Rabbittude Updates: The Long Story and What Is Coming …

Rabbittude updates: photo showing separate spaces for Leo and OliviaMy last post introduced Olivia … Cue the crickets … Why weren’t there any new Rabbittude updates after that?

Our one experience bonding rabbits was Tigger and Shadow. Time passed. I forgot the challenge in maintaining separate yet equal spaces for unbonded bunnies. Olivia also has litter box habits that are an added issue. But I digress. Olivia’s pee party ways will be another post.

Olivia was still recovering from her spay when we adopted her. We knew it would take some time for her hormones to clear. Leo and Olivia had some first dates late in January 2015. We realized we had misjudged Miss Olivia a bit. She had seemed an easy-going rabbit when we first met her. After settling in, she showed us she had a sassy side too. Leo started out shy and skittish. He lost some skittishness but remains shyer than previous rabbits.

Rabbittude updates: Picture of Leo, his blankie and a girl bunny's towelDates were so so. Olivia would try to chase Leo who would run away. There wasn’t aggression or fighting. Leo was more open to Olivia than to another rabbit we had him meet before Olivia. A friend had a rabbit she thought might be a match for Leo. When they met, he didn’t want to share the same space. He tried to climb over me to get away. Then he refused to let me put him down again. The friend left a towel with the bunny’s scent. We put the towel near Leo at another time. He dragged his blankie between himself and the towel. With Olivia, Leo was willing to share the same space, but was nervous when Olivia moved around. We decided to take it slow to allow Leo lots of adjustment time.

Then Leo experienced problems on and off for several months. His appetite would decrease and then his poops would too, not a good thing in a rabbit. But why was his appetite off? We monitored him closely and took him in for a number of vet visits. No clear cause was found. We stopped dates in case stress played a part. Then he bounced back again. We allowed time to go by to be sure he had recovered. During the summer of 2015, we began some dates again.

October rolled around. I had found my groove again between work and rabbit needs. I planned catching up with Rabbittude updates during the end of 2015 with new plans for 2016. Things went awry with a series of unfortunate events and accidents that took months of recovery time as well as lots of money. I didn’t blog because I didn’t want to bore with details, especially when it was harder to find the funny side of anything. Thankfully, both rabbits were healthy and happy to provide distraction. Fur therapy rocks!

Spring 2016 arrived bringing lovely weather. I hoped crazy times were over. Then we woke up to a flood. Overnight thousands of gallons of water flowed out of our main water line. From what the plumber saw, it seemed likely a local mowing service had hit an above ground pipe causing a break below ground which leaked unseen for a bit and then blew out the main line. Repairs and a water bill for enough water for an Olympic size pool were tough pills, but at least the flood flowed in a way that didn’t cause damage to anything else. It just would have been nicer if we had paid for water for a pool to enjoy. Ah well.

So both humans have worked and worked through spring and summer trying to get ahead of the bills again. I planned a Rabbittude update for August and announced it on the new Rabbittude Instagram account. We had some good dates between Leo and Olivia. Things were looking up. I thought I could meet my schedule for the Rabbittude updates.

Then the flying squirrels arrived. I kid you not. This is the year for crazy.  Thankfully, my sense of humor began to come back. Having a flood followed by flying squirrels just became too ridiculously nuts to not start seeing some of the humor even though the tickets for the amusement have been high-priced.

Rabbittude Updates: Georgia pines against a bright blue sky are hiding a secretBeautiful pines like these grow in abundance in Georgia. Those trees reaching towards the bright blue sky have been hiding an invasion force, flying squirrels that can launch themselves from tall trees and fly about 150 feet. They chose our roof as their landing pad. Being nocturnal, they did their home invasion under cloak of darkness. They created an entry tunnel in to our attic. So how could we not know they were up there? They were sneaky and chose the part of the roof above the room where Leo and Olivia spend the night. We thought scratching and chewing we heard was the rabbits being noisier than usual. Then we heard something running around inside the walls and knew it was not the rabbits.

We found a critter company to evict the squirrels and fix the damage. The company arrived early to seal things up while the squirrels were most likely out for the day. Live traps in the attic have been empty (the company relocates any animals caught). So it seems no squirrel has been left behind. Newly installed metal protection is in place in vulnerable roof areas. The company also sealed and protected areas for our crawl space to prevent any other uninvited critters who might try that route.

When we first moved here, we had a couple of mice sneak in to the house from the garage. We jokingly told Tigger and Shadow they were not allowed to have pets. It did not occur to us to tell Leo and Olivia they could not invite flying squirrels in for all night parties.

