holding your chinchilla

Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum

Help Support Chinchilla & Hedgehog Pet Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
rutherford

rutherford

i peer into your soul
Joined
Sep 22, 2010
Messages
130
Location
Maple Shade, NJ
i know they don't like to be held, but sometimes, i really just want to hold rutherford for a little bit. he lets me give him massages and scratches all over, so i know he's comfortable with me and trusts me, to a certain degree. i've had rutherford for about 7 months now, but i never really got the hang of holding him. he makes really freaky noises whenever i do try, so i just stop.

what's the best way to hold your chinchilla? and how do you associate holding them as a positive thing so they wouldn't reject it so much?

i'm just a selfish daddy who wants to hug his fluffy baby!
 
Some chins will just reject being held. That being said, I know how you feel. lol. I can hold pepper for maybe 2-3 minutes at a time. Make sure you support thier feet and hold them close to your body. It makes them feel safe and like you wont drop them. I hold her bottom with my left hand and use my right hand to give scritches/hold the upper body. I've never had her make noises on me, but she does wiggle when shes ready to get down
 
Your chin may just be one that never likes being held. So he may never really want to tolerate it. If you're going to hold him, support his feet with your left hand, and then keep a hold of him by the base of the tail with your right hand, that way if he tries to take a flying leap from your arms, you have a hold on him. Holding the tail is the safest way to do this. It has to be at the base of the tail though, not the tip or the middle.
 
Out of my six, I only have a three like that like to be held. And one only likes being held if he's on your shoulder! :)
 
The only one who really "likes" being held is Tribble. That's one out of three in my little herd. Chichi and Tia will "tolerate" it, but only for a really short time, like going from the cage to play.
 
im not sure if it is appropriate to provide a link to a classified ad BUT there are 2 excellant pictures of Sumiko holiding a gorgeous black chin. both ways she is holding the chin are excellant examples of "how to"
in the first one a beginner could use thier left hand to support the feet
once experience and if the chin is comfortable being held than this position is great.

http://www.chins-n-hedgies.com/forums/showthread.php?t=21282&page=4


mods delete post if not appropriate.
 
My baby, Pikachu, lets me hold him all the time, and I just got him 3 hours ago. ;p (I don't force him, he can jump away if he wants.) I think the reason why he is not letting you hold him is because he isn't used to being held, seeing you've had him for 7 months and haven't held him much. Maybe you should try to socailize him more?
 
sheilabeilabobo said:
My baby, Pikachu, lets me hold him all the time, and I just got him 3 hours ago. ;p (I don't force him, he can jump away if he wants.) I think the reason why he is not letting you hold him is because he isn't used to being held, seeing you've had him for 7 months and haven't held him much. Maybe you should try to socailize him more?
Click to expand...

Chins's personalities differ, but their behavior also can from day 1 to 1000. Flea let me hold him a lot the first day I got him and I thought that meant he would be a cuddly chin. Turned out he was still scared from the move and their natural instinct is not necessarily to fight. By the time he settled down, he did not want to be held.
He is a year old now and it settling down and getting to where I can hold him on his terms, though not for extended periods of time. Keeping him calm enough to be picked up is the hardest part for me.
Don't give up on him and work slowly.
 
sheilabeilabobo said:
My baby, Pikachu, lets me hold him all the time, and I just got him 3 hours ago. ;p (I don't force him, he can jump away if he wants.) I think the reason why he is not letting you hold him is because he isn't used to being held, seeing you've had him for 7 months and haven't held him much. Maybe you should try to socailize him more?
Click to expand...

This, to me, is bad advice. You've only had your chinchilla for 3 hours, so you don't really have the experience to tell someone how to handle their chin. Not trying to be rude, but it's just the truth. I have 7 adult chinchillas. Only 1 really tolerates being held, and I've had them all since they were around 3-6months old. They've all been well socialized, and a few were even like yours that seemed to enjoy being held initially, but the truth is, they were scared and not relaxed enough to be themselves with me yet.

A chinchilla's idea of positive attention differs greatly from ours as humans. Chins do not enjoy cuddling and coddling, and most would rather bounce off of you and around you and accept scritches rather than sit in your arms for any amount of time. If your chin doesn't like being held, you shouldn't force it on him. He's going to be more scared of you than anything if you force unwanted attention on him. Accept your chin for who he is and what he is, and if you want something you can hold and hug, get a dog.
 
Ash said:
This, to me, is bad advice. You've only had your chinchilla for 3 hours, so you don't really have the experience to tell someone how to handle their chin. Not trying to be rude, but it's just the truth. I have 7 adult chinchillas. Only 1 really tolerates being held, and I've had them all since they were around 3-6months old. They've all been well socialized, and a few were even like yours that seemed to enjoy being held initially, but the truth is, they were scared and not relaxed enough to be themselves with me yet.

