| Quentin |
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-under construction-
When I decided I wanted to get a hedgehog, I couldn't find any breeders that were less than 4 hours away from here. As much as I didn't want to do so, I started calling around to pet stores in the area asking if they had any hedgehogs and what information they could tell me about them if they did have any. Only one store had one, and it wasn't promising when I talked to them. They said "it" was 4 months old, they thought it was a boy but they weren't sure so it was an "it", and they had only picked him up one time in the weeks that they'd had him. In addition to that, they had a 2 day health guarantee. I wasn't impressed. But I thought that maybe with some work the hedgie could be brought around, if that was my only option. The problem was that they only had the one... I was going to go on vacation for a week and therefore didn't want to buy him yet; I was afraid someone else would buy the hedgie while I was out of town.
I started researching breeders who lived close to the area I was going to be in--and to my amazement there was one about 5 minutes away from my aunt's house (where I was staying). Tina, the breeder, actually had several hedgehogs available at the time, but we picked our hedgie out because we liked how dark his face mask was.
My boyfriend and I picked Quentin up on 8/24/08 from Bloomin' Hedgehogs in Hampton, VA (if you would like to know what I thought of the experience with this particular breeder, please email me). We had a 7 hour trip through the mountains to get back home, but Quentin slept most of the way. He actually got his name from a sign on the interstate for the town of "Quinton", but I decided to change the spelling. I thought it was a pretty original name, but it turns out there are a bunch of other hedgehogs out there named Quentin (he isn't on youtube, but several others ARE which is how I know about the popularity of the name). Quentin loves to anoint with baby foods, so I can't give him any unless I'm planning on bathing him. He loves Gerber turkey sticks, peach baby food, and chicken and veggies. I gave him carrot baby food...and just ended up with a completely orange hedgie. The theory my boyfriend had was that he thought it was toxic and rubbed it all over himself to try to get it on us. He ate none of it, just smeared it on himself. So we haven't tried carrots since, although maybe in the future we can try again. Quentin's Current Diet:
When I first got Quentin I had him on these foods:
Reasons for switching: I thought he may have developed an allergy to the Wellness after awhile. His poops were getting stinkier and he was getting dry skin. Because of this, I removed it from the mix and those conditions cleared up. It was also pretty high in fat and I decided he needed less fat in his diet, as well. He loves the food but I felt it was better healthy than happy in that case (he doesn't mind the new blend, though). He didn't like the Chicken Soup brand much. I thought it was the x shape at first but he eats the Solid Gold now, which is also an x, so apparently it was the taste he didn't like. Salmon tends to make poop stinky, just for reference. I switched to the chicken blend because the petstore was out of the salmon blend. He liked it, so I might bring it back in the future. He started out on a water bottle and did okay with it, but he would stand there for five minutes straight trying to drink. I felt like that was a waste of his time, and he should be able to choose what he wanted to drink from, so I put a water bowl in the cage too. Now, even though the bottle is still there, he prefers to drink from the bowl. I change the water in the bottle every couple of days, just in case he changes his mind.
He loves to run in his wheel. He runs for 5 minutes or so at a time, hops out, runs over to his food bowl, sniffs it, then gets back in the wheel, then repeats--several times a night. Our theory for that is that he runs thinking that the food will be something different after he gets somewhere new, so he runs and runs as hard as he can then checks the food to see if it's changed. It's adorable. At first he had a bucket wheel, but it became too wobbly when he got a little bigger, so now he has a flying saucer.
Another activity he enjoys is tubing. He can't use the toilet paper tubes cut up the sides because he's too aggressive and ends up running straight through them to the other side (which I'm afraid will hurt him since he does it so quickly), so he has to use craft foam tubes. But he doesn't mind. He puts his head in those things and goes at it. He'll hiss at them, he's growled at them before, and he runs all over the place banging into things and wreaking havoc. When he wants out, he'll sit down on his butt and pull it off with his front feet. We've noticed that Quentin will come out when there's light on, but he's less inclined to play. He has no problem coming out with every single light on in the room when he wants to eat. Playtime is much more active in the total dark though. There was a night light on the other side of the room that shouldn't have put off enough light to bother him, but one day the bulb burned out and that night he tore his cage to shreds and ran and ran on his wheel. The light has stayed off since and he's done the same thing every night. Quentin is also a bit of an attention lover. We went back to visit my aunt in VA, and on one of the rest stops I had him out for some leg stretching and a water break. A whole group of people walked by, then did a double take and came back over. They all wanted to know what he was (one even was like "Is that a groundhog?!") and they wanted to touch him. He actually let a few of them touch him without balling up and hissing. I was amazed. But yes, we ended up giving a lesson on hedgehogs at that particular rest stop, and it seems like people are fascinated anytime they happen to see him--and he's a bit fascinated with them too.
Quentin has traveled to these states:
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Picture the breeder had up of him
Quentin tubing (6 months old)
