Bobi!!

[Maz]

I'm sure the heat could make her more grumpy! It did make me more grumpy for a day or two!

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Hi guys! I’m quite worried… Bobi keeps being grumpy and biting every single time we interact with her, it doesn’t matter who is it, she will bite any human.

These days we’ve observing new “worrying behaviours” in the green circle of the picture of her cage attached she learned how to get on the branches and climb into the lid doing “monkey bar” which I know is an stress behaviour. When I saw her doing that I always put my hand under her so she doesn’t get hurt, but I can’t be 24/7 there... As you can see the cage is 100 x 50 cms, she has deep bedding, multi chamber house, big wheel, sand box… She sometimes also tries to “scape” from the cage which may be a sign she wants to do free room. The thing is we don’t have any safe space at home so we bought the green fences you can see. She doesn’t look to enjoy being in there. She runs RIDICULOUSLY FAST and it’s hard for me to keep her safe in a room. When she’s inside the fences she runs like crazy but safe at least. But she also tries to scape climbing those fences (she can’t). Then after 20 minutes I take her back to the cage (I always hold her using a mug or a strainer to avoid painful bites that can make her fall) and she starts trying to scape/monkey bar.

I have to say that we see her doing this when she sees or hears us. I mean I don’t know what she does when we’re not there because we don’t have a camera so I hope it’s just her way to say “hey I’m here and I want your attention”.

Regarding to her grumpy constant mood I bought a goalkeeper football gloves to hold her and avoid pain but unfortunately she chew them and she “ate” a small piece of plastic that made me worry a lot of days. She’s fine and it’s been almost a week, but the glove idea it’s discarded. Maybe she just kept it in the pouch but never ate it and just left it in somewhere in the cage. I think she would chew any glove material… And it’s dangerous.

She hasn’t gone to the vet since March and her vet emailed me to say small animals like hamsters should be visited every 6 months and not every 12. So I will appoint a visit for ends of this month or October…

I’ve thought about “improving” her cage but honestly idk what else should we put. She gets sprays every two weeks (maybe you can’t see them in the picture because they were all eaten and removed by us).

Any advice or idea to make Bobi’s life better is appreciated

 

[Maz]

Hi there good to hear about bobi You know I find this with most hamsters when they get to a certain age - it's as if they have an inbuilt clock saying I need to live a bit and experience things I don't want to spend my life in a cage. It simply sounds like she wants to be out of the cage and run around and have some fun and so she tries to get your attention when she sees you. Tino's is doing the same thing and well he's about 20 months old now. He just wants to be out free roaming all night every night. And it's quite hard when you can't manage it every night, but he seems happy with his half an hour to 40 minutes out as long as it's regular so I would keep doing that - giving her time in her playpen/fence but I would try and do it at a set time each day/evening so she has a routine she can expect. She has a lovely cage set a lovely enclosure - I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I don't think it's stress behaviour - I think it's just she wants to start coming out and living life a bit. It could be a bit of stress behaviour if you've just given her a big clean out but I'm assuming that isn't the case.

Any hamster can monkey bar across the roof if they can get up there whether it's a meshed tank roof or a barred cage and theyre just looking for a way out especially at night which is a super active time of the day With a lot of pent up energy and their foraging instincts at night. I think the main thing is that she can't land on anything hard to injure herself. Having a look at your enclosure there doesn't seem to be too long a drop from the top. but landing on the bendy bridge could be hard - some people cover those with Hemp Mat for that reason I've seen that done in Germany and I've done it myself. Also I can't tell how low the platform is on the front left.

