The pros and cons of keeping small animals

from w
The task is becoming rather persistent as we can't take the guinea pig and the Dwarf Netherland rabbit back to the pet shop! So what are the pros and cons of keeping such small animals - from our experience. Some members of the family like them, others definitely do not. I have cuts on my hands and arms from the hutch openings, not from animal bites and scratches.

Well, the good things are that they are God's creatures, beautiful little male animals and we can learn a lot from caring for them, taking responsibility day after day after day. We can learn that food is not the only criteria in life, but socializing sometimes comes first as we observe Izzie, the guinea pig, making overtures towards Ozzie, the rabbit.

There are numerous difficulties though! The rabbit just hates to be caged up and has escaped like Houdini about eight times but he just has a few hours in the garden before we catch him. Actually every day we do let them out in the garden to run freely and then it's a task to lure them back by trickery - nice food in a small cage. Keeping up food and drink is constant - fresh grass from the garden and there's plenty of that, a kind of food mix from the pet shop, fresh cucumber, apple, carrot etc. We have had then inside the house but that's frowned upon by super clean members of the family and we only really do that on special occasions - e.g. when the temperature was 42 degrees they sat under the cooler in the lounge room, and one morning after drenching rain which went right through the roof of the shed and the rabbit was really wet, I had to towel him dry and clean out the hutch again so he did spent an hour in one room. Heat and cold are problems. A friend lost two guinea pigs on that 42 degree day.

Although the pets belong to a young member of the family, I seem to get plenty of the jobs and I do want the animals to survive and be a bit happy - if you can call it that - when you live in an enclosed environment for many hours of the day. I really think animals should roam free. Well, at least I get plenty of exercise these days, chasing them after their free time!