Hi and thank you for your help; my orphaned squirrel is 5-6 weeks old and has been under my fiance and I's care for about a week now. When he came to us, he was starving and dehydrated but is doing great now.

I am torn and need advice on whether to release a squirrel that I have been caring for or not. I work from home and my fiance is epileptic which bounds her to the house most of the time due to her condition. We only get out of the house to go to the store so we are fully willing and able to put in the work, money, care and attention to keep him if we need once he's an adult. I've read that it is not suggested to release them if they aren't afraid of predators including humans, and he is very comfortable with people. We also made the mistake (which we are definitely not going to make twice) of letting my mother in law watch him for a 30-45 minute trip to the store for formula. We told her explicitly and repeatedly not to let her dog around him as he will not recognize dogs as threats if he becomes comfortable with them. We come back and she has let the dog (a chihuahua) and a kitten play with him. As a result, he has no fear of dogs or cats and acts as if he wants to play with them. Our backyard and the area we live in is full of coyotes, which makes me very nervous. We have a big back yard with a few trees, but we also have neighbors who will shoot squirrels that they catch eating out of their bird feeders with pellet guns, or just shoot them for fun unfortunately.

I also don't want him to be unhappy with his life as a captive squirrel. If we were to keep him, our plans were to convert our spare room in the house in to a large (but squirrel proof) enclosure tailored for a tree squirrel for the rare times when we can't actively keep an eye on him or play with him. I know that would never amount to what he would get from living in the wild, though. What should I do?