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Hi there good to hear about bobi You know I find this with most hamsters when they get to a certain age - it's as if they have an inbuilt clock saying I need to live a bit and experience things I don't want to spend my life in a cage. It simply sounds like she wants to be out of the cage and run around and have some fun and so she tries to get your attention when she sees you. Tino's is doing the same thing and well he's about 20 months old now. He just wants to be out free roaming all night every night. And it's quite hard when you can't manage it every night, but he seems happy with his half an hour to 40 minutes out as long as it's regular so I would keep doing that - giving her time in her playpen/fence but I would try and do it at a set time each day/evening so she has a routine she can expect. She has a lovely cage set a lovely enclosure - I don't think there's anything wrong with that and I don't think it's stress behaviour - I think it's just she wants to start coming out and living life a bit. It could be a bit of stress behaviour if you've just given her a big clean out but I'm assuming that isn't the case.

Any hamster can monkey bar across the roof if they can get up there whether it's a meshed tank roof or a barred cage and theyre just looking for a way out especially at night which is a super active time of the day With a lot of pent up energy and their foraging instincts at night. I think the main thing is that she can't land on anything hard to injure herself. Having a look at your enclosure there doesn't seem to be too long a drop from the top. but landing on the bendy bridge could be hard - some people cover those with Hemp Mat for that reason I've seen that done in Germany and I've done it myself. Also I can't tell how low the platform is on the front left.

I didn’t know about how much can change her interests with the time! The truth she might be (we don’t know exact birthday) 16 or 17 months old. We have been out of home today from 11 to 5 pm and when we came back she was awake chilling in her sand (she loves doing that, and it’s a cool place -it’s very warm still in Barcelona-) and when she saw and heard us she started asking to go out. I let her being out in the playpen and I recorded this video attached. She also pooped 3 times and she usually does it at the vet because she’s stressed. Do you think she actually likes being there? I don’t think so but I hope she does!

The problem if she really needs more playpen time is that she doesn’t have regular schedules depends A LOT on the day. There’s days she wakes up at midday (and there’s nobody at home or we don’t have time) and days she wakes up at the afternoon such as today or days she wakes up quite late at night and everyone at home is sleeping… This is going to be hard lol

 

[Maz]

I didn’t know about how much can change her interests with the time! The truth she might be (we don’t know exact birthday) 16 or 17 months old. We have been out of home today from 11 to 5 pm and when we came back she was awake chilling in her sand (she loves doing that, and it’s a cool place -it’s very warm still in Barcelona-) and when she saw and heard us she started asking to go out. I let her being out in the playpen and I recorded this video attached. She also pooped 3 times and she usually does it at the vet because she’s stressed. Do you think she actually likes being there? I don’t think so but I hope she does!

The problem if she really needs more playpen time is that she doesn’t have regular schedules depends A LOT on the day. There’s days she wakes up at midday (and there’s nobody at home or we don’t have time) and days she wakes up at the afternoon such as today or days she wakes up quite late at night and everyone at home is sleeping… This is going to be hard lol

Please could you add the video as a youtube one It's the only video site we use on the forum now and also the googledrive one seemed blocked? Thank you!

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Please could you add the video as a youtube one It's the only video site we use on the forum now and also the googledrive one seemed blocked? Thank you!

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there you go

 

[Maz]

Thank you! So fast! It's like she's on wheels But it looks like normal playpen behaviour - their mission is to get past walls! Even if she had the whole room she'd be trying to get past the door to the next room! You could maybe add more in the playpen to distract her - cardboard boxes, a chew stick. Carrot cottages are popular here - ours spend ages nibbling those

Tricky if she wants to come out at different times but I suspect she is loving out of cage time and wanting more!

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Thank you! So fast! It's like she's on wheels But it looks like normal playpen behaviour - their mission is to get past walls! Even if she had the whole room she'd be trying to get past the door to the next room! You could maybe add more in the playpen to distract her - cardboard boxes, a chew stick. Carrot cottages are popular here - ours spend ages nibbling those

Tricky if she wants to come out at different times but I suspect she is loving out of cage time and wanting more!

