems like Pulla has clued in on this whole thing pretty well, so it works out.
It's not exactly the ideal cohabitation, but it's not worrisome or actually dangerous, so I do think the advantages far outweigh the issues. They are often, regardless of all this, happy socializing and spending time together as well.
|
|