About Abby Chesnut
Hello! I am Abby Chesnut and I am a pet product influencer, avid animal lover, student, and retired therapy rat handler from Cartersville, GA. I love making people smile and laugh and enjoy teaching others fun facts.
I started my college education in Animal Science at Berry College but left after chronic migraines kept me from participating. At Berry, I worked at the sheep barn and even in the interlibrary loan department in the library. After getting mostly back on my feet, I started a pet product review blog called The Chesnut Mutts. During this time, I also became a rat mom with two boys named Everett and Delmar which I took with me to public events like pet conferences and local parades.
I met a local therapy animal group called Compassionate Paws at one event. I was amazed to find out that rats could indeed become therapy animals and after that, I was dedicated to training one of my next rats for this task. I was disappointed in the fact there was little to no information on training therapy rats so Healing Whiskers was started to share therapy rat information and adventures to help future handlers and the rat community.
Learn more about why I chose to work with rats!