Hey everyone, I want to both show her/him off and also ask a couple questions. I was wondering, because of what I was told by the guy that sold it to me, that the length of the snout might determine the sex of the monitor. I was wondering if this were true and if so, would a short snout determine female? Because "Debbie" has a shorter snout compared to the other monitors at the show. I also had a couple questions about handling. She usualy does pretty good being held, but catching her is a different thing. She usualy runs away, but never hisses, whips, or bites. When I do catch her though, she struggles a bit but soon calms down. My question is how often should I be handling her and for how long if I dont want her to be an ornary monitor when shes 4 ft. Is there certain things I should encourage or discourage when handling her? Thanks in advance for any nput or advice people have.
Hmmm Varanus should be here any minute with some advice. I tried to handle Loki daily from when he was young. He became very tame and to this day has never bit me. Flared up a few times, but settles down quickly. Nowadays he is rather lazy and he tends to only come out to play when he knows he will get getting some food! Saying that he has good days when he just wants to have an adventure around the house without prompting. As for your sav running away and you having to catch them I wouldnt recommend it myself (I may be wrong), you need your sav to be comfortable with you. One thing I started with was putting a hand in the tank and leaving it there for a while, they may come over to say hello once they have identified that you are not a threat. I have heard one technique of sitting in an empty bath with the sav, that way they can't get out but wander over you and get used to you a bit more. As I said, I may be wrong so Varanus should hopefully correct me if I am!
thanks for the advice, I figured daily was good, not sure how long though. she does pretty good, I guess Im just concerned because of a past experience with an older monitor, it seemed like everything I tried made him behave worse and worse until I just wouldnt even touch him anymore. He escaped from him cage and crawled into the hot water tank and died. I want to make sure I do everything right with this one, starting with making it tame.
