On any given day, Syracuse University’s campus may be dotted with dogs. Chasing a Frisbee across the quad, or walking down Euclid Avenue on leashes.

Behind the closed doors of off-campus houses, students keep cats, rats and even a brood of chicks. On paper, students are only allowed a 10-gallon fish tank in dormitories — but ask an SU FIXit employee, and they’ll say there’s more than that being hidden away.

At the end of every semester, students are faced with a choice: keep the pet, dump it with their parents, donate it to a shelter or, worst case scenario, “forget” about it in a dormitory.

“We have had people leave snakes, gerbils, little rodents,” said Vickie Crawford, an office coordinator in the Office of Housing, Meal Plan and I.D. Card Services. “It’s an interesting variety of things.”

Aside from the permitted two-finned friends, students can only have an animal in a dorm if it’s a therapy pet, and it has to be approved through SU’s Office of Disability Services. And Disability Services won’t approve just anyone, said a representative from the Office of Housing, Meal Plan and I.D. Card Services.

“They can’t just have a kitten because you think kittens are cute,” the representative, who wished to remain anonymous, said.

If a student wants to have a pet in an off-campus house, it’s usually up to the discretion of their landlord. The same goes for adopting animals, said Terri Para, Development Director at the Central New York SPCA.

The SPCA won’t adopt out to any students who live on campus, Para said. Off-campus landlords have to contact the SPCA and give their approval, mostly because they don’t want to adopt animals out to households where they stand a chance of being returned to the shelter, she added.

The SPCA sometimes receives animals when students graduate, though they don’t always know if the person is a college student, Para said.

Kelsey Ketzner debated giving away her 7-year-old Cockapoo named Hudson to a shelter after he was struck in a hit-and-run accident on March 21. Hudson was staying with a few of Ketzner’s friends while she was out of town for an acting gig in New York City. Ketzner, a junior acting major, said she thinks one of the housemates forgot to lock the door, causing it to blow open from a gust of wind.

She got a call from a neighbor on the drive back saying Hudson was found bloodied and lying on the ground. X-rays showed he had a broken foot, shattered femur and a cracked canine tooth, she said.

When she and her family discovered how much the surgery would cost, her mom suggested putting Hudson down.

So far, the surgery has cost almost $6,000 and required doctors to put 16 pins in his leg, a plate to support the bone, and his cast must be changed every two weeks. Ketzner created a GoFundMe account called “Help Hudson” that calls on members of the SU community to help fund the cost of pain medication, surgery bills, X-rays and other charges. So far, the campaign has raised $1,200 of the $7,000 goal.

She now brings Hudson to class so she can keep an eye on him, lugging a carrier kennel to her classes in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management. It only gets embarrassing when he whines in the middle of the lecture hall, Ketzner said.

“It’s been pretty therapeutic for the classes, I think,” Ketzner said. “They like seeing Hudson come to class. It’s also kind of cute to see a dog walk in a cast.”

Other students may choose to bring their pets home for the summer, like Harrison Hope, a sophomore sport management major. He and Henry LeMaire are the faces behind fratducks, an Instagram account dedicated to the two ducklings of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

The account currently has 563 followers, with each picture averaging at least 200 likes. In the account bio, it asks followers to “DM name ideas.”

The two got the ducks from a friend who has “farm connections,” Hope said in an email. The ducks will go back to a farm in the summer so they can roam free, he added.

“We thought that with the weather starting to be nice out, it’d be cute to have outdoor duckling photos and it would have been too cruel to not share them with the campus,” Hope said. “Everyone was on bird and excited to add two more brothers to the house.”

It seems that the number of exotic pets on campus is growing — a student in Park Point reportedly owns a gecko, the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity is rumored to have a snake, and a few students have bunnies as pets, said Rachel Lazarovitch, a junior information and technology major.

Lazarovitch runs an Instagram account for her pet hedgehog named Spike Lee called spikelee_thehedgehog. She said she started the account as a place to house the overflow of photos of Spike.

Lazarovitch got Spike over thanksgiving break last year, then applied to have her as a therapy pet in her Park Point apartment. She said the process of getting the therapy pet authorization was relatively easy — she had Spike in her apartment before Christmastime.

Hedgehog upkeep is pretty easy, she said, despite the animals being nocturnal. Spike’s cage is on just the other side of her bedroom wall, so sometimes she’s kept awake by Spike running on her wheel. Other than that, Lazarovitch only has to feed her cat food once a day and change the cage’s bedding every week or so.

Her roommate liked the change of pace of having a hedgehog so much that she’s considered getting her own. During a recent trip to a local exotic pet store, Lazarovitch said her roommate is thinking about getting a teacup pig. Teacup pigs usually go for about $350 — not too far from the cost of a dog.

While dogs and cats are more common on SU’s campus, Lazarovitch and many other students are proponents of more unlikely friends, such as hedgehogs. Unlike dogs, hedgehogs don’t require being walked outside — a feature that’s nice considering Syracuse’s unpredictable weather, Lazarovitch said.

“I like having her,” Lazarovitch said. “It’s not the same responsibility as a dog. It’s fun.”

Published on May 2, 2016 at 10:13 pm

Contact Annie: apalme05@syr.edu