House training help!

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BINKYBUNNY FORUMS

This topic has 2sd replies, 3 voices, and was last updated 11 years, 9 months ago by HouseMiniLops.

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- 07/02/2014 at 3:10 AM
  Laura82
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  1 posts
  Hi,
  
  One of my buns has been a house bun for about 4 years and was previouly well house trained. Sometimes he’d poo on the floor but never wee.
  
  However, a few months ago we had new carpets put down and now he keeps weeing on the carpet. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong with him (urinary/kidneys) as he’s not dribbling urine and the wee is always in the same place. He has a litter tray and an open cage and he uses both of those, but has also started weeing in this one place on the floor.
  
  We’ve tried rewarding him when he wees in his litter try or house (now when he wees in his house he jumps straight out and sits at our feet wanting treats) and shutting him in when we see him wee on the floor (now he just does it when we’re not there). We’ve moved things around and blocked off the place he is weeing in but then he just moves to another spot! We’ve cleaned the carpet with neutralizing spray and changed the piece of carpet (it’s just an off cut) but that doesn’t seem to make any difference.
  
  Has anyone experienced this and managed to retrain?? Any advice gratefully received.
  
  The only thing we can think of doing is shutting him in when we’re not there (at least at night as this is when he is most prolific) but this doesn’t seem very fair on his mate.
  
  Thanks for any suggestions.
  
  Laura
- 07/02/2014 at 8:44 AM
  Sarita
  Participant
  18851 posts
  I imagine he doesn’t like the smell of the new carpet and is marking it – new carpets have a very strong chemical odor and some rabbits have an aversion to this odor – I guess because they are closer to the carpet than we are.
  
  I think you may have to keep him in his area until the chemical smell dissipates.
  
  Sometimes you cannot be fair – they may not like it, but it has to be done.
- 07/03/2014 at 8:05 AM
  HouseMiniLops
  Participant
  57 posts
  Can you just add another small litter box there? Or at least a tray or absorbent pad? It wouldn’t really solve the problem, but it might give you more time to figure out. Also maybe then you could figure out if he has a problem with the area and he’s trying to mark, or if he just really wants to make this a potty spot. My bunny has done this in the past, but we figured out that he was doing it when he thought his regular litter box was too full or he was mad at us for leaving.
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