I'm a new member and just saying hi. My girlfriend and I have dogs, cats, bird, fish, ferret, a chuckwalla lizard and a desert tortoise. Cartman, as he's called (but I suspect he's a she and will end up being Cartwoman) adopted us five years ago when he made friends with our cat. We checked around, but no one near us knew anything about him. We live in a rural area and most of the plots are over an acre and almost all the neighbors are in their 80's. We're the youngun's at 50.
We've had him on our back deck till now, living in a 20x25 foot space with a dogloo as his homebase. We did research early on and he's been fed fresh veggies we get at the local farmer's market, so they are certified organic.
Recently, cause his deck was demolished by a tree - fortunately he was hibernating - we moved him to our side yard. He nows has about a 30x20 foot enclosure. I moved his dogloo down there and he's just been lovin' it. He's cleaned out all the weeds and has a nice track around the outside with every weed gone within neck reach.
We added a couple pieces of sod (about 2x6') that he likes to lounge on in the shade (after or during a day of basking) and I've been growing weeds and plants (from turtlestuff.com) that I'll be planting down there for him this week.
The big change will be that he'll spend his winters in the garage. It gets quite cold (30's lots of days, colder at night with infrequent snow) and while he's been doing fine out on the deck, I don't think we want him out in the yard during the winter.
He's really taken to us now that he's so much closer and gets so much more attention. He follows me around anytime I'm down there and will make me pet him before he'll take off to get the food I've brought him. Crazy little guy.
So that's us. Any suggestions, friendly please, as to improvements we could make are most welcome.
We've had him on our back deck till now, living in a 20x25 foot space with a dogloo as his homebase. We did research early on and he's been fed fresh veggies we get at the local farmer's market, so they are certified organic.
Recently, cause his deck was demolished by a tree - fortunately he was hibernating - we moved him to our side yard. He nows has about a 30x20 foot enclosure. I moved his dogloo down there and he's just been lovin' it. He's cleaned out all the weeds and has a nice track around the outside with every weed gone within neck reach.
We added a couple pieces of sod (about 2x6') that he likes to lounge on in the shade (after or during a day of basking) and I've been growing weeds and plants (from turtlestuff.com) that I'll be planting down there for him this week.
The big change will be that he'll spend his winters in the garage. It gets quite cold (30's lots of days, colder at night with infrequent snow) and while he's been doing fine out on the deck, I don't think we want him out in the yard during the winter.
He's really taken to us now that he's so much closer and gets so much more attention. He follows me around anytime I'm down there and will make me pet him before he'll take off to get the food I've brought him. Crazy little guy.
So that's us. Any suggestions, friendly please, as to improvements we could make are most welcome.
Welcome to TFO! 