Upcoming Rabbittude Updates: A lot of work for the website is still coming! Check out regular posts on our new Rabbittude Instagram account. I will be back here with another blog post next week …

 

Curveball Thursday: Booda ???

Booda Dome ???So my plan for today had been to write a throwback story about our previous bunnies that had not yet been told. Yesterday I had written about how Leo had finally accepted his Booda Dome after initially not wanting to even be in the same room with it. You can read the Booda Don’t and Booda Do posts for the rest of the story and pictures.

Then today Leo throws me a curveball when I walk in to the room and see him flopped at the doorway of his Booda Dome. So what is the message behind that? Is he back to not going in? Is he laying stronger claim to it by blocking the entrance? Ah Leo, what does this mean?

I have a feeling that there might be more to the story to be told over time …

Turning a Booda Don’t In to a Booda Do

Booda Dome Clean Step Litter box
Leo avoiding Booda Dome
Baiting the Booda Dome TopAnd Leo takes the bait ...Success with the Booda dome
 I wrote in Booda Don’t about how the minute the new Booda Dome  Clean Step Litter Box went in to the room, Leo exited and hesitated to even come back in with that thing there. It is a bit mind-boggling to us since Tigger and Shadow were so intensely curious about everything. We had rabbit supervisors for every new thing and they would break new things in so fast there was never any issue of it keeping any new look or smell for long. So we started out with Leo hovering across the room from it. We began by separating the top and the bottom of the Booda Dome and putting them on opposite sides of the room. The bottom we with litter and a hay pile in one corner to encourage Leo to make use of the facilities and remove that new litter box smell and replace it with his own scent. That was a fairly easily accomplished mission.

On the other side of the room sat the Booda Dome top and that was studiously avoided by Leo. A suggestion was made to put some treats inside to see if Leo could be enticed in. So I laid down a papaya trail leading in and he hopped in to consume one of his favorite treats. I did this several times over a period of several weeks allowing Leo to get used to the idea and feel of hanging out under the dome even if his inhabiting the space was as brief as the length of time to wolf down the papaya bits.

So we left the two parts separate for a month letting Leo adjust. Then one day I joined the top and bottom together again and wasn’t sure of successful use of the dome at all. Recently I heard a strange noise I didn’t recognize. When I went to check, Leo was in the Booda Dome. When the halves were separate, he must have just been hopping over the side of the litter box bottom. Once the Booda Dome was assembled with the top on, his first use of the entry ramp was quite noisy. You can barely see him inside now, just the white of his back with his brown spots.

Ah sweet success, at last … the Booda Dome is now a do.

Hanging With My Bangin Bunny

Leo the Bangin BunnyThe one thing I can say about Leo that is different from Tigger and Shadow is that he is a very relaxing rabbit to have around. Leo is cute and quirky rather than being wired for constant action and activity. Tigger and Shadow were massive amounts of fun, but could really wear us out at times trying to keep up and ahead of them with bunny proofing so that they didn’t get hurt with some of the crazy things they would try.

So I am just hanging out here in the office with Leo today, enjoying a midweek day off that I am gifting myself. I’ve been snapping a few pics of him as he relaxes too. Once again I am so attracted to what first caught my attention in his Petfinder.com ad, those awesome bangs. Leo loves having his head petted and those bangs are like a head petting magnet. If you have ever had a troll doll, Leo’s bangs have the same fascination. You just cannot resist playing around with his bangs this way and that and in the process he gets lots of the head pets that he loves too.

Everyone who meets him just loves that little mop top. Leo’s fur is just so very soft and silky to the touch, it is hard to describe just how very wonderful it feels to run your hand over him or run your fingers through that mane of his. It is yummy relaxing fur therapy.

Off to enjoy petting a little bunny rabbit head some more … oh and I was so busy looking at Leo’s cute bangs, I fogot to mention the adorable little milk mustache look he has going too. His coloring and fur pattern is just so different from any other rabbit I’ve seen.

Leo and His Pet Bed

When we first got Tigger, we had a small pet bed for her that she just loved. I wrote about how she would just put herself in to all kinds of bunny model poses on that bed. When Shadow joined our household a few months later and we started the bonding process, we found that the pet bed was something that was going to have to go because Shadow insisted on eating them. If we gave him opportunity, he would attempt to shred the beds and try to eat them. So we ended up with keeping the beds only for lining carriers on vet visits when it was really cold or they were really sick.

