Why Chinchillas?

[Laura]

When I was younger I used to have hamsters. I ran into a string of bad luck with them, and I had about 3 die on me in one week. After my last one died, my dad was watching Animal Planet or something, and saw a chinchilla rolling in dust. He asked me if I wanted one, and obviously I did, so he told me to do some research, and we'd find a breeder in the area. I went to pick out my first chinchilla, only to find out he had a brother. A few weeks later, both little ebony boys came home with me, and my herd has just grown ever since

 

[Anne-Lise]

My first chinchilla was a gift from my ex boyfriend. He was a big animal lover like me and he just saw that cute little face at the pet store and couldn't resist. He lived in Ontario and I in Québec, so he bought it as a gift for me as I was going to spend spring break with him, but I would be alone at home during the day. At that time, chinchillas were barely known here. There were none in Québec in pet store and they were quite rare in Ontario too.

I just felt in love.... That first little guy died 2 years later but I bought another one that is still with me and my little 5 chin herd brings me joy I cannot describe

 

[Sandi]

I wanted to get my daughter a small pet for her birthday. Sorry, but I just couldn't take the smell of the rabbit and guinea pig cages at the pet store and then one day the pet store didn't smell but I saw these wonderful little creatures in cages. I had heard of chinchilla fur coats but I had never seen one, and that is where the love story began.

 

[Twilight Chinchillas]

I started off with 2 chinchillas from Pitter Patter Chins for my kids. Got in contact with her, asked lots of questions, liked what I heard about them, and the rest is history! So is having JUST 2 chinchillas.......sigh

 

[Christie]

I was around 12 and was at Walmart (this was back in the day when Walmart sold guinea pigs, hampsters, and other small animals). They had a chinchilla, and the employee was cleaning the chinchilla's cage and allowed me to touch the chinchilla. I had never felt anything so soft, and had never seen anything so cute. My parents were always strict about researching pets before getting one, so I started reading encyclopedias and library books about chinchillas (this was 14 years ago... we didn't have internet). I bought my first chinchilla about a year later at a petstore. I've had them since.

 

[macygray]

I always went to the petshop nearly everyday and spent about 2 hrs at a time there. They just got used to me being there and would go to the back and do their own things, lol. One time my Mum came and we seen 2 chinchillas. We didn't know what the heck they where.
''WHAT IS IT??''

''I dunno, but they would be cool pets to own...When somebody asks you if you have any pets you would say yeah, I have a chinchilla...''

''You have a what??'' LOL. Then, because I was there so much, I got to hold etc. when they cleaned out their glass (sigh) enclosures. I was in shock for about a week after touching their fur!

Got one about a year later for my 13th Birthday. I still have Macy. He is about 3, nearly 4 now!! LOVE Chinchillas.

 

[pamszoo]

My first chin, a standard, came from a breeder who was selling them at the Farm show or Sportmans show in Harrisburg. He was a birthday gift at the time. I think I was 12 or 13. I had him for 10 years. He had some kind of "heart episode" and died in my arms. My second chin is a beige that came from a pet store. He is now 12 years old and going strong with all the teeth problems I've had with him.

 

[Rickman]

My daughter really wanted one for her 10th birthday, and my wife asked me to find one. Knowing about petstore chins, I tried finding a breeder somewhere around here, and called a "pelt farm", about 50 miles away, who said none of hers ever interacted with humans, were pretty wild, and would be $250 - $300 each - not what I wanted for a 10 year old! After a few weeks, happened apon a add in a Chicago paper, with a Joliet phone number. Turns out, she lives in unincorparated Lockport, about 3 miles away! Took my daughter over there, and she picked a beige male, and named him Digger, [as when you hold him, he "digs" at your chest,] and loves people! Then my son wanted one, he got a Ebony, and my wife deceided to order a pair of violet wraps from Dia in Seattle! While waiting for shipping weather, a male kit was born! Since they were already paid for, Fearless was thrown in as a bonus!
Well, as time goes on, noone has time, and I get attatched, kits are born, I buy more cages, start selling and swapping, and more kits, etc. and all of a sudden I've 46! Then found C+Q's = C+H's and learned the correct way! Thankfully, I've not had too much bad luck along the way, either!

 

[ann1]

Well I have always loved animals and grew up with many. My love of chinchillas actually started as a child. My step mom had a teddy bear made out of chinchilla which I thought was horrid but it tweaked my interest. I wanted to learn as much about them as I could (which at the time wasn't much)Over the years my interest grew as well as my knowledge and I really wanted to own one. My husband bought me my first chinchilla "chinny" (my avater) as a anniversary gift from a guy in CO and from there I fell in love. She passed away a couple years ago and I miss her dearly. I know we all say this and i'm sure it's true for you all but she truly was "the best chinchilla" ever.

