Hello!

 

First let me introduce you to myself and tell you a little bit about me, my name is Dawn, I am the mother of two busy boys and I am a complete animal fanatic!  I have owned and raised several different species of animals in my lifetime including: dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, horses, hedgehogs, guinea pigs, hamsters, gerbils, chinchillas, ferrets, fish, toads, and of course sugar gliders!  I came from a crafting family so I have been sewing since a very young age.  I also crochet, knit and do photography.  Outside of my photography and sugar gliders, for the past 3 1/2 years I worked a couple of days a week at a mother's day out/preschool ministry program as a teacher, and I really enjoyed it!  I made the decision at the end of the 2022 school year that I would no longer be a full time teacher so that I can focus more on the gliders, my sugar glider supply business, and my family.  However, I will continue to be a substitute teacher for the school as they need me, since I was not 100% ready to let go of teaching completely.

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How I Got Started:

My beginning with sugar gliders is a bit of a long story...  My sister had a pair of sugars when we were younger, but I didn't have much to do with them as I had my own animals that I was into and busy with. 

 

My husband and I had talked off and on about the idea of getting some but never talked about it seriously.  My sister mentioned one day that she was interested in getting some more and that stuck with me.  So as I was browsing Facebook one day there was a ad on a page where someone was trying to rehome a pair and I had commented on it (thinking of my sister), and was informed that they were pending pickup.  I replied asking that if they didn't show that they let me know, and then didn't think of it again.  

 

Several months later I received a message through Facebook from a lady saying that she had seen where I had commented wanting a pair of sugars.  She stated that she had a pair that they had gotten for their son, that she had become the main caretaker of them, and turned out that she is highly allergic so she was needing to find them a new home.  I explained that I had inquired for my sister and that I would contact her and then get back to her. 

 

After speaking to my sister who advised that they did not have the funds at the time to get them, I mentioned the situation to my husband who agreed that we could get them.  I let the lady know that we were interested in them and that we would first like to meet them before making any commitments to getting them.  She advised that it would be a couple of days before she would be available for us to come by to meet them. 

 

I spent those two days at my computer on the internet educating myself as much as I possibly could before we went to meet them (I was homeschooled so research and teaching myself things is nothing new to me).  After the first day and I was telling my husband about some of the daily care of gliders and what would be required to care for them.  He had some doubts that we would have the time to properly care for them.  I assured him that I had more than enough time to take care of them as I had recently become a stay at home mom.  

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So a couple of days later we finally got to go meet them.  I don't think that I would have been able to leave them, even if I had not liked them.  This family only had the gliders for 3 weeks, and the lady they got them from told them that she had them since they were babies, that she had to rehome them due to becoming pregnant and unable to handle the smell, so they had moved them into the garage and then decided to rehome them. 

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I was so sad for them...  They had a huge cage, but the pouch they had looked more like a crocheted hat and was CAKED with urine, the wheel they had was not safe at all, and they were not being fed a complete or proper diet.  Because of this they were horribly stained, where they were supposed to be white/cream colored they were YELLOW!  The staining was so bad that it was advised to me that there is no way that this was the result of just 3 weeks of poor care, but months.

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So I had some fleece that I used to make them a no-sew pouch that first night, I completely cleaned out their cage, removed the unsafe wheel, and got them on a proper diet.  About 2 or 3 weeks later I realized that she had babies in pouch, so back to the computer I went to research the breeding processes of sugars!  This was the start of a whole new world for me.  They ended up having a set of twins and amazingly all went well, thank goodness!  That's when I learned about lineage and more in depth information about becoming a breeder and the proper way things should be handled.

 

So I got Zeus neutered, found the two babies some AMAZING homes, and set out to start my breeding program.  Hera was a difficult glider to bond with, I endured 9 months of blood drawn bites before she finally decided that I was ok.  Zeus on the other hand was sweet from the start and still is to this day!  Hera was my inspiration to make sure that all babies I produce be super sweet, handled to be hand tame as well as being well socialized with multiple people other than myself.

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So here we are now today, 6 years since purchasing my first lineaged glider!

 

Sadly we lost Hera in March of 2023, she will be greatly missed and loved forever.

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