Trial and Bunnis

Perhaps we're a little crazy, or possibly we just love animals just a little too much. So, despite our better judgment, we added another animal member to our home this September (we also have four cats and a 14-year-old dog). His name is Reginald aka Regg or Reggie (after the Star Trek character Reginald Barclay) and he's a Dwarf mix rabbit (aka bunnis, our nickname for bunnies). We had fostered rabbits in the past, so we thought we knew what we were getting into. However, we were less-than-prepared for the chaos this four-pound cutie unleashed upon our home. 

Don't get me wrong, this adorable little lagomorph has brought immeasurable joy and pleasure to our lives, but it's taken us longer than expected to regain a semblance of normalcy. Two months later we're starting to get the hang of "life with bunny", but not without a lot of trial and error. 

If you've never had a house rabbit and fathom how a tiny bunny could change our domestic lives so much, here are some of the house rabbit basics...

Bunny-proofing:

Curiosity may have killed the cat, but our feline friends have nothing on rabbits when it comes to inquisitiveness. With the desire to leave no territory unexplored, rabbits are the mini-Magellans of the animal world. Of course, many of the places they want to explore are either dangerous or provide too much temptation to do something naughty (like burrow into the underside of the couch!), so we had to block access to such places if he was to have free or semi-free roam of the house. My boss said, "Oh so it's like having a baby?" And my answer to that question is, "Yes, but my baby has razor sharp teeth that can cut through electrical cords and can fit into a space smaller than my fist."

Diet: 

Our cats and dog eat dried kibble, so their meals are easy to prepare - just scoop and serve. Rabbits, however, cannot live on a diet of pellets alone and need twice daily doses of fresh, green veggies and unlimited amounts of timothy hay. I read somewhere that rabbits need one heaping cup of greens per pound of bunny per day, so the first few weeks we were giving him a smorgasbord of greens: kale, bok choy, romaine, collard greens, beet leaves, cilantro, parsley... You name it, if Reggie could eat it, he had some on his plate morning and night. After telling an experienced rabbit owner what I was feeding him, she said it was too much - in both quantity and variety. Now Regg gets a few leaves of romaine and several sprigs of cilantro or parsley twice per day. That cut down on the veggie cost quite a bit, but we still need to make weekly runs to the store for fresh greens.

Litterbox Training: 

Reggie came to our home at a year and a half old and partially litterbox trained. Rabbits apparently poop while they are eating hay and the standard 'best practice' for litterbox training a bunny is to put his hay where you want him to go, i.e. the litterbox. I thought this was gross though, so I tried to rig up a special shelf in his cage that could suspend the hay above the box. This just ended up getting the hay and poops everywhere. Now I've succumbed to the notion that his food and bathroom area have to be combined in one space. In actuality he is very clean and the "bathroom" and "kitchen" areas are well-defined within the box and rarely mix. The hay, and the mess that it creates, is another story altogether. 

The Couch Issue:

Reggie wasn't neutered when we adopted him and therefore has displayed some pretty undesirable behaviors, namely claiming ownership of our couch. Reggie stakes his claim by urine marking and sometimes nipping us when we're on the couch. Despite being neutered in early October, he's still exhibiting this behavior. As a result, Reggie has lost his couch privileges for the time being. However, we're hoping (fingers crossed!) that a) this will diminish over time as the testosterone leaves his system and that b) this behavior isn't already hardwired into his walnut-sized brain.

Enrichment:

Despite the his small brain size, Reggie is quite intelligent and needs enrichment (chew toys, etc.) to keep him from getting into mischief out of boredom. He has toys galore and lots of willow balls to consume, but we discovered another way to keep him occupied - a bunny "kong". Like a dog kong, Reggie's kong is stuffed with treats and he has to figure out how to get them out. For Reggie's kong we used a medicine bottle with a slit cut into the lid and a twist-tie for gripping. Check out Reggie enjoying his food-dispensing toy (ignore the exposed fan cord which I moved just after filming):