Ok that makes me feel better I hope she doesn’t get hurt if she does monkey bar or tries to scape when we’re not there to take her out we got a hard pleasant hammie

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Hey guys… I’m sorry I just come here to post “bad things”

Regarding the last post: Bobi didn’t get any better at biting, but it’s even worse, she started being “hyperactive”, she tries to scape from the cage, from the playpen… It looks like she only wants to run as crazy by our flat but that would be dangerously so she isn’t allowed to do that. We take her out of the cage using a mug but she will bite anytime she got a finger or hand near to her mouth.

We have booked an appointment to her vet this Friday because the thing that worries us the most is that she has lost a lot of weight (10 or 12 grams) in 3-4 months (eating the same food, same amounts…)

We needed to take away some cork branches she had in the enclosure because she uses them to “monkey bar” and once we saw her falling on tough cork or surfaces, now I feel the cage is quite empty and she might be angry because of this. She has also started to chew a corner of the cage, and it’s made of safe wood but we’re worried about her making a whole and scape, she’s totally obsessed with scape.

We feel awful and we don’t think there’s a solution? I mean what can we expect from the vet regarding this “behaviour issue”?

Thanks

 

[Maz]

Aw I'm sorry to hear this. How old is she again? Have you tested for diabetes? That can change their mood and cause other behaviours. You can just use human ketodiastix you can get from a pharmacy. You dip one of the sticks in a bit of her urine and it shows if it has sugar in it or not. Although often you can smell it in the urine if they do have it, but not always.

Yes she's probably stressed if some things have been removed from her cage. I'm wondering if you could add some new things to distract her? Even cardboard hides or tunnels? I take it she was climbing the branches to get to the roof?

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Aw I'm sorry to hear this. How old is she again? Have you tested for diabetes? That can change their mood and cause other behaviours. You can just use human ketodiastix you can get from a pharmacy. You dip one of the sticks in a bit of her urine and it shows if it has sugar in it or not. Although often you can smell it in the urine if they do have it, but not always.

Yes she's probably stressed if some things have been removed from her cage. I'm wondering if you could add some new things to distract her? Even cardboard hides or tunnels? I take it she was climbing the branches to get to the roof?

Yes she climbed using the branches and she was “crazy” before taking them away… She has cardboard tubes from toilet paper and she never looks at them even! Since she will be taken to the vet on Friday we will ask him to make her any test or anything that could give us a clue, such as the urine test, poops, fur… The urine smells the same to me though, and we’ve been careful about the diabetes issue! No fruit at all, just veggies, always eating Rodipet mix designed to avoid diabetes… By the way she’s 16 or 17 months old (we don’t know exactly if she was born on April or May 2024)

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

TRIGGER WARNING: DEATH, SICK HAMSTER...

DISCLAIMER: IT WILL BE A VERY LONG POST BUT I NEED TO OPEN MYSELF AND WRITE ABOUT THIS, DON’T READ IT IF YOU DON’T FEEL LIKE TO.

I'm here to share some very sad news: Bobi crossed the rainbow bridge on October 6th.

As you have been reading in this forum, we have always been very concerned about Bobi's health, and unfortunately we have not felt that exotic veterinarians in Barcelona and the surrounding area are very knowledgeable about things like nutrition (you will understand why I say this later), but I did trust them professionally and now I have to say that I am really disappointed, as well as incredibly hurt by Bobi's departure.

It all started around summer: July-August. Bobi had been with us for a year and was already 14-15 months old. Overnight, her personality changed completely: from being a hamster who would sometimes nibble without biting or hurting, she started biting constantly and hard. We didn't pay much attention to this.
We thought it might be the suffocating heat, even though we had the air conditioning on as much as possible, ice packs on top of the cage, and increased the amount of fresh vegetables.

In September, things got drastically worse: we usually weigh her once or twice a month. We noticed that she had lost a whopping 7-8 grams at first, which ended up being 10, which is outrageous for a hamster. She was biting even more and doing strange things. It seemed to us that she “wanted to get out of the cage” and she started climbing like a monkey.

