It’s been awhile since I’ve updated and we’ve seen a lot of progress. My last post was about Cassandra exploring the vet room. We allowed her to do this once more and it went about the same as the first time. I believe the second time, she took longer to come down, seemed like she was enjoying exploring too much. Before that I wrote about crate training, which has been my biggest goal with the ring-tailed lemurs. (now it’s our biggest goal with the red ruffed lemurs too, check back for future posts about that)

Their physicals were way back in September, on that particular day I was only able to crate Cassandra. The boys both went into their crate but then bounced right back out, Sherry said catching them was very easy that day.  We also changed where the lemurs wait for sedation. We started using a metal cage located in the vet room. It’s roomier which makes it easier to get the lemur out of.

This is an added part of crate training. I bring the lemurs into the building and then open this cage and their crate door and ask them to go inside.  I have also been practicing this behavior with the lemurs down at the lemur house. We took an extra vet room cage and placed it inside their holding space in the lemur house. It’s big and silver and makes a lot of noise when the jump on it, but the good news is, this behavior is working. They are not afraid of it and have no problems climbing all over and inside of it, making their visit to the vet room much less stressful.

About a week later we needed to get blood work on Cassandra again. It was very easy to crate her using training which made everything run smoother.  Then in November I noticed Lycus was holding his left hand across his chest. It seemed like a shoulder injury. Dr V came in to check him out and decided she wanted to do hands on with him. This meant getting him into the crate and bringing him to the building. Using training it was super easy. I still practice crate training a couple times a week. It has helped the process of vet visits tremendously and it’s something I want to continue working on. Next challenge is crate training the red ruffed lemurs.