Has it been 3 months??

Ok, I'll be the first to admit....I'm bad at this blogging consistently thing. I'm giving myself a little credit though, it's been a SUPER busy three months. Spent the month of March planning a wedding (mine and Jay's!), in April all 6 of our kids were here for a week and now we are packing up for a move cross-country.

The gliders are doing fantastic though! We still haven't combined the two cages, but we plan on trying that after we get moved and settled. If someone had told us back in February that Taz would have become a sweetheart cutie, I'd never have believed them. Sydney still has biting issues and we've discovered that she's an exercise NUT! (More to follow on both of these developments in upcoming posts.) The crabbing that both Syd and Taz did quite often is almost nil now. They still don't like to be handled, but have no problem coming to see us and climbing all over us. Our sweet little Bruce seems to have gotten even more lovey with us. He rarely bites, just an occasional love/grooming nibble and he also doesn't snatch food from you when it's offered to him. He just takes it gently and is so precious about it.

I promise to be much better about updating from now on! I've got articles on food & toys and individual glider updates to share.  I also plan to blog about the move and how the gliders do on a 3-4 day cross country road trip.

Going to finish off today with a cute picture of my daughter, Steph with Bruce over Spring Break.

Have a great day friends!

I Have a Twitchy Marsupial on My Head!

Taz likes to be up...as high as he can get. Can you tell??

Happy Valentine's Day!

Bruce wants to be your Valentine!

Lots of love from Bruce, Sydney, Taz and the rest of the bunch at Sugar Rush!

Let's Try This Again!

Well we got brave and tried to socialize all three gliders in the tent again. Amazingly, it went a LOT better this time. There was only one full out wrestling match with Bruce and Taz and much less crabbing at each other. Sydney REALLY likes Bruce too, but he's a little frightened of her because she is very agressive in showing she likes him. She grabs his head and rubs her head all over him. (That's the way gliders "hug".) We spent right at an hour in the tent with them and they had a fantastic time. Got a few pictures, but only a couple really of them all three together. Someone always seems to move right before we can push the button. Oh well! The shot on the left has Sydney, Taz and Bruce on Jay's back.

We bought them a fake ficus tree to use as a jungle gym. Tonight we are going to set it up in a closed room and see what they all think of playing in it. I'm hoping to get some shots of Bruce and Sydney actually gliding. I'm just not seeing Taz doing more than a couple inch jump just yet!

More pictures of playtime with all three:

"I promise Mom, I wasn't doing anything!" -  (Sydney and Bruce)

Bruce and Taz sniffing each other.

Suggies with Other Animals

One of the things Jay and I get asked a lot when we talk to people about our suggies is what our other pets think of them. There are some of the more shady breeders that will tell you all kinds of untrue statements about sugar gliders getting along fantastically and becoming lifelong friends with dogs, cats and other animals you may have. It's a sad and well known fact though that gliders have been killed by their owner's dogs, cats and other pets, like ferrets.

 However, our other pets, under very close supervision, have met our first suggie, Bruce. Buddy is our basset hound and he's very curious about the gliders. He and Bruce will often sniff each other through the cage.

Our cat (well Katie's cat) Molly isn't usually this curious about Bruce. In his picture though, he and Bruce are checking each other out pretty good.  

I still don't advocate every pet making these types of intros with suggies. Know your pet and ALWAYS be alert.

Boys Will Be Boys

You know those movies where the big burley guy gets overprotective of his girl when another guy just attempts to talk to her? "Hey boy...who do you think you are talkin' to??" Well it wouldn't be a stretch to put Taz in a little tiny "wife-beater" give him some little fake cans of Coors and recreate that scene sugar glider style. (It's Jay's idea for the costume, not mine!) The other night we decided to put all three gliders in the tent together to see how they'd react to actually being able to interact, not just see each other through cage bars.

We had reasons for concern. Males, even if both our neutered like Bruce and Taz, can be very territorial, especially if a female is involved. Testosterone is the same across the animal world! Both of our boys techincally have lower levels now, but they still have working boy parts and get typical boy urges. Sydney is Taz's mate and he is very fond of her.

Sydney ran up to Bruce right away and they both started sniffing and grooming each other, an awesome sign that they will get along fine. Taz however, wasn't as happy to have another boy in the room checking out his girl. He waddled ('cause Taz can't run or swagger yet!) over to Bruce, gave him a sniff and started crabbing. Down they went into a little mini glider brawl. Jay pulled them apart quickly and Bruce sat on Jay's leg. Sydney came back over again to say hi and Taz was right behind, still not happy. This cycle continued a few times. We did have a couple of moments when they were all sniffing and Bruce and Taz were not fighting, but they were short lived.

Despite the first attempt not going perfectly, we are pretty sure we can get all three of them to the point that they will play together at least with our supervision. We aren't sure we'll ever be able to have them cagemates, but it's our hope. We are on the lookout currently for another female about the age of Bruce to give him his very own mate. That might make him and Taz be a little more friendly of each other and not look at the other as a rival. Tonight we are going to try tent time with all three again. Maybe I can actually get a few more pictures and even a video.

Tent Time!

I think they actually like us! We have done a few sessions of tent bonding with Sydney and Taz the past few nights and it has been a blast. We thought they were skittish with us because of all the crabbing that went on when we'd try to touch their pouches when they were inside. Apparently we were wrong! I think it's more protectiveness of their sleeping spaces. In the tent, they are almost completely different gliders. Sydney enjoys doing very fast laps around whoever is in the tent with her, pausing to climb us like a tree. Taz is more slow, but he also enjoys climbing up to your shoulder to perch like a parrot. We even saw our little chunk butt jump a couple of times. No gliding yet, but maybe once he loses some weight he'll be able to do so. We are SO happy that in less than a week with us how much they've accepted us. We still can't pet or cuddle them, but we hope to get there eventually.

Some pictures from the fun in the tents:

Sydney climbing on Jay. ("Daddy, do you have food in this hand?")

Sydney climbing on Katie.

Taz hanging out on Katie's shoulder. ("Taz want a cracker or cheese or whatever you are willing to feed me!")

Taz considering jumping from me to Katie. He changed his mind that time.

Taz in my hair. He really liked our hair. ("Mmmm, I just LOVE the new shampoo!")

Sydney climbing on Katie some more.

Taz figured out how to get up to the mesh window of the tent and climb. I am amazed sometimes at how well he hangs around like that as big as he is!

Next time, I'll let you know how our introduction of Bruce to the new gliders went!