Leo isn’t the chewer that Shadow was and he is a bit more like Tigger in some ways. So when we came across a really cute bed with a big mark down at the pet store, we thought it was worth a shot to see if Leo would like it. I just love the bed which looks like a mini sofa with a throw pillow. Leo has absolutely no idea what to do with it. As you can see from the pictures, he will wander all around it, put front paws on it and that is the full extent of his interest in the pet bed.

Leo has never once been on it to sit on it or lie down on it. We tried draping his blankie on it since he just loves his blankie and plays with that lying on it, burrowing under it and dragging it around to play with. The blankie draped on the bed was what finally got Leo to at least set his paws on the bed, but that is as far as he was willing to go. You will notice in the pictures that when he appears to put his paws on the bed, he has actually carefully positioned himself so that he is really standing on his blankie.

Unless we get another rabbit who likes the bed, this is likely to be one of the least used pet beds ever. We have had it more than a year now with him and it still looks brand new.

Ah well, there is at least some hope today that Leo might adjust to his new Booda Dome litter box. He stayed in the room with it today for a bit. At some point he did hop in and check it out since I found he had used the facilities. I’ve still got the top off of it waiting to see if he will venture in to the top just sitting on the floor and then maybe we can see if we put it together whether he will hop in and use it.

Booda Don’t

Booda Dome Clean Step Litter boxSo this is the Booda Dome Clean Step Litter Box. We picked it up for Leo over the weekend. We thought a manly deep brown color was just the thing for our little bunny boy.

We had a Booda Dome without the steps with Tigger and Shadow. They liked it. We thought this one with the step ramp in to the litter box would be more to Leo’s liking since he loves to hide places and he isn’t as adept at hopping into and out of things as Tigger and Shadow. So we thought the step ramp would be something Leo would like better. We forgot though that there is one thing Leo hates more than being out in the open and that is new things.

Leo avoiding Booda Dome So now we have the Booda don’t. As you can see in the picture, Leo isn’t willing to enter the room with this new “thing” in there. You can barely see where it is way across the room behind the cardboard cottage. I even removed the dome top trying to make it a little less scary to him. Leo alternated between hovering at the doorway and running top speed down the hall and back in to the office. He sits at the doorway just staring at it.

I have no idea what Leo thinks it is going to do, but he clearly plans to keep an eye on it and maintain a safe distance. I’ve read that the eyes on a Lionhead are more prominent than other rabbit breeds. What that means to us is that when Leo gets scared about something, he really looks bug-eyed.

Leo avoiding Booda DomeOkay, so this picture is a bit later and looks like progress. Except Leo never likes to be out in the open in this room and is never in this spot. His favorite spot is behind the cardboard cottage. However now, the new litter box is behind the cardboard cottage. So Leo is more willing to expose himself in the open than go back by that new “thing”.

I do hope this isn’t going to be a repeat of the pet bed. I’ll share that story tomorrow.

Throwback Thursday: Stunt Bunny Tigger & Leo’s New Version

What bunny parents have to do to keep a Tigger safe ...So this throwback picture shows what we had to do to keep Tigger safe from her crazy daredevil stunt bunny desire.  She managed to do a bunny bump and get in to a closet. You can read the full story by clicking here to find out just how crazy dangerous to her well-being this bunny stunt was. When it came to getting in to things Tigger was pure stubborn determination.

Leo has his own version of this which is fortunately not as dangerous as Tigger’s stunt. Leo’s just gets him in to a forbidden bedroom. The bedroom doorway latch doesn’t do the job it is supposed to do. If you push on the door it will open. Well little Leo discovered that if he gave the door a bunny side bump, he could get in to that bedroom anytime he wanted to.

So I’m a bit slow sometimes with Leo to catch on to things I should bunnyproof. Leo has been a kinder gentler bunny in regards to being bad. So when he decides to go for it, I’m usually a few steps behind trying to catch up to what needs to be done. Leo managed a good number of bunny bumps to the door and unauthorized romps around the bedroom and hiding sessions under the bed before I realized that I needed to block the door. I would be busy doing something and would hear a funny bump noise and sure enough when I looked, the bedroom door would be open and Leo would be either nowhere in sight or just a fluffy white bunny behind quickly on the way to disappearing inside.

Leo on top of the bedroom doorway barricadeIt took some refining to get the barricade of the doorway it so it worked right. You can see Leo here sitting on top of his first version of the doorway barricade. We placed a cardboard box on the left where the door opens and his carrier blocking the right side of the doorway. Then Leo realized that he could pull the box out of the way, bump the door and he would be in again. After that, we put his carrier on the left side and the box on the right. Leo can’t pull his carrier out of the way to get to the opening side of the door.

