# Problems getting others to accept your pack



## PrincessGingy (May 27, 2011)

Does anyone else have problems getting partners or family to let you have a large amount of small animals? My parents used to but in fairness we were young and not able to or didn't look after them by our selves but since I've been older my dad is ok with whatever I bring home for the long holidays as long as I look after them and they don't smell or keep him awake. However my fiance is really annoyed when I get more pets. I only have 5 which I take up to uni with me and I don't expect him to help me look after them. I appreciate we're at uni at the moment and so are limited in what we have as we don't know our situation once we graduate. He wants to do a year abroad but even if we did do that, my mom, who loves animals too, said she's happy to have my animals until I get back so they will be living in the same house and they all recognise my mom as she regularly fusses them. So I fail to see a problem (apart from how much I'd miss them), especailly seeing as the gerbils and hamster were adopted so would have been worse off without me. I look after my animals well, I don't let them smell and don't expect any help. I worry that when we have our own settled house that I will want many more animals and we will argue about it. Does anyone else have this problem? How do you persuade others to let you have more animals?
Thanks.


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## LostGirl (Jan 16, 2009)

my mum hates that we have rats, she doesnt live with us or do anything in our house etc but she is in our lifes so she has a moan i just ignore her lol! 

oh pretty much lets me just get on with it, he knows i'll bride him into letting me get whatever i want anyway so depending on how hes feeling he just says yes straight away now after 10yrs together hes learnt well! i think it came from him saying "no more cats" when our first one was pts then came home one day from work to find a tabby kitten on the sofa :biggrin:


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## Lil Miss (Dec 11, 2010)

pretty simple really, love me love my animals (all 70 of them :lol: )


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## niki87 (Nov 18, 2009)

Yup my mum and dad do not get it at all! And to be fair they had to help me out with the £120 it took to get all of them into boarding last year (since been paid back lol) but yeah they are not liking it al all! But they don't live here so it's just nagging that I can ignore. 

Saying that if you are planning on going away might be worth not getting any more till you're back...then there is only one lot of human bonding etc.


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## Guest (May 30, 2011)

My OH is always moaning about my fluffs even tho he doesn't have to pay for them or care for them in anyway, most people that come to my house comment on how it smells of fresh hay so no smell problems 

Well he pushed it too far one night and told me I had to get "rid" of some, I calmly got up looked him straight in the face and said...

"Well if you don't like it you know where the door is, the fluffs came first."

As Lil miss said my moto is love me, love my fluffs we come as a package :biggrin:


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## thedogsmother (Aug 28, 2008)

I dont tell many people how many animals we have (45 at the moment), I think some of the neighbours would give me a real hard time if we told them we had rats and mice (because they are obviously going to escape and infest their houses ). My family think that the rats are a source of amusement unfortunately, especially when we go to my mums for a meal and I take leftovers home for them.


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## Zanki (Jun 1, 2011)

Currently I have one gerbil, three rats and of yesterday a tank of locusts. 

My boyfriend was the one who persuaded me to get the rats. He didn't want me to get a dog so I ended up with the terrible trio (don't worry, I love having them but they do cause a lot of trouble, especially Remy). 
My mum thinks I only have Zhane, my gerbil right now. He is the final gerbil in a long line of gerbils. I've not just had one since my first year or uni when my first gerbils brother died. Hiding the rats was difficult the last time she came up here. I guess shes going to have to find out next time she comes up here but she will be angry when she sees them. She doesn't need to know about the locusts. 

As for everyone else. My boyfriend doesn't mind them, well he does when I wake him up putting a rat under the duvet but even though he doesn't have much to do with them, he likes them. When I lived with my friends at uni last year, I couldn't stop them getting one of my gerbils out when I wasn't there. Billy was loved by everyone once he recovered from his stroke. 
My friends where great with my animals, but they did complain when I had to keep them in the front room (my room was ultra cold and damp, which caused a massive mite and mould infestation, it was gross and it only went away when I moved out).


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## zany_toon (Jan 30, 2009)

Anyone who has anything to do with me either keeps their mouth shut and accepts my animals or gets told to leave. My dad didn't want me having mice and made the mistake of threatening to let Theo our house cat out - I told him that if he let the cat out that he better have enough to pay for his funeral because he'd be leaving the house in a coffin before the night was out and as for the mice i got them when he moved out as I knew he was a jackass and would "accidentally" let them outside. And I warned everyone that if I got mice and that happened that I would not be responsible for what I did to the other person - hence the reason I waited until he moved out. My mum puts up with the mice as long as they are clean and not too smelly (and with 51 mice of which 28 are boys, a cat and 3 ASF rats it does get a little smelly, but I love the smell of the mice  ) My sister hates the mice - I told her to move out  She hasn't complained about them since :cornut: As for the neighbours, I don't stick my nose in when a gaggle of obnoxious miscreants spring from their loins so my pets are none of their concern. If the person you are with can't accept that animals are such a big part of your life then you really need to speak to them about it now and set some rules before you go any further - a lot of people think that it's easy to talk some one around to their way of thinking later, and they probably think the same. If it were that easy there wouldn't be so many people who end up divorced and not talking to family members.Although i have to agree with everyone else, if you are planning on taking a year abroad travelling it may be selfish taking on more pets when you will be putting them through a lot of extra bonding and means that it may cause issues for them later on.


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## catz4m8z (Aug 27, 2008)

Id be very careful getting too attached to someone who didnt want pets TBH. If you are mad keen on little fluffsters then you dont want to wind up with someone whose idea of a full house is a Hamster (if you're lucky!).
Maybe go travelling for a year (and make him pay)..then dump him and stock up on cages!!LOL


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## twilight (Jun 19, 2011)

:nonod:beware dont think you can talk him around because you wont if he cant accept you and your fluffs show him the door girl.kaz


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## Becs1051 (Jun 23, 2011)

This thread made me giggle, cos last week I told my hubby that I want to have a gerbil rescue one day and he wasn't that keen (mainly cos we don't have space at the moment). But then he realised he's put a biro in his back pocket and it had leaked all over our sofa. He was mortified and said "if you can get the pen off the sofa for me you can have your gerbil rescue!" Needless to say the sofa was spotless by the time he got home from work :001_tongue:

But seriously, I think you'd need to talk about this properly - my OH takes an active part in looking after the rabbit and is very accepting of the gerbils (he doesn't get them out cos he's scared of losing them!). IMO the decision about whether to have pets is almost as important as whether you are going to have children, and if one of you really doesn't want them and the other really does that's a major compatibility issue. Hope you get things sorted out soon x


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