How big is the puppy going to be? How old are your bunnies? Are they spayed/neutered? Will the dog be spayed/neutered? (if the answer is no to those last two questions, don’t ever have the animals together unless they are!). How much training do you plan on doing with the dog? Have your bunnies been around dogs before?

For instance, my 5lb chihuahua and 3lb rabbit get along fine, but the dog grew up with the bunny and I have put hours upon hours into training her. The most she does is steal hay (yes, hay O_o) from the rabbit. She views the rabbit as part of her pack, and doesn’t have a prey drive towards anything but birds.

The most important thing is to go slow and make sure both the dog and bunny are calm. With a young pup you need to worry about play more than prey drive – the puppy will probably want to pounce on the rabbit and make it play with him, but obviously that’s not appropriate behavior with rabbits. Keep the puppy on leash and praise when he’s calm and quiet around the bunnies. Don’t let the puppy off leash around rabbits until he’s older and well trained and even then only under supervision.

 I am currently introducing my 3 dogs to my new bunny.  I have always had dogs and rabbits together.  How much freedom/interaction you can allow depends a lot on the dogs and the bunny.  If your bunny is not fearful and is curious then you just have to work on your puppy.  My small dog is a 7lb min pin.  SHe has always been around bunnies and has helped me foster several.  She is also ten years old so is not overly playful.  WIth her i just introduced her on leash and set up boundaries so that my dog knows she can’t go in She-ra’s (my bunny) cage.  She can go in the pen and the room and all and she sits with the bunny and goes in her hidey hold but if She-ra wants a break she knows she can go into her crate and my dog won’t go in their.  I just did that by keeping the dog on leash and correcting her gently with my voice and tension on the leash if she went in the crate.  My big dogs know the bunny is on look but don’t touch status.  They are younger and bigger so I don’t allow them direct contact.  We play a game called “Look at That” in which the dogs get rewarded for looking at She-ra and staying calm.  I click their look and then when they turn back to me they get a treat.  We are still playing that game around her mostly but the idea is that by rewarding them for staying calm and looking then looking away, they learn to stay calm.  Its also a game for them so they have something else to do besides just staring at the bunny and waiting for her to move.  Give it a try and let us know how it goes!

-Lindsay

 I recently went hrough this when I brought home an abandoned American Bulldog puppy. I had already introduced my other two older  dogs to rabbits, but this was a puppy so I was glad to have the opportunity to raise her with the rabbits. To start, I put my puppy in the crate (also for crate training, you should highly consider this when training a puppy, it makes everything easier!) and let my rabbits come up and sniff her through the bars. I chose to do this during one of her puppy naps so she wouldn’t scare them at all.