The Big Guide to Small Pets

Our small pets can just as easily suffer from behaviour issues as can dogs and cats, many a rabbit or hamster owner for example, will have encountered aggression from their pet at some point. Many people hold the belief that these small pets are either not clever enough to be rehabilitated or, as is more often the case, too small or short lived to be worth the bother trying. Thousands of small animals end up in rescue centres across the country bringing with them a whole host of behavioural issues. Similarly, the modern, mass breeding of small animals for pet shops, with the lack of stimulation and care provided to the animals they are breeding, is causing behavioural abnormalities to become more common place. Although it is said a vast proportion of behavioural traits are genetic, more and more people are beginning to realise that the behaviour of their small pets can be improved given patience and understanding. In order to understand how to help our small pets behave differently we must first understand how they think and how they perceive the world around them. Firstly, it is important to realise that our small pets have been domesticated for a relatively short length of time, especially when compared to dogs or cats. This means they still retain many of their innate and instinctive behaviours handed down to them over generations which have allowed them to survive in a world where everyone wants to eat them! Being prey animals, a natural tendency towards mistrust has been hardwired in their make up for thousands of years. Being on the menu of many predators in the wild, means curiosity really could kill your pet! This brings us to the number one barrier to having a happy and content small pet, FEAR. Fear is an essential emotion that in the wild would provide our small pets with the means to avoid predators and to ensure they do not take unnecessary risks. It is easy to recognise fear as being the cause of a rabbit running away or a guinea pig cowering in its nest, but many people find it difficult to recognise fear as being a major factor in aggressive behaviour. Aggression in our small pets is caused by a fear of the person, animal or object their aggression is aimed at. This instinctive reaction causes the animal to believe that aggression is their only means of being safe and that they need to do all they can to get that object or being to go away. The growling, biting ‘monster’ that runs at you when you open the cage, is generally no less scared than the cowering little animal that buries itself in its bedding. Bravado in the animal world is a very useful tool for staying safe if you have no other option, especially when the only alternative is to be eaten!