From Pest to Pet: New Life for Hot ‘Dog’

Laura Gallion just loves her pet, Honey. The animal fits right in with Laura’s dogs and cats, follows her around the house, and doesn’t mind being strapped to a leash for a walk around the block.

But Honey is no traditional pet. She’s an 18-month-old prairie dog, a three-pound, squirrel-like rodent that’s even housebroken.

“She wrestles with the Chihuahua,” Laura says. “They roll each other across the floor and she can’t understand why she gets wet when the dog licks her.”

Honey is “one of Joe Bill’s babies,” Laura says.

Joe Bill is Joe Bill Rogers, owner of Flyer’s Specialty Pets, which supplies everything from hedgehogs to water buffalos.

Prairie dogs, he says, are an increasingly popular pet.

In the United States, they retail from $95 to $145 a piece, and in Japan fetch between $250 and $350.

“There is an upswing in the ‘pocket pets,’ ” he says. “Ferrets, chinchillas, rabbits, hamsters, gerbils, guinea pigs, any small apartment-type animals.”

Not all states allow prairie dogs as pets, including Colorado, where they run wild and have been susceptible to the flea-borne bubonic plague.

Rogers, based in Lubbock, traps prairie dogs on private ranches and farms across the Southwest. He keeps only the babies born each spring that can be easily socialized and live an average of seven years. Last year, he sold 1,600 of them. He estimates upward of 30,000 Americans own prairie dogs as pets. They are particularly popular in the Northeast.

Rogers warns that prairie dogs aren’t for everyone. The naturally burrowing animals tend to chew anything they get their claws on and can rip up carpet. The males emit a musky odor during breeding season.

Most people keep them in cages and take them out to play with them.