I just read an interesting article on Slate about dog behavior and how we humans assume our dog's behavior follows a similar logical path that human behavior does. ie (the example used in the article) This woman's dog is starting to behave poorly because he is angry she went back to work full time instead of being at home. When in actuality that's not the case at all. And through a lot of information gathering about the behaviors and involving a doggie behaviorist they realized the dog was anxious because no one was around to correct its bad behaviors and it didn't know how to act. There's much more to it than that but that's the gist.
It made me think about Tess & Rigby. I'm still feeling a bit concerned about Tess because she seems to be a little (translate that to a lot) high strung (kind of like me) and Rig still has an unholy affinity for my feet (usually investigating their taste with her teeth, she is especially fond of this at 5:30 AM). When they first came to live with me I tried caging them during my work day and then letting them out when I got home. I stopped too soon I think, after only a few days. I'm now wondering if they still have anxiety because of too much freedom and no real clue about what to do with themselves. Hence the problem with the plants, and really any other major chaos they get into such as the bathtub. Now ferrets aren't dogs. They are naturally curious. They do like to dig. They're fairly single minded when they have something on their mind. (ie I can keep redirecting Rig out of the bathroom and away from the tub but short of moving the trash can and shutting the door, she'll keep going back to it until she gets bored on her own.) But I think I need to apply some of what I read to the terrible twosome. I thought by giving them more freedom they'd be happy because they weren't shut up in a cage like they had been, but really I may be freaking them out.
3 comments:
Are they naturally denning animals like dogs? The dogs like to be in their crates. They feel safe in there.
They're burrowers. So they like dark enclosed spaces. The bottom of the cage currently has about 5 - 6 sweatshirts & tshirts from good will that they can burrow and curl up in. That's also evident in that when they're roaming about the house they still sleep curled up in clothes or hidden away, not you know, on the middle of the sofa. But I keep not thinking about the fact that they just came off of 1 year of small cage living.
I know that dogs are different from ferrets, but my high-strung Murphy (dog) seems to fare so much better when left in his crate during the day than when we left him uncrated.
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