Former Hutch Bunny’s First Overnight Free-Range

[Epitome]

I share my apartment with two lovely bunnies, a neutered Dutch boy, Scooter, and a little Netherland Dwarf girl, Louise.  I rescued Louise from a bad situation at the end of May, two weeks shy of my move out of state. It was a spur of the moment type of thing. She was left in a filthy hutch in a backyard. Her bondmate had frozen to death over the Michigan winter. Louise, when I met her, was emaciated and far too small to go in to be spayed. Over the last month, she’s gained weight and looks how a healthy bunny should. For an unspayed rabbit, she is litter-trained very well. I let Louise and Scooter out to hop whenever I am home and awake. 

However, I do have a vision of having both rabbits free-range permanently. Scooter does very well. He does not chew, dig, etc. where he should not. Louise, however, has a taste for carpet. I do sincerely hope it will lessen once she is spayed in a couple weeks. I bought some bitter apple spray, and it seems to be working very well. Tonight I’ve decided to leave their cage door open while I sleep. Needless to say, I’m a little nervous about having them run about while I’m asleep, but I guess we all have to start somewhere.

Anyone have any first-night stories? Were you nervous the first time you left your rabbit unsupervised at home?

[Q8bunny]

My bun has only had boundaries twice in his life. For a few days after his neuter (a half-room pen) and during his immigration quarantine (a walk-in isolation tent). The rest of his life, he’s been free range, and I have never come home from work to any naughtiness.

BUT at his grandparents’ house, he likes to customize the edges of their rugs and wood furniture. Crazy, right? So we got out a bar of Ivory soap and “waxed” the tempting edges with it. So far it’s working. He did the lick and ptew ptew once, and ran off all offended, flicking his feet at me.

[Bladesmith]

Ivory soap? Brilliant Idea! I’ll have to remember it for my next move. The carpet here are ruined by Dawn. That said, they’re the original 1982 carpeting, and I’m pretty sure Dawn’s customizing has made it look better.

[Gordo and Janice]

Waxing with bar soap!!!! We even use the 99% Pure Ivory Soap ourselves. How come no one has ever said anything about that before?!?!? Or maybe they have but it was before I became a member. I’m with Bladesmith, “Brilliant”.  Will try that next time we have a bun that is a customization expert which most seem to be.

The very day we got Icey she was free. Maybe we humanized her too much but we couldn’t see putting her in “jail” except in special circumstances (e.g. furniture guys stomping around delivering furniture and front door being open) It just didn’t seem right otherwise. But there are so many other factors. We own our house so any damage is on us, indirectly allowed by us, and dealt with by us. Renters and lessees have other responsibilities to consider. Large families, many toddlers, other pets, all sorts of things that have to be taken into consideration that we didn’t have to deal with. Technically, I suppose, she was on permanent “house arrest” because we wouldn’t let her outside (ear mites when she was a baby, pesticides, fertilizers, predators, etc. etc.) So that seemed a little unfair even, because outdoors is their natural environment. Everyone is different so no judgement or accusation here with regard to how members keep their bunnies. The very fact that everyone here takes them in and loves them and cares for them in every way to the best of their means is wonderful enough in and of itself.

Like you said, if that is your goal, permanent free range, which I commend you for too, by the way, then starting slowly would be wise. That carpet thing is a tough one. Once Icey learned the game of “tug of war” with the carpet piles, it was on! I don’t think we could have stopped her and it may very well be that we didn’t try to curtail it early enough. And once she was hooked it was a permanent “thing” that she found entertaining and enjoyable both as something to accomplish and as exercise. When we moved into the new house we had wood floors installed and wool rugs which didn’t allow for the same type of “tug of war” as the regular pile carpets and rugs do.

There were a lot of things we had to do and/or learned to do along the way. Learning experience of trial and error. A weird thing about the bed was (as we know now is common, but back then we didn’t know anything) the second she would jump up there she would pee on it. Frustrating. How can we allow her to be free but stop this. I didn’t think we could and this was just going to be part of it so to mitigate the problem a little we had a couple of large wardrobe cardboard boxes from U-haul that we hadn’t used and were still folded and flat so they cover considerable square footage when lying down. Anyway we put those on top of the bed after we got up and made the bed. We moved the pillows and just covered the bed with the card board like it was the comforter every day. At first she would get up there and pee and the cardboard did it’s job of protecting the comforter and also would absorb the pee and dry out. Interestingly, and I don’t remember the actual time frame, she began to do it less and less until she stopped. So all that to say there may be some creativity that you have to employ to curb and steer some of their behaviors. There is a bit of a price to pay for having total free range bunnies but for us it was worth it.

I am very interested in how this progresses for you and your two little ones. Please keep us posted.

P.S. Oh, and I forgot to ask if you would allow us to pay for Scooter to have some counseling sessions with our new little bun in the future.  “does not chew, dig, etc. where he should not.”  Sounds like an angel of a bunny.

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