Holiday at the Rescue

There are lots of ways to spend your annual holiday entitlement from work – lazy days on sundrenched beaches, skiing through the picturesque landscapes of Europe or even seeking out some of the more interesting local tourist attractions. None of this really appeals to me though, so when I was faced with finding something to occupy my week away from the drudgery of desk work I could think of nothing better than having a few days of training in bunny care at the Rescue. Hoping to some day be able to have her own holiday of the more traditional kind and know she was leaving the Rescue in capable hands, Caroline was more than happy to oblige.

The Rescue operates a small “hospital”, an area where bunnies needing daily medicines, or recently returned from the vets needing some recuperation time, can relax in relative warmth and be closely monitored. Where they are confined to a much smaller space than the healthy bunnies, they require more frequent cleaning so the first task of the week was a familiar one - cleaning out! Each bunny had to be removed from its cage and placed outside in an enclosed area on the grass so lesson number one from Caroline was how to pick up a bunny through a small door in the cage. This technique involved using a hand either side of the bunny and fingers slipped under the back feet with the bunny facing me. Next carry (cuddle) them to the outside enclosure, clean, bed, replace bunny.

Anda practises his ballet moves while

Sparkle waits for their cage to be cleaned

Once all the cages were clean and the bunnies happily returned to a fresh chompage of hay, next up was the special tasks. Each bunny has a list of medicines, cleaning and grooming requirements. Santa’s propensity to stasis has given me lots of general experience here but still I had lots to learn. Highlights of this section of the day included cleaning out the site where Marbles’ jaw abscess was removed from and the foul substances that are emitted from Anda’s ears (yuck!). As usual, the things we see Caroline do every day that look SO straight forward when she does them are suddenly revealed to be highly complex when we attempt them ourselves, even with Caroline’s direct guidance. Not helped by grumpy bunnies that aren’t happy about the extra time you are taking over it of course.

Lacey likes meeting new friends in the hospital.

And weeing where you've just cleaned. She likes that alot.

After the hospital it was on to the main site of the Rescue where the tasks are more familiar. The only extra bit here was administering eye drops. I had had some experience already as I had been trained to do Whisky’s, but whereas Whisky is pretty used to being picked up for this it is a different story for Lucy Liu, Snow White and Sneezy. But bunnies are full of surprises – Whisky started resenting me once I started his eye drops but Snow White and Sneezy became more friendly. They had always been cautious around me at the Rescue before, but now it seems I’ve proved to them that I can be trusted to pick them up and not to cause them harm.

So that was my week on holiday at the Rescue. I don’t know if Caroline has seen any difference in my handling of the bunnies, but I have certainly found it a useful experience. At the end of the week I even found that I was holding and carrying bunnies differently without having made any conscious changes, which I see as a good sign.

And for my next holiday? I guess I should go away somewhere. I hear there’s some quite good rescues in North America…

Chubby Bunnies

"Wake me when the grass has grown back"

Rabbit Awareness Week is next month and it looks like this year they will be focusing on rabbit obesity. For much like us humans, a rabbit who is overweight is at much higher risk of all sorts of quite serious medical problems. And this is something we see not only in the rabbits that have been removed from bad situations and passed to us by the RSPCA, but even rabbits subsequently adopted from us into otherwise idyllic situations.

Part of the trouble is, when trying to make friends with an animal, or even just trying to get them to pay you attention on a daily basis, it is all too easy to fall into the trap of bribing them with snacks. With bunnies, it can be the choice between sitting patiently on the floor for what might be an hour before they decide to give you any attention, or rattling the snack jar and immediately having bunnies clambering all over you. But at the end of the day, we love our bunnies and their health has to be paramount - with just a little more patience we can soon be enjoying a much deeper friendship with our bunny friends that is not based on treats.

Which brings me to Jemima. Yes folks, I myself am the parent of a very porky bunny. I know I am to blame, since every bit of food going into her has been put out or given directly by me, but I'm seriously trying very hard and running out of practical ideas. She has a reasonable amount of space (6ft by 3ft house attached to 6ft by 10ft run), at least twice daily access to the garden, a healthy diet of veg and some "lite" pellets with unlimited hay and grass. Since I realized over a year ago that she was scoffing more than her fair share of the food, I have been separating her from Santa for mealtimes and despite being twice his size gets less food than him, especially pellets and carrots. And yet after all of this, she is still a fatty.

I think I know the main source of her problem though - much like me, she's incredibly lazy. All winter, if they were out for playtime you would find Santa grazing, exploring or tearing round the garden like he's on fire. Jemima's pastimes rarely extend beyond chomping and napping. Sometimes she even lies down to eat the grass in the garden.

