Huge house

[colleenbunny]

(I am not trying to brag or show off in any way. Thanks for understanding that!) I got a bunny for Christmas!!! And thanks to my best friend and her rabbit, my parents have decided to let it have free range of the whole downstairs! But that might not be the best thing, since my house is giant, and it is a very open layout so there are not many ways to block off danger zones, such as speakers, cords, tables, or walls.

Also, litter training would probably be a lot harder without being able to really start small.

And the room where we will be keeping the bunny full time is as safe as we can make it, but it still has a table with chairs, all made of fairly expensive wood. Does anyone have any ideas on how to bunny-proof the table to make it safe for the bunny but still fairly “stylish”?

— CB

[BinkyBunny]

Free range is not always best for everybody nor every bunny.  It will depend on your bunny really. Some bunnies are less interested in chewing on furniture etc, while others seem to make it their mission.  There are some things you an do, like rubbing ivory soap on the edges of the furniture where a bunny might be more enticed to chew — that doesn’t “taste” good to a bunny, and yet is rather gentle enough that if they do decide to take a taste it won’t be harmful.  My rabbit-savvy vet gave me that recommendation  — also you can rub perfume on certain areas  – (just make sure you are careful as it might be too harsh for some fabrics or wood) 

My recommendation though is to start small, with any new bunny in the home.  Start with their home base and pen them in and gradually expand.  You may need two xpens to block off rooms and areas as you slowly expand.  See the Litter box training section under bunny info for more info. 

Most of my bunnies have become either free range or had a bunny room and were allowed free range while I was in the house.  But they have always started out small, with slow expansion as they developed good litter box habits.  (This usually took a few weeks to a month).  Our house is not huge, so it wasn’t that far for them to go from the living room, through the dining room and down the hallway to their bunnyroom to use their litter box – but they would do that.  With a larger house, you may need two bunny home bases to encourage good litter box habits.  Time will tell. 

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