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For all those that created your own cages out of the cubes... How do you make a door that you conveniently open and close (securely)? They look cool, but I don't get how this would work.
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Aug 29, 2007 03:14
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| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 11:00 |
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Do you guys have problems with your rabbits trying to eat you? My rabbit (pictures soon) tries to eat my fingertips.  At first I thought maybe they smelled like food, but I've washed them thoroughly and then let her sniff them and she still nibbles. I know she's not doing it defensively either - I'll just be sitting there and she'll come up to me and start trying to eat my fingers. And I don't think they're love nibbles either, because if I don't pull my fingers away she starts biting harder and it hurts. She doesn't nibble any other body part - just the fingertips. Is this normal? Is there anyway to stop it? I've told her "No" really firmly but we all know how well that works with rabbits. 
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Sep 1, 2007 15:53
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Here is Delilah, Rabbit With The Big Ears Who Likes To Eat Everything Sadly, I don't know if I'm going to keep her. I have a feeling that some people might yell at me for not doing more research, but I thought that going to a humane society and talking to the people there *would* be research. The adoption process was a joke. I filled out a generic adoption form, let them xerox my drivers license, then they charged me $16 and gave me some printed handouts from https://www.rabbit.org and sent me on my way. I hadn't bought supplies beforehand, because what if I bought all the supplies then I didn't like the rabbits they had - I'd be stuck with a bunch of rabbit supplies and no rabbit. I assumed that they would hold Delilah for me for at least a couple hours while I went and bought supplies, but they wouldn't. They told me that I should take her home and shut her up in my bathroom while I went out and bought her things. Then I asked them if she was spayed or not, and they said no (she is ~1 year old, they tell me), but as long as I didn't let her interact with a male rabbit, it would be fine. I've since found out that getting her spayed would not only have significant health benefits, but it might curb some of her destructive behaviors as well. As a final note, and I guess this is probably my fault, but a big reason that I thought I could take care of a rabbit is because I just started a new job with a pay increase. But as an instructor, I was used to being on a 9-month salary, and at my new job I'm on a 12-month salary. So even though I'm making more money on a yearly basis, I found out today that I'm actually making *less* money on a month to month basis. I want to keep her, but only if I can take care of her. She is starting to warm up to me - she nuzzled my nose a few nights ago. We'll see. I definitely think she needs to be spayed - I will call a vet soon and see how much that would cost me.Edit: It occurred to me that I didn't actually say what the problem with her is. She is just way more destructive than I thought she'd be. She's pretty good about not biting cords, but she LOVES to rip fibers out of the carpet. At first a stern "No!" would stop her, then she started ignoring me, so I clapped at her. That worked for a while, but then she started ignoring that too. I've started using a spray bottle as another poster suggested, and that is working now, but I'm scared that after a while will stop being effective too. I've given her plenty of other toys to chew on, and she chews on them, but she still likes to tear up the carpet. I have a rug where her cage is, but I can't cover all the carpet. I really feel like she needs to be in an uncarpeted place - like a mudroom or something - until she is either spayed or grows out of this crazy chewing phase. And I can't give her that in my apartment. She also likes to chew on my clothes - and therefore me - and that's just no fun. I have a bruise on my leg where she accidentally chomped me. The only way I've figured out to keep her from doing this is to move away from her when she gets near me. And again, that's no fun. I'm really hoping that spaying her won't be too expensive, and that it will help the chewing. sgocity fucked around with this message at 23:47 on Sep 4, 2007 |
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Sep 4, 2007 23:24
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alucinor posted:Spaying her will run around $200, most likely. IF you are lucky, you might find a place that does it for $75, but that's uncommon. I pay nearly $200 and that's WITH a rescue discount. Where are you located? I can find you the local HRS branch and you can contact them and see if they have a low-cost S/N program. They might also be able to send a mentor to visit you and to give you some one-on-one coaching and advice. I will PM you my location. alucinor posted:Is there a kitchen or other large tiled area you could let her have her out time in? She doesn't need the run of the WHOLE house, a 4'x8' space is plenty big for some laps and some binkies. You could use gates to confine her although you may need to run a wall of grids along the baseboards to prevent her from tasting the cupboards. Unfortunately the only tiled spaces are the kitchen and the bathroom. My bathroom isn't big enough for her cage. My kitchen is big enough for her cage (barely), but the cage would have to go next to the washer and dryer, so I was thinking that probably wouldn't be a good place for it. I suppose I could keep her cage in my living room and then when I'm not using the washer/dryer I could try to herd her into the kitchen and then put up a baby gate or something. But that doesn't sound like that good of a plan. She's not all that easy to herd (I've tried), and like most rabbits she hates being picked up. alucinor posted:I'm not going to yell at you for not doing more research, but I'll use this as an opportunity to yell at all the lurkers who are being overwhelmed by the fuzzy pictures and are thinking about a rabbit of their own. Rabbits are DIFFICULT pets. They ALWAYS cause problems - behavioral, financial, hygenic, medical, or social. Turn images off, read this drat thread top to bottom and pay attention to the horror stories. Then find a rescue who will tell you the truth about living with a rabbit, will provide ongoing mentoring and support, and will provide a promise to take her back and rehome her if it doesn't work out. I agree with this. I might not have mentioned in my other post, but I have had rabbits before, so I knew to an extent what I was getting myself into. My other rabbits weren't nearly as destructive though, and I owned them when I lived at home with my family, so expenses were less of a concern, plus we had a big tiled mudroom where we could keep them. About the "find a rescue who will tell you the truth about living with a rabbit" thing. I know now that the humane society I adopted Delilah not only didn't tell me the things I needed to know, but also told me flat out WRONG information, but I didn't know that at the time. If I had known enough about rabbits to know that they were giving me wrong information, I wouldn't have been asking them for information in the first place. I guess it would have been better to rely on the humane society as a supplementary source of knowledge - to do research on my own as well as talking to them. *sigh* Live and learn. Also: they gave me three days to decide if I wanted to take Delilah back. But it took her more than that just to get used to her surroundings, and she didn't start exhibiting a lot of her behaviors until after that.
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Sep 5, 2007 17:36
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