In 2003, I received my first colored sugar glider. At this time, all sugar glider breeders had to be USDA licensed. Colored sugar gliders were quite rare then and only a few existed. Those that bred colored sugar gliders all knew each other and shared records between them via paper and emails. This method worked well at the time.
As the USDA became more lax in their licensing requirements, the pool of breeders exploded. More people became interested in sugar glider genetics and wanted a way to track it. I worked with a few breeders in 2005 to host pedigrees of their breeding gliders on my site so they could share the information with perspective buyers.
In 2007, it became evident that there was a need to have an actual pedigree database and I searched out premade scripts. These scripts worked well for many years, but required me to manually enter each joey, verify the pedigree, and then upload the information to make it searchable. In 2013, I bought a domain to separate my personal business from the pedigrees of others.
As popularity grew, I couldn't keep up with demand and asked for help from friends and the community. With help, I was able to keep it going a little longer, but ultimately the process was too much. In 2008, The Pet Glider opened an online version that was fully automated.
I maintained the PSG database for my own records and continued to enter sugar glider joeys from my breeding program and those that had purchased sugar gliders from already existing lines. However, it was closed to the general public due to a lack of time.
Some years later, I was approached by several breeders that wanted an alternative to The Pet Glider's database. This perfectly coincided with me working on my masters in computer science and information systems. It has been a slow process building a database from the ground up, but the features tailored to sugar gliders and our community will be critical in continuing our journey to understanding sugar glider genetics and properly tracking lines for the betterment of the species.