Advice on aggressive biting behaviour

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marlo

New member
Joined
Dec 11, 2012
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2
Hello all, Marlo the hedgehog and I are in a tough situation. One of siblings bought her three months ago at a pet store, by now I believe she is a little over four months old. At first, she was very sociabl, trusting, friendly, and cooperative. Gradually, she began aggressive biting behaviour, it’s hard to say exactly when and at what rate because she is not my hedgehog. I would handle her sometimes too, and as far as everyone goes she would lick and nip sometimes, that wasn’t a big problem. Almost always however, it would escalate from that into aggressive, bruise inflicting bites, sometimes even with enough pressure to draw blood. Or else she’ll skip the tasting entirely and get straight to hard biting.
Now, this has made her scary. My sibling has somewhat abandoned Marlo; she still lives with us but the original owner no longer looks after her or socializes with her. I didn’t really want to take on the responsibility. I do like Marlo but I’m also dealing with clinical Anxiety and Depression, both are moderately severe and debilitating and I don’t think I’m consistent enough for a pet. I don’t want to let Marlo waste away though, I take care of her essentials and bring her out at least every couple days for half an hour or more. I handle her but only with my sweater sleeves (which she also bites and tugs at) but she doesn’t seem to like that. I feed her meal worms each time she comes out to try and get her to enjoy the experience. It takes a lot of bravery to put my fingers around her and I don’t do it often. Each time I do she bites them hard not right away, but it is almost inevitable, and with my anxiety I can’t calm down. I’m worried I might hurt her if she bites me. They’ve already incited a panic attack once before, but luckily I was able to keep my cool just long enough to get her away from me. Marlo is very aggressive and I’m not sure why, either that or she is only kind of aggressive and also loves to bite things. Either way, if you’ve been patient enough to read this long post please help me understand what to do.
 
I bet Marlo is picking up on your worries about being bitten and getting a bit more chompy in return.

Check out this thread about chompy hedgies: http://chins-n-hedgies.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35744

For now, I'd work on breaking the anxiety cycle as best you can. Ultimately, it's best to handle hedgies with your hands, but it sounds like you're not quite at that point where you can trust that will happen safely. So go ahead and give yourself permission to pick her up in something. You can use a fleece blanket (or fleece scraps) that's folded over a time or two so that you don't have to worry about what will happen if she chomps on the blankie.

I do know that some hedgies have played a bit of tug-of-war with their humans as a game. You might be able to turn the chompiness into a happy game if you have some strips of fabric she can tug at.

Great that you're feeding her mealies -- make sure that you're not handling them with your bare hands (and making your fingers smell like mealies) or feeding them to her with your fingers (helping her associate "fingers" with "food"). It's okay to put them in a little dish. Or you can set up a small highly supervised play area and let her hunt for them... instead of hunting for your fingers.

Some things I do when I'm dealing with a hedgie who isn't behaving the "right" way are to really take a step back and consider it from hedgie's perspective.
I remind myself that I'm the big human and hedgie is just a little one who is probably rather upset/scared/confused... Even more upset than I am.
I put myself in the role of "I am hedgie's protector. I know better. I can do this."
I tell myself if I'm consistent, hedgie will eventually come around.
...it's a lot of self-talk. I don't know if you get into that at all when you're dealing with anxiety in general? If so... go ahead and start applying that to this situation.

Overall, I find hedgies can be a rather zen creature. The calmer you are, the calmer they are. Of course, the opposite is true to and sounds like that's where you are with things at the moment. But it can change... you may find Marlo can actually be therapeutic (I know, sounds crazy right now, eh? But it's possible.).
 
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