Now I understand that she was just asking us for help. And I can't help but break down in tears when I think that we didn't rise to the occasion.

We took her to the vet on September 26th. The weight loss, the video of Bobi “asking for help” and climbing, and the drastic change in behavior that we explained to the vet led him to recommend that we have her tested—which meant anesthetizing her with gas—so we did.

My wife and I obviously don't know how to read lab results. When the vet called us, he told us that there were “little things” that were abnormal, that she had anemia and low defenses, but that “it was nothing serious.” I repeat, “it was nothing serious.” In fact, with a hamster that weighed only 25 grams that day, he only recommended giving her “Red Cell,” some vitamins... We gave them to her for seven days. She hated taking them and they made her anxious.
My best friend is in her third year of veterinary school, and when I sent her the test results, both she and my wife and I thought that this wasn't enough... So on October 3rd, we took her to another vet on the outskirts of the city, which took us almost an hour and a half by car. Again, imagine the stress on Bobi...

The second opinion we sought after seeing the test results did suggest that it could be an infection of the reproductive system or kidneys. He prescribed Critical Care formula to help her gain weight. We gave it to her for two days. This vet and her regular vet insisted that we feed her “pellets” ... We didn't give it to her. The second vet suggested that her diet might be to blame. Bobi ate Rodipet seed mix, mealworms for protein, three different types of vegetables two or three times a week, and occasionally nuts such as walnuts. She also had sprays and timothy hay.

I want to emphasize that we specifically asked both veterinarians if Bobi was seriously ill and if we should be concerned or do anything. They told us no, that she was “a little weak,” that “we could” do an X-ray “but they couldn't guarantee they would be able to see if anything was wrong since the animal is very small and sedation has risks.” The truth is that we had planned to take her to the second vet on Friday 10th to have her evaluated for more tests. We also had to collect urine, spoiler alert: there wasn't enough time.

On Sunday, October 5th, we woke up and gave her her Critical Care porridge when we saw her awake in her cage, as well as some vegetables. She seemed fine. We went out to lunch with my family. When we came back in the afternoon, we saw her in one of her ceramic hiding places. She was very still and didn't come out for food. We thought she might just be sleepy.

It was getting late: 9 p.m., 10 p.m... And I wanted to go to bed because I had to get up early the next day. I told my partner to wake her up while I prepared the porridge. “She's not moving,” she said. “Take her out,” I said. “She has to eat something else.” She peed on my partner, which she had never done before. Sure enough, she took her out and she wasn't moving AT ALL, and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. She had a very lost look in her eyes and convulsed. Of course, she didn't want to eat. When she picked her up, she didn't move, and she could barely stand on the scale. It now read only 20 grams. She peed on the scale again. “Call the vet urgently and get dressed, she's in very ill, we have to go.” -I told her-. We left in a hurry, I didn't even put my contact lenses in (luckily I could see good enough), nor did I take my cell phone, but we had my partner's with us.

She barely moved during the car ride. Well, she convulsed. When we got there, we were seen by a vet on duty whom we didn't know. I understand that these are their protocols, but she started asking us questions that I honestly thought were already on the form... Things like what she eats or where she lives. I had a really hard time answering her questions because I just wanted her to see Bobi as soon as possible.

When she finally looked at her she said she could “hear a noise in her breathing.” What the hell???? Why didn't anyone tell us that before???? We went to TWO different places and NO ONE said ANYTHING about her breathing. Then she said his abdomen was swollen and that “it could be her reproductive system”... Whatever it was, it was obvious (and we were already prepared for it) that Bobi had to sleep there so she could be in an incubator and breathe oxygen.

As soon as we left, it started raining, and we cried in the car as we left her there. The plan was that on the morning of the 6th, they would try to do the damn X-ray or ultrasound... There wasn't time. On Monday the 6th, the vet opened at 10 a.m., and at 10:10 a.m., they called my partner to tell us that Bobi had passed away.
Although we could have imagined it because we saw how sick she was on Sunday when we took her in, you always trust that your little furry ball will be able to overcome it. It was a huge shock because they had told us twice (once 48 hours earlier) that it wasn't “that bad.” We went on Monday at noon to say goodbye to her little body and paid for an autopsy.

