It’s a tough situation! But you could start by showing your friend how your bunny lives, and how happy it is. You can also point her to educational sites like this one.

You should also focus on a couple of things that you think are most important to change. If you give her that long list, she might feel attacked and not change anything, so think about what changes would improve the bunny’s life the most. So to my mind, that would be the small cage, and the hay. Those are the things that you should focus on trying to change first, perhaps by saying something like ‘I’ve been doing research for Bear, and I found out that 90% of a bunny’s diet is meant to be hay! I had no idea… Did you? Shall we find some good hay suppliers and share a bale?’ for example. That way, you’re not attacking her and it seems like you’re learning together.

While the small cage is also not ideal, it sounds like he gets time out of it at least? So perhaps you can work on trying to get him to spend more time out of the cage, and perhaps suggest a pen that could be attached to the cage.

If you’re making progress with those two things, then you can start making other suggestions, but I think it would be counterproductive to tell her everything that’s wrong at once. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with a corner litter box to be honest, and not having a vet, while isn’t ideal, is presumably something they would sort if there was an emergency. So I would choose picking up as third priority

Hi Bear the Bunny. First of all I just want to say that you are an amazing animal lover to be so worried. If you are close to your friend do you think you could mention it to them causally at first with out them being offended?
Bunny’s should be out of their cage at least 4 hours a day, as a minimum. It doesn’t have to be all at ounce and can be broken up during the day.

Maybe show her this forum – you could delete this post before you do if you don’t want her to see it – for tip and advice on bunny care.

Some people just don’t know better. So maybe if you approach it from a place of Love and helpfulness she wont see it as you judging her.

Good for you for wanting to help!

Oh my god, I know the feeling! I had a friend who had two rabbits and kept them outside in a tiny little hutch with no run, she fed them whole carrots almost daily and just did not know about basic rabbit care. They were both 3 years old and one suddenly died (probably because of gi stasis or something, since they didn’t have a clue what that even was). She wasn’t even all that upset but I asked her if she was going to try and get another rabbit so her first bunny doesn’t get lonely, she replied with “no, he’s probably going to die soon anyways”. And sure enough he died a couple weeks later. I don’t know if it was from depression or something contagious but it was clear that they weren’t too concerned. Thankfully, they’re not getting any other rabbits, but it was horrible to see them being mistreated. We weren’t that good friends so if I said something about it, it would almost seem like I was criticising her way of caring for her rabbits, and her main excuse was that she had had rabbits for three years and I’d only had them for a couple months so she automatically knows better. I don’t think she even knew that they can live up to 10 years and probably thought that they had both died of old age.
Sorry for the mini rant

I hope it all works out. I have a bonded pair of bunnies that live in a hutch outside. They sleep in there but spend all day in their x pen. I do think rabbits can be happy living outside. They have lots of toys and I do have a vet. I just wanted to say that not all rabbits that live outside aren’t well cared for. I love my bunnies as much as my dogs and cat. I know a lot of outdoor rabbits aren’t well cared for but some of them are well cared for. Sorry

Yes, just because they’re outside doesn’t mean that they’re being mistreated. But sadly a lot of people will buy a hutch without a run because they think they don’t need exercise. My rabbit lives outside but she does have a very spacious she’d.

Oh man – I remember when my husband and I were house shopping… this one house had a small crawl space of a basement, where you couldn’t even stand up fully, and when we were looking around I found a rabbit in a cage down there! I always prayed that the bunny was only down there for people coming to view the house and not all the time. We didnt’ buy the house.

My husband always says that no bunny’s ever lived as well as the ones i have do LOL.
I know that’s not true as most of the people on this forum treat their bunny’s amazingly too – its where I learned

My husband says the same @Nutmeg lol! But I’m glad he’s jumped on the bunny train with me and we’re in this together.

I think it’s just a general misconception that people have about rabbits. I don’t exactly blame them for it (I was once there myself), but back then info wasn’t available at the click of a mouse button on the internet, so I’d like to think that it was more forgivable.

I’d think that even today, the severity of the misconception also varies depending on which country you’re in. The US and UK (and some other parts of the EU) are probably still more “rabbit savvy” compared to other parts of the world. I know this from first hand experience when I couldn’t even find a proper vet specialised in rabbits in the whole country (and I’m in the capital city). The vet that I eventually went to told me: “I don’t think you can find any vet who specialises in rabbits; it’s just that some of us have seen more rabbits than others and learn from experience, plus some of our own research.”

We i first got my bunnies i didn’t have a run. I still don’t but now they spend all day in an x pen. They are pretty helpful with the grass so that’s a bonus. Our grass is weird and there are taller patches of grass all over our yard so they help keep those trimmed down. My parents actually like having them now. It’s sad that you don’t see enough stuff about how to properly care for them when doing research when you want a rabbit. At first I didn’t have a big enough cage but I learned. I hope more people come to this website and learn how to properly care for a bunny

If I ever am lucky enough to have another woman in my life, her loving the idea of house rabbits will be the litmus test.