Hedgehogs: can they co-exist with cats and dogs?
 

I have recently become smitten with a hedgehog at our local pet store, and I think I would someday like to get a hedgie (if not that particular one). Does anybody out there have insight as to whether they are likely to be threatened by any of our 3 cats or our pretty mellow but squirrel-obsessed dog? I'm thinking the spines would be a pretty good deterrent, but I don't want to bring a hedgehog into an environment where it'll never feel safe.

http://hedgehogcentral.com/otherpets.shtml

Has some tips....but i just popped in to say, hedgehogs are AWESOME and you need to take millions of pictures for us.

My experience with cats is that they will either A. ignore it or B. obsess over it until they figure out a way to kill it. If they are type B, then you must keep it in another room with a closed door, keep it in a heavy glass aquarium with a wire mesh lid, and keep a clamp or lock on the cage lid. This is how we kept our mice safe when we had a cat.

With dogs, it depends on the dog what they will do. My first dog, a Sheltie, understood instinctively about pets and would not even think about harming any of our small animals or birds. My current dog, a Tervuren, obsesses like a cat over my dove, but leaves my chicken alone after the chicken pecked her nose. If confronted with a spiny hedgehog, she would learn right away to leave it alone.

However, a dog like a Lab or Beagle or other dog bred to hunt/retrieve might obsess over picking up the hedgehog and playing with it. They might persist depite the spines. My mother had a dog that kept atacking porcupines over and over despite the spines.

The advantage of dogs is, they can be trained. A dog should obviously not be left alone with a hedgehog, but you should be able to train most dogs to leave it alone.

There's only one way too truely find out.

I think the real question is Hedgehogs: can they co-exist with mad scientists and collect rings?

when I was a little kid one of the neighbor kids had one, and we would always play with it in the front lawn.

was a pretty neat pet, like a prickly guinea pig.