At least Spring is just around the corner and I know that she is about to perk up. In just a few short weeks she will no doubt be chasing Santa all over the garden demanding his "romantic" attentions and his highly developed skills of evasion will hopefully help her burn some calories. And on top of that, I will be looking forward to all the exciting events that are taking place in Rabbit Awareness Week and looking out for some helpful tips!

Save The Rescue 2010

As friends of the Rescue will be aware, we have been required annually to re-apply for planning permission to remain on our current site. This is largely due to our proximity to (and access through) a residential area.

Recently, in preparation for the current application, we contacted the local residents and asked them to let us know of any concerns they had so that we could address them. Most of the people we spoke to were very positive. The only concern we encountered was with the way in which waste was removed from the site and as a result we implemented a new system which eliminated all of the problems highlighted.

So having met the conditions of last years planning approval (limiting the vehicles on site in number and to volunteers only, visitors only on Saturday and only appointment etc) and addressing the only concerns expressed to us by the local residents, we were understandably surprised to hear that the Parish Council decided to recommend that the application this year be denied.

We have just a few days before the District Council make their final decision on our application, a decision that could mean the end of the Rescue. So please, if you support the work that we do, show your support by signing our online petition below. We have until 3rd March to convince them to let us continue to run the Rescue from our current site.

The petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/rabbit10/

If you have any comments or queries regarding our planning application we would be happy to hear from you. Please contact Caroline at the email address provided on our website.

Rabbit Reconciliation

We love hearing from our rehomed bunnies and their families. Here is an email we received recently from a family that Caroline helped find a partner bun for (kindly rewritten for us to post here on the blog - thanks Andy!).

Rabbit Reconciliation - Bunnies fall out over ear-drops and VHD jab

Magic and Wendy
(Picture by Andy)

After the death of our beautiful little Lionhead, Pepper, at the age of 9, we asked Caroline to find a new partner for our 5 year-old Dutch-cross house-rabbit, Magic. We have had a number of rescue rabbits over the years, mostly from Caroline. We wanted a rabbit of similar age and temperament – Magic is quite timid – so Caroline's rabbit, Spirit, was suggested.

Unfortunately, after a long time on her own, Spirit turned out to be most boisterous than we initially expected, resulting in unsuccessful bonding and Magic getting a bitten ear. Against this backdrop of a slightly distressed rabbit, Caroline suggested one of her new arrivals, Wendy. Wendy is HUGE – well, Magic is little, and against him, Wendy looks enormous (3.5kg lop vs Magic's 2kg). After a couple of days with Wendy, Caroline noticed that Magic was just a bit wary of Wendy. Unusually, she proposed that we bond Wendy and Magic on Magic's 'home turf' – to try to boost Magic's reticence with a bit of 'home advantage'.

I went and picked up the pair and brought them home. In preparation, I had bought a new indoor cage for their bedding area. Together with the old cage, each rabbit had their own cage and small area at the back of our house, but separated by bars at the edge of the cage. I had also set up a web-cam to view the two cages. With support from Caroline, I proceeded with the bonding, initially waiting a couple of days to see them take interest in each other and be prepared to sit by each other, separated by the cage. This was followed by a couple of nights 'swapped around' in each other's cage to reinforce the familiarization of the other rabbit's smell. I then trialled the rabbits in the living room, to see how they reacted to each other with unrestricted access – there was wariness and a bit of chasing away, but nothing too serious. I followed this up by allowing the rabbits access to each other’s cages over night for a few days until they were happy to sit together in one cage. The second cage was kept as a bolt-hole, eventually being removed after a further 3 or 4 days. With the web-cam, I was able to observe them cleaning each other – bonding seemed to be complete...

However, trouble was ahead... Magic needed stitches removed from his ear following the earlier ear-biting incident with Spirit. Wendy needed her spay stitches checked, her waxy ears looked at and her VHD vaccination. Off we went to the vets... All went to plan and we were given some drops to help break down any remaining wax (Caroline having spent some time with a rather annoyed Wendy removing the wax from her ears with cotton-buds).

On return home, Wendy was a bit off-colour (naturally, after a vaccination). She also didn't like having the drops squirted in her ears – and the drops smelt funny too! But all was well... Except a day later, the rabbits were chasing each other around and trying to bite the other's backside. This was very depressing, having successfully (!) bonded the rabbits – my first attempt at this sort of thing. I spoke to Caroline, looking for advice. Obviously they needed to be separated. The bad reaction may have been a combination of Wendy being understandably grumpy and Magic not recognising her scent, masked as it was by the ear-drops.