A chinchilla's idea of positive attention differs greatly from ours as humans. Chins do not enjoy cuddling and coddling, and most would rather bounce off of you and around you and accept scritches rather than sit in your arms for any amount of time. If your chin doesn't like being held, you shouldn't force it on him. He's going to be more scared of you than anything if you force unwanted attention on him. Accept your chin for who he is and what he is, and if you want something you can hold and hug, get a dog.
Click to expand...
I didn't tell her how to handle her chins, I just suggested socailizing it. And I'm aware I don't have expierience. I suppose it was bad advice. And he most likely is friendly, seeing that his older owner was a friend of mine and he was okay with being held with her. And as I said, I don't force him. And I let him run around 100 times more than being held. And I have two dogs. I didn't get a chinchilla so I could "cuddle." I got him because my friend said she needed a good home for him, and I did weeks of research on him before I got him, so yes, I am aware chins don't like being cuddled, so I was surprised when mine did. I guess the one thing I didn't know was that chins can't be socailized into social pets. Sorry?
 
GorillaJTA said:
Chins's personalities differ, but their behavior also can from day 1 to 1000. Flea let me hold him a lot the first day I got him and I thought that meant he would be a cuddly chin. Turned out he was still scared from the move and their natural instinct is not necessarily to fight. By the time he settled down, he did not want to be held.
He is a year old now and it settling down and getting to where I can hold him on his terms, though not for extended periods of time. Keeping him calm enough to be picked up is the hardest part for me.
Don't give up on him and work slowly.
Click to expand...
I completely agree. I wonder if mine is going to switch on me. I'll still love him. <3 <3
 
Sheila, your chinchilla is also an "oddball" so to speak if he likes being held. Honestly, it has nothing to do with socialization the chin does or doesn't receive and everything to go with personality. It's been said time and again it's a rare chinchilla that genuinely enjoys and wants to be held. Most chins will only tolerate it for a minute or two, if that.

And I by no means said that chins aren't socializable animals, but their version of "socialization" and ours are totally different. Many chins are content just to come up to you for scritches on the chin, but will dart in the other direction when you try to pick them up. It doesn't mean it's not socialized, it means it's a prey animal that isn't comfortable with being held. There are members/breeders that have held and handled chins since day 1, and those chins still grow into adults who don't like being held. They're sociable and friendly, but dislike being held. It's more common than not for this to happen. There are also rescues who receive chins from horrible situations that love attention and being held. It's a luck of the draw, and owners need to be prepared for the possibility their chin will not tolerate being held for more than 2 seconds...

My comment about getting a dog was more for the OP if he wants something that's going to be huggable.
 
Last edited:
wow, thanks for all the advice and suggestions!

i would say rutherford is pretty socialized. he loves seeing people and having people sit around during playtime. though most of the time, he just kind of explore my bedroom on his own, he does enjoy running up and down my back, perching on my shoulders, or using my legs or arms as ladders to get places. i got him when he was about 2 months old, and he did let me hold him then when i was at the breeder's farm. he enjoys massages and scritches, but holding him has always been an issue. i've tried a few times, but he just doesn't like it.
 
My two chins are very different in personality, but they both came from the same breeder and she claimed that they were very tame. I suppose they are quite "tame," but even then, I wouldn't say they LIKE being held. Especially Pepper, my grey boy -- he can be kinda... volatile when he's being held, LOL. He will sit still for up to a few minutes, but then out of no where he will suddenly spaz and want to be somewhere else. Filbert, my violet, is a lot easier to hold. He will just sit there and doesn't spaz like Pepper, so I guess you can say he definitely tolerates being held very well. I don't know if I would go so far as to say he likes being held though, lol! When he wants to come out to play, he will actually try to push your hands out of the way so that he can dart out of the door without being picked up and runs to the bathroom by himself (ok, he only finds his way there a fraction of the time, but still..). Sometimes he'll try to take a big bite out of your finger if it's in his way.. and man, his teeth can be sharp. They can be such feisty critters sometimes.

So you shouldn't feel too bad if your chin doesn't like being held. My chins were raised such that they were handled daily and still, they prefer doing their own thing and are more bonded to each other than they are with people. I still suggest that you try to get your chin more accustomed to being held though. It's just for convenience in situations where he really will need to be handled. I try not to hold my chins as much as possible especially during play time but at least I know that they will tolerate being held when they need to be.
 
i know what you mean! rutherford shoves my arms out of the way with his little paws when he's trying to get out for playtime. it's so adorable when he does that, but i try to set him straight because he needs to learn to be patient.

once he wakes up today, i will try to hold him before i let him have some playtime.
 
Rhino will tolerate being held for about a minute, that's it. and i never force being held on him. if he allows me to pick him up i will hold him lightly, close to the floor in case he should jump, and give him scritches and croon 'good boy' the whole time. when he's done being cuddled he lets me know by squirming a bit and i let him go gently without him fussing too much at all. if i were to keep holding him past the point of him getting uncomfortable then that could cause problems with bonding, which Rhino and i are still in the middle of.
 
I think chinchillas are like birds in that they would rather perch on you than be held. I do hold my chinchillas once in a while just so that I can get them used to being still and checked over. Other than that I make sure that they have to hop on me to get out of the cage and back into it after play time. I try and snuggle them before we go to the play pen and before they go back to the cage. All of them are used to this and now that they are older they allow it a little more. All of my boys will turn 2 or 3 this year.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top