About a year ago, my girlfriend’s daughter decided she wanted a tiny companion. At the same time I had a friend who had a litter of hedgehogs born and needed homes. Because this was my first attempt at ever raising a hedgie, I did a decent bit of research and gave her daughter all the info I could (as the hedgie was meant for her). However, I grossly miscalculated not only the young lady’s maturity to handle and care for a small companion… but also her ability to be responsible for him. At the time I was working over the road, but now I work a “normal” job where I am home every night. The child came to us and explained that “cleaning his droppings daily and bedding weekly is more responsibility than she can handle” (she is 10, but that didn’t seem like much to me… her loss). Since then, I’ve taken responsibility for him and have started researching even more than I did before (part of us getting Sonic for her was that she had to research and let us know any needs she had for him… and she didn’t come back to us with anything, so we assumed we had all bases covered). Since joining this sub I’ve learned that we have GROSSLY neglected this poor guy, and we are currently working to amend all of that. My friend that we got him from keeps her house warm year round, so it slipped her mind that hedgies need warmer temperatures. I’ve made a temporary correction on that by putting a digitally monitored space heater that keeps the ambient temp around 75F (I know this isn’t the ideal temp, but the only other option was 80 F and that seemed too warm) near the top of his enclosure and made a type of funnel system that keeps the air circulating (we keep the house at 68F year round). We were using pine chips for his bedding, but I’ve replaced it with fleece. His enclosure that he is in now is roughly 4sqft, but it’s just a plastic tote. I intend to get him a better enclosure as soon as I possibly can. Currently he does eat kibble, and I’ve been giving him some mealworms as a snack (3-4 once or twice a day). And I’m working on socializing him more by handling him daily. Right now, one of my concerns is that he spends most of his time sleeping, but he does run around at night (something I hope will get better when I can finally get him a wheel). I’m looking for more information that will help me help him live his best life because I feel absolutely horrible about what he’s been through this last year, and wish all of this would have been brought to our attention sooner!

So please, if possible… give me all of the information! I know we screwed up by not taking care of all of his needs better before, but I am trying to correct all of the mistakes. I ask for no judgement because I feel bad enough and have been beating myself up about all of it and feel like the more important thing to do here is to focus on helping this little dude as opposed to pointing out all of my mistakes. I plan to keep posting to the sub as time goes on to update on progress, but the first (and more important) things are making sure that Sonic is properly tended to and cared for.

Thank you in advance!