When dd was 13 she bought guinea pigs with her birthday money,. This was against my wishes because she had previous form a couple of years before for not remembering to feed pets. However, DH wanted her to have another chance as she was older. But, 3.5 years down the line dd is now 16 and it's been a constant battle, reminding her, pestering her to take care of them. At her age I now expect her to be fully responsible for them- she's old enough now, surely!
They are in an indoor cage with a fleece liner which requires a daily sweep out to keep the mountains of poo down! We expect her to top up their food bowl and hay before school, sweep out after school and give them greens. Then she needs to put the fleece in the washing machine at the weekend, hang it to dry and put new fleece liner in. We are in a constant cycle , and have been for the 3.5 years we've had them, where she looks after them well for about 2 weeks, then she starts to slack- first, she forgets the greens, then she stops sweeping them out and they are sitting in their house a pile of poo when I check, then she lets the water bottle go green, then she forgets to let us know they are out of supplies and it's a mad dash to the pet shop. Then we have to have the 'responsibility talk" again, or I lose the plot with her, or we threaten to rehome them, or we remove her allowance, or we ground her.. etc Then she is diligent for a week or two and the cycle starts again.
What are we to do? Are we expecting too much? I am torn between rehoming them and not because I feel rehoming is a cop -out, in my view a pet is for life unless you can't look after it- I don't know how to get her to take the responsibility - Tonight I've checked them and they were in a filthy mess. I've told her tonight I'm ashamed of her for leaving them in a filthy state and embarrassed to have a daughter that would do that to an animal. Maybe this was the wrong thing- I'm more ashamed of myself for trusting she was cleaning them.