lurkette

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.

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"If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

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telekinetic

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.

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twisted no more

Acetylene

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.

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The Faba

There's only one way too truely find out.

Willravel

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

JStrider

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.

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-=JStrider=-

~Clatto Verata Nicto