So, the second cage returned... They went back to the bonding arrangement for a couple of days, separated, until I was willing to risk having them have access to each other. The main problem then, rather than aggression, was that the second Wendy got near Magic, he would run off. Still, no fighting... So they had separate, but accessible cages for a further 3 days. Eventually, they could be sat next to each other without one of them running off. Back to one cage... Not exactly 'in love' though... Anyway, 1 week later, they are cleaning each other and all is well again – it just needed a bit of time.

The moral of this story, if there one, is, don't try to force the rabbits together, give them time on their own without human interference. And, if things go wrong, all is not lost. The situation can be recovered with a bit of patience and care!

If you have adopted a bunny from us and have an amusing or interesting tale to tell, please contact Caroline via the email address on our website.

Bun to be Wild

Pea, Pod, Cosmos and Goofy are wild (cross?) rabbits, hand-reared from a very young age. And they are great fun.

The wild streak can make the group quite manic at times, especially living in a group of four where there is always one doing something to set the others off into chaos.

Each of them sits on a different point on the scale of trust towards humans. When you go in to see them, outside of the usual feeding times, one will immediately bound up to you and place their paws on you to see what you are doing and one will move to the farthest corner and eye you suspiciously. The other two will lurk somewhere between, waiting to see what time it is - treat-time, cleaning-time or being-picked-up-for-health-checks-time! But all of them are ultimately friendly towards people and happy to be stroked once they have gotten to know you.

Today whilst cleaning them out, I repeatedly had to encourage them to move out of my way, to which they generally responded grumpily ("Hey, I was eating/relaxing-in that bit of hay!"), moved to somewhere I hadn't cleaned yet and glared at me. By the time this process had been repeated around the whole of their enclosure, we were left with four bunnies crammed into one small corner! ("Well, you've moved us from everywhere else!") It looked very cute and was one of the funniest moments I've experienced at the Rescue, though I don't think they really saw it that way. As with most of our cleaning-related stories, the incident ended with happy bunnies with their faces stuck into a pile of fresh Timothy Hay and dried grass, so I think they've forgiven me.

"Dude! Will you stop crowding me?
I'm trying to use the bathroom here!"

Caroline told me she fears these lovely little things will likely spend most or all of the rest of their lives stuck at the Rescue, which would be a great shame. It's probably true that they would be far too mischievous to be general house rabbits (you'd keep finding them under the sofa cushions and inside the VCR) and they are expert diggers/chewers, so you'd need a pretty well built enclosure to house them outside. But who wouldn't want to take in a cute little bunch of crazy bunnies that were almost guaranteed to make you laugh out loud every day?!

So now I need to save up to buy a house with a bigger garden. You have until then to get the adoption forms in before me... ;-)

Beware of the lunch thieves!

It wasn't my fault. Honest. I was sitting quietly having my lunch when this white flash suddenly appeared from nowhere and attacked me. Well, actually she attacked my sandwich - peanut butter, yum yum, she obviously thought so as well. Well I reckoned that this would be an easy battle to win, after all she's small and so very cute; I'd be able to fight her off easily.

How wrong I was. She's a strong little thing, that Perdy, but just when I thought I would win, I realised that she must have called for reinforcements, as two little helpers came at me from different sides. The tactic of Hoppy and Nestle was clearly diversionary as they went straight for the plastic bag containing my apples, found their way in and started nibbling. With my hands full from battling with Perdy, what could I do?
I realised I was on a loser so I had to sacrifice something. The peanut butter sandwich was too precious to lose so I grabbed an apple and thrust it under Perdy's nose. My tactic worked. Distracted for a moment, she let go of the sandwich, which was now all mine, ha ha! Thrusting the remains into my mouth I revelled in my victory.

However, my glory was short lived as my apple was disappearing fast. I tried to save it but it was too late as the three monsters had gorged their way through it. I'll swear they never took a breath during their merciless attack. I did manage to retrieve one of my biscuits for a moment but alas, weakened by the struggle I had to give in.

Finally gasping for breath and traumatised by my experience I staggered up and away from my tormenters, cursing their names ........................................................ or something like that.

Already I'm looking forward to my next lunch in warren 10!

Bunface

This week we started setting up a Facebook page for the Rescue. If you are a Facebook user, search for The Rabbit Residence Rescue and "Become a fan" to receive updates of all the latest happenings and events, plus (of course) lots of pictures of our adorable bunnies, past and present.