Oh wow I’m sorry you are having such a rough time. I am sure getting her spayed will calm her down. I would do that sooner than later. A rescue in your area might be able to tell you where to get discounted spays. They exist. Sorry I don’t know about the pain. How long have you had her? If you haven’t had her long you need to just be patient. I would suggest using a piece of linoleum on the floor of the cage and a towel or two that can be washed. Of course if she chews the towel don’t use that or even try a grass mat. I wonder if her would do well with another bunny. I’ll let the experts here answer the rest of your questions. Good luck.

Hi Suzanne! Welcome to Binky Bunny!  Wow, what a tough trial this is for you, especially after being mislead.  Eeek.  Yes, the spaying will help the behavior but also as often is with pet store rabbits, they are used to being frightened of people grabbing at them and so really develop a phobia to being held and of humans. Dwarf breeds also are a little more high strung as well and so that doesn’t help things much.  However, there is hop in that area, be gentle, when you go to reach into her cage, gently stroke her head and talk to her.  Does she fight back at you and bite or scratch?  If so, try wearing a glove and gently pressing her head down in submission.

Flooring- We just had a chat about the foam tiles and the same concerns about chewing. When you are talking about her foot, do you mean to say that she has sore hocks?  If so it can be serious, and is the medication (which I assume is antibiotics like Baytril).  You need to be very careful about flooring and sore hocks, something soft that nails can sink into helps and I’ve found that fake sheepskin works best.  Try a layer of linoleum first or coroplast and then fold the fake sheepskin around the edges to secure.  That way it can be pulled off and washed.  Something that can also be done is a layer of straw all over the floor to help with the sore hocks until they are healed up.

Corraling – Incentive such as a treat like a raisin, papaya tablet or Critter Berry for going in the cage will eventually train your rabbit to go in voluntarily and is a trick that is easily learned by them.  Use a key word like “home” or “In” each time and then it will reach the point where you will just need to say the word without herding her in at the same time.

Surgery – Most rabbits who go through surgery often turn from monsters to sweethearts.  For her surgery though she will need a cage that is just one floor to prevent her from jumping up and possibly opening the suture. You’ll also want to provide her a litterbox with a low side too.  Some just set up the pet carrier as a temporary home or litterbox during recovery. She’ll be groggy and so I do not think it will be so bad overall.

I hope this helps and let us know if you have anymore questions.

Well after her spay and she is healed if you want to, you can try buny dating at your local rabbit rescue or shelter. She just sounds like a high-strung bun and alos may have acted the way she has because she is in pain from the sore hocks. Slick surfaces actually make it worse and wow her being a chewer doesn’t make it easier to give her soft surfaces. I’m going to have to think a bit on that. What have you tried on her as far as getting her to stop chewing the carpet? A squirt from the water bottle helps, I’ve also used pure lemon oil on the spots but you can also cover those areas with a safe-to-chew item or distract her with something else like a large untreated willow basket to munch on. Rabbtis explore by chewing so it is only natural she does this. I am also wondering if she is exhibiting a behavior known as “cribbing” in horses when they start to chew their envrionment out of boredom. Does she have a lot of toys to play with?

suzanne i feel your pain.  reading your posts reminds me of when baby bun was younger.  i got her from a pet store too and she was similarily high strung and thumpy.  corraling her was an art to say the least.  i have these 1/8″ thick press boards… you know, the kind that are white laminate on one side & brown on the back… that were cut down from a 4’x8′ sheet for mounting art projects on.  i used these to corrale her.  i’d block off an area near her enclosure with them & close in on her while holding 2 other boards so she couldn’t get by me.  lol.  what a sight! 

do you think she would eat the fake sheepskin if it was pulled tight over sign board / cardboard and the ends were tucked under?  i’m thinking if you tryed this plus put a bunch of cardboard pieces on top of it, then she could chew & tear at the cardboard on top which is more accessable & rip-able than smoothed out fake sheepskin.  i know it sounds like a lot of work, but it’s possible if you get her distracted with ‘toy’ cardboard on top of her flooring it may just do the trick.  block & divert is the name of the game i had to play anyways. 

i think fake sheepskin could be found in a store that sells car cleaning stuff since they’re good to dry off your car with after a wash.  but maybe there’s a cheaper spot to find them or find bigger ones? 

i’m about to find out what its like to have a bunny spayed for the first time too…  my newly adopted girl pinky will be scheduled soon.  my old lop, baby bun, was never spayed but she did have surgery last november which required stitches.  they used surgical glue to fold her skin together above the stitches so that she couldn’t pull at them.  i had to watch her to be sure that she wouldn’t lick the area & bother it, in which case they would have given her a cone to wear.  fortunately she left the area alone aside from normal grooming.  i imagine after a spay would be similar in that the bun would be on pain meds for a bit and be a little groggier than usual.  hopefully some one else can comment on the spay recovery time & care as it’s possibly different than my experience so far.

as for chew toys… i have had much success with everything that i did NOT have to buy from a store.  mind you, since i’m in canada i haven’t been able to order willow toys from binky bunny which i hear are a big hit with the furry friends!  i give my bun all toilet paper & paper towel tubes, box board from, say, cereal boxes (unfold & then roll up to wedge in cage bars), and cut down corrugated cardboard into ’tiles’ & pile them up.  some one in the toys forum recently posted about a ‘jellyfish’ toy which is a great idea.  they cut long strips of news paper, poked holes thru a piece of cardboard & pulled some newspaper strips through it.  then they hung it some where so bun could run through it & rip paper.  i made a modified lazy version by cutting a folded section of newspaper into strips & hanging it over the cage bars. 