Now if Leo wanted to let himself in, he would have to jump on top of his carrier and bump the door at the same time. Fortunately for us, he hasn’t figured that out.

Leo’s “Hillow”

Leo and hillowAlthough we buy things that look like good fun for our rabbits, I also look to repurpose things we already have for rabbit use. And sometimes what I repurpose, the rabbits have repurposed even further. That is the case with Leo and his “hillow”.

When I was having some back problems, I bought a body pillow to see if it was more supportive, but didn’t find it helped me out much. I was thinking about giving it away. Then I decided to put it on the floor in Leo’s hallway run area and wrap it around the corner as kind of a bumper and to keep him from chewing carpet right at the corner. With Tigger & Shadow we had always found corner areas to be the place where they seemed to go after the carpet the most.

It didn’t work out exactly as planned, because being a pillow it is light and easy for Leo to move it. And move it he did. At first he pushed it over a lot and was climbing around on it. Then one day, he just kind of burrowed in between it and the wall creating a little space just wide enough for him to fit between the pillow and the wall. He loved it. After that, he kept burrowing the pillow away from the wall. It became a place for him to hide out, but if he is sitting up, he can still see anyone approaching him from any direction. He loves to run around it and through it and sometimes he still goes over it.

Leo and hillowWhen I realized how much he liked that semi-protected space he had created, I always make sure now to set the pillow down curved around the corner just wide enough for Leo. I realized it looked a bit like an earth mound, especially since the pillow has a green cover. That is when I started calling it Leo’s “hillow”. I put some ceramic floor tiles down over the carpet around the corner so he doesn’t chew the carpet there. Leo hasn’t tried to lift or move those and actually likes to hang out right in the corner of his “hillow” sitting on the tiles.

I would love to hear if others have some things they or their house rabbits have repurposed just for bunny use.

An Afternoon With Leo

With our previous rabbits, they spent a lot more time out in the open. We used to see a lot of the plotting and planning going on and know by how they looked what was about to happen. With Leo, much of what he does is out of our sight. We usually ;don’t know something is in the works until it is executed. So I took a couple of pictures of Leo this afternoon, being his usual quiet bunny self and had no idea that he had plans …

Leo and his tunnel

Leo in the in the doorway of his tunnel

Leo and his tunnel

Leo back in the corner shadows plotting and planning …

Leo and his tunnel

Mission accomplished, tunnel overthrow achieved and Leo is back at rest

Leo is just a bunny full of surprises. I took the first two pictures of him at rest and then went back to work. A little later I heard a whoomp sound. I walked around the desk and found the tunnel completely over turned and Leo back at rest in his favorite little corner as if nothing at all had happened.

Leo is forming a habit of throwing over his tunnel. Since I can’t see what brings it on, I’m not sure if he gets mad at it, does something accidental or does it just because he can.

What Is Up with Rabbittude?

Close up of Leo #1

First close up picture attempt with Leo

Close up of Leo #2

Second close up picture attempt with Leo

Close up of Leo #3

Third close up picture attempt with Leo … success

Sometimes in life, you just have to stop talking about things and just work through them. It has been a bit of a rough patch here since last fall. There were some significant changes in some of the services we use and a really bad fall allergy season was followed by one of the worst winters we’ve had here in a long time. It all became a bit too much juggling. I decided to just keep focused on working through it all and bring the blog back when we were on a more even path again.

Today is a really good day to start talking again. As of today, we have officially had little Leo the Lionhead with us for two years. I will sometimes call him Le Li for short, pronouncing that as “lee lee”. I would have to say that Leo is the shyest bunny rabbit I have ever known. He holds back a lot. It has made getting to know him a real challenge.

I decided this afternoon to try to get a good close up picture of him now. LOL, camera-shy he is not. Every time I put the camera on the floor, he had to make sure the close up was really up close and personal. In trying to get a good shot, he nosed the lens, chewed the small tripod I had the camera on and I think probably got a whole bunch of  bunny fur, dander and just general essence of bunny rabbit all over the camera.

As you can see, first attempts were way too up close and personal. I finally had success with the third shot by literally putting the camera right down and clicking the button as soon as the tripod hit the floor. If there had been a fourth shot, it would have looked like the first two all over again.

So maybe I need to get the camera out more often if I want Leo to come straight to me … Rabbits are all such different personalities. Each new rabbit we come to know is very unique and different from every other rabbit we have known.

