I've had my gliders for about a year now. they seemed fully bonded around the 8 month mark. we played together all the time, they let me pick them up and do just about anything with them. No crabbing, no biting, and they jump on me immediately with a "MOOOMMMM!!" happiness whenever I opened the cage.

Until last week. I clipped their nails, and messed up. I cut the quick of one nail pretty badly. In fact, I think I nipped a little of the pad of his toe. OMG I felt soooo bad!!! But what's worse, is that now they don't come near me. they were super scared of me the first couple of nights.. like RUNNING whenever I put my hand in the cage. no amount of treats makes them love me the way they did :'( I feel like they just don't trust me anymore. what am I going to do to get them to love me again?!?!?

sad...heartbroken....I'm dying inside..

good news is the foot is fine. no sign of infection. bleeding stopped pretty quickly, and no problems since. they just don't love me now

any advice?

They will come back to you, just be patient and start over with your bonding process.

Next time you trim nails follow with some treats, they will then associate nail trims with goodies.

I agree, just continue as best you can with your usual routine. If they're too skiddish to resume your normal routine, just take some steps back to the bonding practices you did to win their trust the first time.

I had to do similar, but for a different reason. My gliders due to the change in my living arrangements missed their routine out of cage play. After long periods with a few where I could manage here and there out of cage sessions, they became a little more distant with me. I could still trim my girl's nails (Ollie hasn't ever been good with that yet), but it did get some work to rebuild our relationship.

Then another factor I'm working on is with my Skadoosh. She was quite the adventurous suggie, investigating everything, climbing as high as she could, then glide down to me. One of our bathroom playtimes, not too long before I homed my Ollie boy, I wasn't there for her when she launched, and she ended up on the floor. I felt horrible! But what actually happened at that moment was my Lulu, who was more of a timid climber/gliding glider, was just beginning to work up to climbing and gliding to me around that time. She had climbed up the shower curtain and was on the rod, I looked at Skadoosh who was on top of the medicine cabinet, Skadoosh didn't look ready to launch, so I took one step, just one step closer to Skadoosh (my bathroom was small, very small). Anyway, at that very moment I stepped to Lulu and she launched to glide to me, Skadoosh took off, and I wasn't there . She hasn't been the same since durring out of cage play. Even though we still had a few more months before the move and big disruption. I have experimented with different ways in my latest living arrangement, still not ideal but at least I've been able to work it out to a way I can get them out 2X/week, with one of those times being about an hour and the other time about 20-30 minutes. It's making a difference, Skadoosh even climbs up and jumps down to me at least once each time.

Sorry so long, but I wanted to share these experiences to help you see these creatures are fairly resilient and will adapt back to the relationship you had, if you continue as you always have with them.

thank you for the stories and encouragement. it's been a few days now, and although they still don't greet me with the same gusto that they used to, it IS getting better