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as far as the post-op care, i think 9 out of 10 buns (at least on this forum) never bother with the stitches.  many of the vets use the glue stitches now so there’s nothing to really chew.  for a girl the main recovery time is about 48 hours (24 of which they are usually way drugged up and not doing anything at all.)  you want to keep her confined for several days, depending on how she’s doing (maybe 5-7 days.)  most people do see a great improvement in behavior very shortly following the surgery.  the benefits of surgery (both behaviorally and healthwise) outweigh the risk a hundred fold.

some people like to do surgery later in the week so you can be home for the weekend when the recovery is happening… but if you do that, make sure to have a back-up vet if an emergency arises over the weekend, or see if your vet takes emergencies immediately after surgery. 

Fake sheepskin – fabric store, you can buy it by the yard a lot cheaper and I would avoid an auto store.

Bunny dating –

http://ntrs.org/index.html

House Rabbit Resource Network

Houston Bunny Buddies

North Texas Rabbit Sanctuary of Richardson

Spaying questions –

https://binkybunny.com/Default.aspx?tabid=54&view=topic&postid=13556&forumid=6&tpage=2#13954

First-hand advice & assurance: https://binkybunny.com/Default.aspx?tabid=54&forumid=2&tpage=1&view=topic&postid=17164#20010

Toys – Check out the Toy Test Forum.  A phone book is a great rip & tear toy for rabbits as are untreated, unstained, natural willow laundry baskets, I flip them upside down and cut the hand hole larger with a craft saw and place on top of an old towel to catch the pieces that are chewed off so I can just take out the towel & shake it off outside.  I buy the baskets from my local craft store.  A plain brown paper grocery bag works well too.

size doesn’t really matter too much when bonding.  the most important thing is how the two get along.  check to see if the rescue allows bunny speed dating where you would take her to meet prospective gentlebuns.  it is usually best (easiest) to bond a male and female… so your first step would be spaying her, then waiting about a month for healing time and hormones to decrease.  bonding sometimes takes weeks, sometimes months, in which time they need to be housed separately.  keep in mind, not every bonding situation will work out, so you also need to be prepared that they may need to be kept separately for the rest of their lives.

here’s a link from HRS about bonding…

http://www.rabbit.org/journal/3-4/two-rabbits.html

I tried to post yesterday…but my connection kept disconnecting.

My evil little netherland dwarf, Jessica, has undergone a spay and an injury recovery.  She was attacked by her cage mate (another female).  She had over a dozen punctuure wounds from the attack.  Her belly was so bad that they thought her abdominal caviety may have been punctured.  She rec’d about a dozen stitches.  She was on cage rest for nearly 3 weeks.  I had to soak and ointment her wounds 2-3x’s a day.  She was on about 3 different meds.   It was awful!  It was so bad, that I really worried about her getting spayed.  The spay recovery was nothing compared to her recovery from her injury.

Post-Spay she spent the night in a bunny meatloaf in her litterbox.  The next day she went back to the vet b/c she wasn’t eating or drinking.  They gave her fluids and taught me how to force feed her critical care.  It was recommended that I modify her cage to a single level for up to a week.  By Day 3-4 she was eating normally and broke through every barrier I put up to keep her to the ground level of her cage. 

Her personality changed overnight.  She regularly attacked me anytime I had to access her cage (pre-surgery).  I have all the scars to prove it.  Now she grunts at me when she gets miffed w/ me, but she doesn’t bite me anymore.  Her litterbox habits have greatly improved as well.  It was the best couple of hundred dollars I ever spent!

I highly recommend any of the willow products on binky’s site.  I have the tunnel and teepee shelter thingy.  Homemade toys are always great too!  In our pet therapy program that’s what our bunnies lived on.  Phone books, cardboard construction tubes (get them from hardware/home improvement stores super cheap), paper towel tubes stuffed w/ newspaper balls or hay & craisins, a digging box (cardboard box filled w/ balled up or shredded paper.  As a treat I sometimes use my paper shredder to shred up clean paper and put it in their bunny igloo or just a cardboard box.  They LOVE that—but it can be messy!  The kids used to ball up paper and fill the construction tube up so they would dig/tunnel through.

The fleece is not the same as chamois cloth.  The fleece is just an artificial sheep fleece–its usually a yellowish tint.  I use cardboard covered in rag rugs.  The rugs are fairly cheap and when they get bored they tend to pull apart the weave.  None of my buns have eaten it, just pulled it apart.  Hope this helps!

i don’t think having sore hocks should prevent your vet from doing the spay.  you’re right that there is a good chance she’ll chill out afterwards and may stop thumping so much.  that’s a question to ask your vet.

well the surprising thing about these houserabbits is that most of them dont actually live in he house, well they do but not like mine. Fluffee and Sooty live in the house with no cages or restrictions and ar very well behaved, they simply have 2 boxes lined with first of all newspaper then fresh hay which they adore, there food is contained in bowls like dogs have and water dishes the same they have an array of rugs and beds which they sleep in and not a single wire can be noticably seen in this house, To me it sounds like she/he is ready to mate and if this is not an option for you i should advise sadly that you get him neutered, this seems cruel and believe me i had to take they day off work to just be with my partner and pryay both my bunnies would survive and operation but they did and were absolutley fine and very very happy to be able to have the full run ofthe house, ihonestly think your bunny is unhappy at the lack of room or company both human and bunny therefor neutering and more space and company from you will surley help you and him out xmx oh! and i got lied to by pets at home twice and my vet took £80 off me and told me he had neutered my FEMALE bunny (pets t home said he was a he but wasnt the case) she was infact pregnant with 11 happy bunnies!!!!!!!!!!!!

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