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Spikes Sanctuary Hedgehog Rescue Peebles |
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Wobbly
When the decision was taken not to release Wobbly it was for many reasons, when she first arrived she had no visible injures, some broken spines on her head and neck suggested she had been hit by a car. Her mobility was badly affected and to begin with she could only manage a few steps, the vet put her on a course of steroids and anti inflammatory injections and she made slow but steady progress. Wobbly spent the winter in the shed, it was planned for her to go to my mums shed but on the day I was going to move her, I was pleasantly surprised to find her curled up in a tight ball hibernating. When she woke in the spring, we tried her in an outside run, sadly she had still not regained all her mobility she has problems with toppling when trying to get out of tight spots and although she could curl up, when turned on to her back she would lie with her legs pointing up this would leave her vulnerable to attack from curious dogs. Wobbly was also happy in her run and never made any attempt to dig her way out, so we had to decide what to do with her, I don’t think many people are aware that it is an offence to release an animal into the wild that would be incapable of fending for its self. I contemplated advertising for a secure garden for her to live in, but would the owner of the garden check daily to see she had not got herself stuck anywhere? Also what would happen to Wobbly should the owners of her new home go away on holiday as she would need fed every day?
In the end the obvious solution was to make our small 10m x 3m front garden secure, so mesh was attached to the fence to prevent Wobbly escaping through the gaps and also to prevent unwanted visitors from coming in, my husband built Wobbly her own hedgehog house and feeding station, any gaps or holes in the ground were filled in and finally my night vision camera was set up so I could keep an eye on her with out standing over her. Once every thing was ready we moved Wobbly round to her new home. I was worried to begin with about how she would cope with being in a much larger space, but I need not have worried. Wobbly is very happy in her new home, there are lots of plants and shrubs for her to forage around and often in the morning I find half eaten slugs, I put food out for her every night and she often watches on from behind the sea holly where she seems to think we can’t see her. So far I have only had to rescue wobbly once when she managed to get herself wedged between the flowering currant and the fence. I have heard from other hedgehog carers that Wobbly could live fourteen years or more. Wobbly will be regularly checked over and wormed twice a year otherwise she is free to go as she pleases.

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