The autopsy report hasn’t arrived in my mailbox yet and it makes us feel sadder since we don’t know exactly what happened to her…

 

[Socks' Mum]

Very sorry to hear this sad news. Sleep softly over the bridge little Bobbi

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

Thank you

 

[Lovelyness]

Oh no, so sorry

 

[Maz]

I am so so sorry @dwarfhamstermom . As you said - somehow you think they will get better and come round. And I know with our first hamster we just felt like he would always be there and his decline and passing was pretty devastating.

It is very very sad and I’m so sorry for your loss. You tried everything for Bobi and she knew you loved her x

It does sound like a fairly typical decline with an older hamster unfortunately and many vets don’t know much about hamsters or aren’t able to diagnose specifically - however “nothing serious “ was not a wise thing to say if they don’t know what is going on. It’s possible she had some kind of tumour internally and gradually that would lead to weight loss. That wouldn’t have been fixable. Surgery might have been an option but not really with an older hamster in her condition.

It could have been e just been gradual organ failure.

Please don’t feel you missed anything - it’s a natural part of grief to think that - it is possible her biting was because of pain as they are so good at hiding it.

You did everything you could and she is playing free over the rainbow bridge now - free from pain. x

Do take care and look after yourselves now and eat properly x. Talk all you want.

 

[dwarfhamstermom]

I am so so sorry @dwarfhamstermom . As you said - somehow you think they will get better and come round. And I know with our first hamster we just felt like he would always be there and his decline and passing was pretty devastating.

It is very very sad and I’m so sorry for your loss. You tried everything for Bobi and she knew you loved her x

It does sound like a fairly typical decline with an older hamster unfortunately and many vets don’t know much about hamsters or aren’t able to diagnose specifically - however “nothing serious “ was not a wise thing to say if they don’t know what is going on. It’s possible she had some kind of tumour internally and gradually that would lead to weight loss. That wouldn’t have been fixable. Surgery might have been an option but not really with an older hamster in her condition.

It could have been e just been gradual organ failure.

Please don’t feel you missed anything - it’s a natural part of grief to think that - it is possible her biting was because of pain as they are so good at hiding it.

You did everything you could and she is playing free over the rainbow bridge now - free from pain. x

Do take care and look after yourselves now and eat properly x. Talk all you want.

Thank you for your words, Maz. The truth is that these three weeks have given us time and, in a way, compassion for ourselves, because our first feelings were of guilt for not having been able to help Bobi enough. Even today, we still struggle with the question, “What if we had taken her to other veterinarians sooner?” But the truth is that we would never have known if we could have prolonged her life and kept her in good conditions.

We wanted to take this opportunity to show you the tattoos we got with Bobi's actual paw print. The truth is that I had other hamsters when I was little, but as a child I wasn't aware of what it meant to have a pet and I didn't even take good care of them because I didn't work to pay for big cages, hiding places, food, forage, vet... This time we really felt that she was OUR FIRST PET and part of the family, of course, These tattoos will always remind us sharing those happy moments together: Bobi and my partner and I. And all the love you can feel for such small animals

 

[Maz]

Such a beautiful photo of Bobi. And very special to have the pawprint tattoos x. I hear you. Our first hamster Charlie was very much part of our family and Bobi was part of your family. In time you will remember the joy and good times. The end is always hard however it happens. Bobi had a wonderful life with you and she was loved. You took great care of her. I think she developed an unpleasant condition and there probably wasn't anything that could have been done unfortunately. RIP Bobi.

 

[Tulsi]

God how sweet to have paw print tattoos. RIP Bobi.

 

[Doodleham]

So sorry for your loss. Your tattoos are so cute.