 

Sneaky Little Rabbit Tricks

Sneaky Leo plotsSo no way would this cute little bunny be plotting and planning something of evil destruction, right? Well we are finding that little Mr. Leo has another shade of Shadow (our previous devious destructo bunny) going on in spite of his cute innocent little bunny looks.

When we took him in to the vet at the end of October, everything was normal except she felt Leo’s stomach might be just a bit larger than it possibly should be. It was her first meeting with him though and nothing in any other way seemed wrong or out of the ordinary. So the vet told us to make sure he was eating a good diet to promote good motility of his digestive system and keep up with the weekly grooming of him to keep his excess fur ingestion down.

So on Monday Leo gives me a clue that there could be other sneaky little bunny activities that could have gone on that I will have to be more diligent to prevent. We had big problems with Shadow trying to consume anything he could sink his little teeth into. So Shadow had run time when someone was around to be supervising him so that he didn’t completely shut down his digestive system consuming all the household furnishings, carpets, upholstery, pillows, books, papers, sheets, blankets, wood furniture and baseboards. It got so we could tell what Shadow was chewing on by the sound of it. I didn’t think Leo was a carpet chewer like Shadow had been. There weren’t any bare spots or tell-tale little pieces of rug to be seen in his run area. Then on Monday I heard a funny chewing sound from him that I didn’t recognize.

When I checked out the sound, Leo had found a way to quietly munch on the rug. This area rug unlike others was not showing bare spots or he was being very careful to not graze too much in one area. It was clear he had eaten some rug as he had a few strands pulled loose and swallowed one before I could get it away from him. So Leo is going to lose some of his free roaming privileges like Shadow did, for the good of his digestive system. Leo didn’t like it when I put him in his pen when I needed to be away from him for a bit on Monday. He has a good-sized pen at 4 x 6 feet which normally doesn’t have the door closed, but he will have to get used to that more often if he is going to try to chew carpet.

I will have to check into replacing the area rugs with different ones that are jute or seagrass. We had some larger ones in jute and seagrass with Tigger and Shadow and wanted similar ones with Leo, but were having some difficulty finding them now without a latex backing. We couldn’t keep the ones we had previously as the vet wanted everything that could not sterilized thrown away since Tigger and Shadow had various infections going on at the end of their lives. So it is back to shopping around again for me to see if something is available that would be safer and allow Leo safer free roaming.

We’ll be making sure he gets lots of hay and monitoring his overall food intake and bunny poop output to make sure that what has gone in is coming back out. It just really puzzles me like it did with Shadow what the huge carpet attraction is all about. It can’t taste good and Leo has multiple choices in hay available in lots of places around his roaming space. I’ve also put down small straw mats in different areas. He has lots of wood and jute chew toys and some cardboard ones too. So what is the carpet fixation all about?

 

A Lionhead’s Lairs

One of Leo's lairsSo little Leo has proved to be a bunny who likes to have secretive little lairs. He is a small bunny. Like Tigger, he has the ability to seemingly disappear completely from sight. Little bunnies get into small spaces without disturbing things to give a clue where they might have gone.

Leo is there in the first picture, but the only way you might see him is to look for the darkness of his head casting a shadow where he decided to wiggle in to hide out. The first time he headed into this little hidden lair of his, I could hear him in the room, but could not find him. It was only when I saw something move that I realized where he had gone. Shadow would hide in plain sight by using his dark coloring to just park himself in front of or on something with a deep color. The other rabbits all chose to find hiding areas that they could get in to. Tigger and Leo being the smallest of our rabbits have both been able to get in to some areas without it being at all obvious they had gotten behind or under something. Little bunnies are sneaky bunnies for getting in to places and can create some challenges when bunny proofing to keep them safe. In this case Leo has found a safe space. So he has a new little area to call all his very own Lionhead lair.

Leos-Lair-2This second picture shows where he is hiding. Leo likes to sneak into the space behind the door. As the first picture shows he can do it in just inches of space that don’t disturb the door at all to give a clue he is back there. In the second picture, he has pushed at the door opening up which is why he is more visible.

This is something that reminds me of Portia. Tigger and Shadows’ main living area was our living room and the only door there was to the outside with no screen door. So the door was never open when they were out. Portia’s area was on our kitchen / dining room floor and there was a half bath there that when the door was open formed a little alcove behind the door. Portia liked to sneak into that area and would come running out of it when we would walk back into her area. It was clearly her secret space that she didn’t want to share with us. Now Leo has made a discovery of a similar secret space in his area in our office.

Tomorrow some news of what is coming up this month and next.