Litter Training: My Story

Here is a story about how my Owner litter trained me! I was so happy one day when she brought home a litter box, .because I was tired of always looking for a corner to "DO MY BUSINESS". I don't know if you know this, but hamsters hate doing bathroom anywhere near to where we eat or sleep, so with such a small living area as we are destined to use, it is important to have the proper facilities to go potty. So one day she brought me home a litter box, complete with accessories, and you should know that I was more than ecstatic about it.

 Here is my story, complete with pictures!

So what is litter training. I guess you could say it is training your pet to use a tray or litter box to do all of their "private business" in, just like you would like your cat to use a litterbox. Bet you didn't know that hamsters can be litter trained, but they can! Just as easy as any other pet :3 So here are the steps...

The first thing that she had to do was find me a tray to put the litter in. The tray had to be big enough for me to fit comfortably in, but also small enough not to take up too much room. Here is a picture of mine:

Good Ideas for Litter Trays:

A shallow Gladware container that is also small

a hollowed out glass jar (better for smaller hamsters, unless you find a big enough jar for Syrians)

a store bought tray; here are a few links. These can be found at Petsmart or Petco, and probably at your local petstore if you have one with decent hamster supplies:

corner pan

one like I have

Crittertrail Outhouse (for homes with tube accessories)

Then she had to add the litter to the box. Good Ideas for litter are things like:

Sand: if you're getting your sand from outdoors you will want to clean it using the methods in this link

Kitty Litter

Store bought hamster litter

Chinchilla Sand (NOT chinchilla dust!)

 The next thing that had to be done was to find out where I was normally using the bathroom. So she watched over me for a few days to see where I was mostly going bathroom at. For your hamster, this will probably be in one specific corner of the cage (not including where your nest is, many hamsters will use their nest as a bathroom...all well!!!)

Then she placed the litterbox in that corner, and (brace yourselves) she placed some poo in it! That is the secret to getting your own hamsters to be litter trained. You have to physically put some of the puup in there :X But you should only have to do this once before they realize how it works, or place a small amount of used bedding into the litterbox as you see fit. 

Here is a picture of the stuff that I have:

a cute thing about the hamster potty that I got was that it came with a special scooper that litterally works like a regular cat scoop. And plus it's really cute and has a silly hamster face on it.

So that is my story. I hope you guys enjoyed it, and can take some tips off of it. If I didn't have my own private bathroom, I don't know what I'd do. I sure do spend a lot of time in there!

SEe ya latereeeeeeeeez! Peace >-(^3^)-<