 

[chinchildren]

always loved animals and rodents in particular. that being said i never heard of a chinchilla till my son came home and told me of a friend who has some and they are sooooooooo cute and funny. some time later two of my kids ended up with chins as pets which was the first time i ever laid eyes on a chin. i was hocked but they were not mine so i loved them remotely i.e. i constantly bugged the kids: "did you feed your chin?" "do they have water?" "when did they last get a dust bath?" "what is the temperature upstairs?" etc. my husband got so upset with me for harassing the kids like this that he blew up one day and said "why don't you get your own stupid chinchillas and leave the kids alone?" and the rest is history... :thumbs:

 

[mishalaa]

I got into chins because I was in love. =p

I'd always had some sort of rodent as a pet - mice in high school, rats in college. In college, I dated a girl from Chile named Inoia. My friends had trouble saying her name, so she got nicknamed - being from Chile - The Chilla. LiveJournal came out around that time and we both were invited to join. I chose a camel for my user icon (I worked with camels at the Baltimore Zoo for three years - I still collect camel trinkets) and Inoia used a chinchilla as hers. Because of that, chinchillas became sort of a mascot for us, even though we didn't have any and didn't know much about them.

9/11 happened and Inoia's application for citizenship got indefinitely delayed while the INS dissolved. Her student visa ran out so she had to return to Chile. I stayed here because I wanted to finish college. We put up with long distance relationship for about a year before we decided we should stop killing ourselves and see other people. Then my last rat passed away. When looking into getting a new pet, I wanted something that lived longer than 2 years, and as I was still head over heels about Inoia, chinchillas came first to mind. I joined CnQ and did a bunch of research there, found a pair of mosaic males in the classifieds. Went to my first MCBA show the next year and, after talking with other breeders there and on CnQ, started breeding after that. The rest is history.

 

[Brandon]

Also, just wanted to add- there's something about chinchillas that I think intrigues most people. I had heard of them before, but I didn't know a lot, and I was curious. I did research and from that point forward I contracted the Chinitis!

 

[aznmexaggie]

I had wanted a chinchilla ever since I was a kid. I remember seeing them in the little plexiglass cages at the petstore as a child, begging my mom for one, and my mom firmly telling me "no." But I'm glad she held her ground. A chinchilla definitely is not a good pet for a young child anyway. While growing up, I took care of many pets and livestock but it wasn't until a year or so after I graduated from high school, I had the money and the means to take care of a chinchilla.

I worked at a pet store at the time and one January, two mosaic chinchillas showed up at the store. They were the most adorable things and it was the first time I had seen a non-standard colored chinchilla. I fell in love with the female who was very inquisitive and had the cutest little face and whiskers. Soon, I had my very own chinchilla. I named her Gizmo and I still have her to this day...

However, my numbers have definitely grown! For fun, I took Gizmo to a chinchilla show just to practice grooming and to see what took part in a show. I had been researching quite a bit prior and also learned a lot at the show from the ranchers and judge. I also wanted to breed high quality show chins and I ended up buying my first breeding pair that day... I purchased the GSC, a beige male and a standard female from Furball Ranch which I visited later that day. I've grown a lot in numbers since then and am now producing some nice animals of my own.

It all goes back to my Gizzy though... I always loved chinchillas but Gizmo started the craze!

 

[Snoepgoed123]

This girl that worked with my mom had a baby and couldn't care for a chinchilla and a baby at the same time, so she sold him to me, within a week I bought my second one to keep the first company, except the first one is a female (was told male) and the second one is a male, luckily the male never got the female pregnant.

 

[DaphnesandFreddysmom]

Well I wanted a chinchilla for awhile and I found my girl from a local couple. Our male I got from a breeder a couple hours away we are in the talks of getting our male a male companion and our female a female companion.

My friend just recently got a girl same color as mine and named her the same name just because we both think it suits that color for some reason.

 

[blacksettingsun]

About 5 1/2 years ago, we got my mom a chinchilla for christmas. She had ALWAYS wanted one, and our family dog was getting pretty old, so we wanted her to have something furry for whenever Toby passed. She named him Merlot, and then about a year later I decided I wanted chinchilla babies (I know, I know...I was one of "those" people), so I got a female chin. When I found her at a petstore, she had ringworm covering most of her face. I've always had a soft spot for injured/sick animals, so I purchased her at full price. I did a mini-intro, then they started living together. There were no babies, but a few months later I moved into my own apartment when I found the perfect dog. (I did things kind of backwards there...most people get an apartment then a dog, but I found the perfect dog so I HAD to find an apartment) So anyway, I found CnQ and discovered the world of chinchilla rescue. I was told by a vet that Rayna (my female) was sterile, so I kept her and Merlot in the same cage. And THEN Rayna showed signs of pregnancy, so I separated them, and in February 2006 she had a set of triplets.

