Bonding
With a little time and patience your new pet can become a well-bonded buddy. Just remember when you get your new friend home, you smell different to their mommy and daddy, your home probably smells different than ours, and there will probably be different sounds too; so you must remember to be patient. You need to earn their trust. For the first few days you can leave them in their cage to get used to their new surroundings and to you. Gliders will become more used to you if they learn your smell. One way of doing this is to wear or sleep with a bit of fleece fabric and then put it in the cage with the glider. If you use a small piece of fleece they can have it in their sleeping pouch/nest box.
You need to talk softly to your glider to get it used to your voice and you can also use treats to get it to associate you with good things. Our gliders like licky treats, such as chicken and apple baby food, or yogurt. We put a little bit on our fingers and they like to lick it off. Talk to them as you are doing this and don't remove them from the cage. Try and do this a lot during the first few days so they become comfortable with you and you can start petting them when they are confident to come and get a treat from you.
After a few days you can start to use a bonding pouch with your glider. One way of doing this is two wear 2 shirts and put the bonding pouches between the two layers, buttoning the shirt so the pouch won't fall out. You can also buy bonding pouches that hang around your neck. Start out only doing this for 15 minutes and gradually increase the amount of time. Bonding pouch time must be during the day. Do not shut your glider in a bonding pouch in the evening! The evening is for playtime.
For evening time we suggest you use a tent to bond with your Sugar Glider. Please read our Tent time page for more information.
