About two months ago my spouse and I fell in love with this bunny, I’ve never had a rabbit before but I was convinced after asking a bazillion questions about what they eat and how they should be housed. I’ve been doing constant research to make sure we’re doing everything we can to make sure this bun is happy but I’m quickly getting over whelmed with her bad behavior. It’s almost a constant thing now and it’s brought me to tears more then once.
I don’t think it’s right to keep a bunny in a cage all day, so I’ve gone through the efforts of bunny proofing the house (it’s not a very big house anyway, more of an apartment), there’s only really two places she’s not suppose to go (besides the bedrooms, we just close those doors), one is behind the couch because it’s just too small and we can’t see/get to her, and the other is the corner where the tv is because of all the wires. I made barriers for both those places and have done backflips to cram every little possible hole she could wriggle through to get in there and absolutely nothing works. I watched her literally clear one of the 2 foot high barriers, twice the other day. She seems to /insist/ on getting behind the couch even though, as soon as she gets there, she starts thumping her foot and trying to get out, but she can’t figure out how and she won’t let me get near her to help her out. She has literally pulled apart barriers to get in there and for nothing, but that I have to spend the next half hour trying to coax her out. She also /knows/ she’s not suppose to go by the tv, I’ll tell her ‘no, Lyssa, no.” and she’ll run off somewhere else, but then I don’t know…it’s like she’s decided she’s fed up with rules and thumps her foot in defiance before suddenly jumping the barrier anyway.
She acts like she’s bored! She chews on the walls and the furniture and the carpet! She used her litter box like a pro for weeks and suddenly she doesn’t think she needs it anymore or something. We’ve gotten bitter apple spray which kind of works on some things, but there’s just one spot on the wall (it’s not even the base board!) where she insists on chewing and it thunders through the whole house when she does it. We’ve gotten her SO many toys! Balls and chewing rings, those wooden chew logs, a grass hut, a rope carrot thing that’s suppose to be for throwing, I’ve made her toilet paper and paper towel roll toys and cut holes in at least three different boxes, torn up news paper and laid it out for her and she wont’ touch any of it. Everywhere I look says that bunnies LOVE cardboard, but she won’t chew on any of it!
My spouse is at work all day and I stay home to work, which means I watch her all day, but I just /can’t/ work with her out in the house. It’s always that the second I sit down she’s run off to do something else she knows she’s not suppose to do. It’s a cycle for her or something, from one thing to the next to the next. I have to jump up ten times a minute and cram myself into tiny places to either rescue her or shoo her out from behind the television. I litteraly don’t have the endurance for this, but I don’t know what else to do! I wouldn’t feel right leaving her in her cage all day! She’s still too young to get fixed, but that’s also our last hope that she’ll calm down. Is there anything anyone can suggest to help?? How do you correct a bunny so it matters to them? How do you keep them from destroying barriers to go exactly where they’re not suppose to go(and don’t even want to be in the first place)?? Why would she just stop using her box!? What can I do to entertain her so that she stops being so bad and I can have some semblance of sanity back!?