I’m desperately in need of help... Some back story: I have two prairie dogs, Spiderman & Sweetie, 1 male 1 female and they are both almost 8 years old. I have had them since they were about 1 year old. They are healthy, have always had a proper PD diet of loose timothy hay, compressed cubes, mixed seeds, fresh veggies, and plain cheerios for treats. They have always been good around me (& my ex who left almost a year ago) and have not been aggressive towards me except the yips sometimes when they didn’t want to go back in the cage and had never bitten me. The male used to go into ruts but hasn’t for almost 2 years now. When strangers would come over the male would yip but would calm down within a few hours.


Until now.


A few weeks ago a friend was over and the male chattered at him (normal) and when he was gone I went to talk nice to the male and he turned on me and bit me! It hurt and is still healing but I didn’t get mad at the male, I knew he was upset from my visitor before and knew I should have just left the male alone until the next day.



Now, here’s where I admit I haven’t been paying as much attention to my PDs that I should be. I feed them every day and clean up around the cage. I pet their tummy’s but haven’t been taking them out much at all. Also a few weeks ago I changed their cage material, including all their bedding and gave them new stuff. They’ve relocated the bedding to outside their wood ‘house’.


So here’s my dilemma... the last few days and especially today, the male has gotten SO mean! He’s very aggressive, anytime I am home he yips at me, chatters and won’t take treats or let me even go near the cage! He lunges at me. I have to distract him just to put in food. The poor female goes and hides in their wood house as soon as he starts getting mean. They don’t “yahoo” anymore either


What can I do?!? I'm afraid and can't go in the cage to clean or take out the female. I'm worried he's mad at me, won't forgive me and things will just get worse. Please help!

Over 50 views and no reply? I don't know where else to go!

Any ideas?

My only update is I left them alone for the weekend and within 30 seconds he was up on the cage chattering at me again this morning.

I seriously want to cry.

I wouldn't profess to be an expert, but my male PD developed a bit of an agressive streak during his first year's rut, and it was still present a little towards the end.

The way I got around it was by dominating the little bugger. Disciplining him by placing him by himself in a tall bin with a lid IMMEDIATELY after anything as agressive as a bite will soon teach him not to do that. It may take a few tries, but it does work.

As for the general agression, simply not spending time with them does seem to make them less likely to be excited by your prescence.

I've found the great thing with PDs is because they're smart, they can pick up on attitude changes quickly. I wouldn't be surprised if you spent more time with them, let them out the cage, fed them etc. that within a few days you'd have your pal back.

I have the same exact problem with my male. He's 4 years old and developed some cataracts. Did you find anything that helped. My PD wont even let me touch him anymore : (.

I got an email saying there was a reply to this thread from 3 years ago! Thankfully I got into my account & can give you an update.

After reading it over I should mention that "my ex" that had left? Yeah, that ended up being very important. Not sure if you've had anyone that was in the prairie dog's life a lot & then was gone, but in my case, a little while later my ex came back & took custody of the pd's cuz I couldn't handle him anymore. Within days my spiderman was just fine & back to his old self! I guess he wanted the other parent in the divorce! heh

Anyway, if this is relevant, great, if not let me know & I can come up with some other advice!

Thank you for replying! No, nothing changed. One day he but my dog(he's always loved my dogs and cats. They've all grown up together.) then another day he bit my other dog, then my husband, then me. This was over a few
Months. He's neutered and he does have some cataracts but that never seemed to bother him before. He's just so unpredictable. He used to cuddle with us all the time, now he wont let us touch him. He's been to the vet, no issues. I dont really know what happened. We still love him and just want to figure out how to make him less grumpy. Thanks for any advice u can give.

While our PD isn't neutered, when we had real problems with a rut in this 3rd year making him unapproachable, we had him fitted with one of these:

noahcompendium co uk /Virbac_Limited/Suprelorin_9_4_mg_Implant_for_Dogs_and_Ferrets/-56993 html

It's a testosterone implant designed to make them infertile, but it calms behaviour down a lot too. Not sure if it would work with one that is neutered, but might be worth looking into.