Carpet eating/ new bunny

[Pernie's slave]

A few weeks ago I found a domestic bunny in a park and called animal control. She was sent to a no kill shelter, spayed and got her shots and then I felt guilty. I captured her by picking her up. She was so sweet that I adopted her.

Pernie is very bold, bossy, chewy and apparently a genius. I bought her a 36″ by 36″ pen and let her out in the morning and at night. She is great at removing wire covers and moving anything that covers something she would like to chew. I don’t trust her anymore and she is only allowed out when I am around. She has tricked my scared cat into letting her out and tricked me into thinking we were friends.

She is still adjusting but I need help with the digging/chewing. She has made 2 quarter size holes in my carpet in the 2 weeks so far. I have purchased rugs to cover the carpet, but other than thumping and saying no, is there anything I can do to encourage her not to eat my stuff? She doesn’t care if I push her off. She has tried to eat my phone charger while I was using it. I lease so i care most about the carpet. I would like to let her out as much as possible, but I can’t trust her and that makes me sad.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

P.s. When I wake up and when I get home, she chews and digs at her pen to be let out. She grunts a lot if I take too long to let her out. I wake a lot, so the mornings are not fun for either of us. Please help.

Pernie’s Slave

[tobyluv]

Thanks for rescuing Pernie, then adopting her.

Many rabbits are bad chewers, so you do have to be careful with your furnishings/possessions and bunny proof as much as possible. Do you have things that you can let her chew on, to divert her attention to your things? Things such as cardboard boxes or old phone books are good for rabbits to chew and destroy.  You can put shredded paper in a box, and that might satisfy some of her digging desires.

You can get apple or willow branches for her to chew on, or you can buy willow rings for chewing. 

You can search and find a lot of good ideas for homemade rabbit toys or enrichment. Here is one site with some good ideas: http://www.therabbithouse.com/blog/…nrichment/

Since Pernie was just recently spayed, it may be that she will calm down and not be as bad of a chewer when some more time passes.

[tobyluv]

 Sorry – I was editing my post to add something, but I made a duplicate post instead.

[Author]

Messages