I got involved in rescue and did it for about four years before I made the difficult decision to close based on financial and time restrictions. In those four years (it's nothing compared to some larger rescues) I placed 97 chinchillas. I live in a one-bedroom apartment, and the chinchillas live in my bedroom with my bed in my dining room. I have seven chins of my own (in order of getting them: Rayna, Fluffernut, Twilight, Orville, Charlie, Aurora, and Starlight), along with a 17lb rabbit named Georgie, a 7lb rabbit named Thumper, and my 50lb border collie mix named Stewart. There is a lot of fur and not much space, but we make do! Everyone except Starlight has a good-sized cage (30"x20"x30"). Starlight is a tripod and has very little coordination, so her cage is smaller and completely filled with ledges. She moves well on a solid floor but just doesn't have coordination in hopping onto things. Pretty much every chin has had some health issue or another: Orville had toes amputated after Fluffernut attacked him, Twilight has scars on his ears and back from getting double-teamed by Fluffers and Orville, Charlie had bladder stones and had surgery, Fluffernut has seizures from low blood sugar, and Starlight is an amputee. Rayna and Aurora have both been through upper respiratory infections, but have been pretty much healthy.

So yeah, there's my basic story! I have lots of furry sons and daughters, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

 

[3CsMommy]

When I started dating my Taller Half, who had friends, who had a roommate who had chinchillas, I was intrigued by how sweet his beige one seemed to be. He had 3 males, he thought, but "they're gay" because "they hump each other all the time", and one of them in particular was really darn grumpy. But in spite of wondering if he didn't maybe have a female by mistake, I even thought the gray one's attitude was endearing; might as well have some spunk if you're going to go through life small. Fast forward to Thanksgiving day 2 years ago, after Taller Half and I had been dating for about 6 months. After dinner with family, we went to visit Taller Half's friends for video game time, and being far more interested in furry critters than Wii, I walked over to the chinchilla cage, where Mario the Beige was huddled on a top shelf obviously scared to death, Luigi the (male) standard was huddled on a second shelf just as stressed, the unnamed, unwanted "gift" (female!) standard was huddled in a corner squeaking at 4 little gray things skittering around the bottom of the cage. Happy Thanksgiving!

From watching the owner's reaction to the situation, I kind of knew it wasn't going to result in a great thing for the animals. Generally speaking, a 'with it' pet owner shouldn't pace the house tearing at his hair while complaining at the top of his lungs about 'having to deal with this **** instead of do homework' when he/she finds an accidental litter. *eye roll* I spent most of my free time in college volunteering with a county humane society; neglectful and abusive pet owners really irritate me, and since Taller Half had been thinking of getting a rabbit, we talked over adopting one of the chinchilla kits instead, and started doing research about the differences and similarities, how to keep them, what to feed, etc..

A couple of weeks later, we found out one of the kits had died because he got out of their cage and was stepped on. Of the 3 remaining, one was a male, and knowing that the adult males were already bonded, we decided to bring the other little boy home with us, in hopes that the owner would leave the female kits with their mother and just keep 2 cages (which, thankfully, he did). As part of that research, while I coached the owner via email about how to keep the litter, we paid a visit to ForCHINate Chins in Cleveland for experienced advice about what a *good* chinchilla owner should (and shouldn't) do. Then, Cervantes came home with us around Valentines day, and he's been running our lives ever since.

 

[Sesame]

It was our 3 year anniversary and I had gotten my boyfriend a kick-butt GPS system. In return, he came running to me with a blue box with a ribbon on it, the lid half open and some whiskers spilling out of the box. My first reaction was, 'OMG...' and run the other way. I love animals, but was resentful since this was a big decision and that this is a lifetime commitment/responsibility you make/uphold. Back home, my heart belonged to my cats and dogs. After a few days of refusing to have anything to do with the chin, I was won over by the cute little buggy-eyed fuzzball. Similar to some of the other members here, I dove into chinchilla care research and found this lovely, knowledgeable community.

It's been almost a year and we're doing great! We love her a lot and spoil her a lot.

 

[sight]

I picked chinchillas for a multitude of reasons. They fit my college life style well, they where maintainable on a college budget (vet bills are covered by parents, they are both vets) and the supplied a great source of stress relief and friendship. When i moved up to college for my sophomore year and into an apartment i realized how much i had missed the interaction of pets, since i had had many throughout my entire life henceforth. The chinchilla fit so perfect and has been a joy since.

So... I did a couple months of research and then started buying the required goods for my first chinchilla. I also started looking for litters being born in and around my area, i decided i wanted to buy a standard female with a pedigree so that if i ever got very involved with chinchillas i would be able to breed (no plans for that happening). I found a lovely little girl in ohio and took a weekend to drive and pick her up.

She has formally been named Tika but... often jokingly gets referred to as "the rodent" between most of my friends and I. She has been more then i could have ever asked for. She is spunky with loads of personality, and has gotten very used to the attention and playtime she gets often.

 

[Essentia]

From as far back as I remember I've always wanted a chinchilla. Once I got older I started doing research on them and found one on craigslist. I got him out of that horrible household and then got my second two weeks ago.

I love chins, it's just that simple.