Throwback Thursday: Thumper My First Bunny Experience

Thumper bunny rabbitI met my first house rabbit back in 1980. A coworker of my father had two pet bunnies who had one litter of four bunnies and a month later another litter of eight. The woman brought the first litter in to where my father worked when the bunnies were six weeks old and offered them to anyone who would give them a good home. My father picked out the spunkiest one in the bunch and brought him home. We were very unoriginal and called him Thumper. That was the only bunny rabbit name we knew of besides Bugs Bunny and he didn’t look like a Bugs Bunny, so Thumper it was.

My family was clueless about taking care of a bunny rabbit, but we had some experience with hamsters and guinea pigs and started out at that point. Mom got Thumper a cage, water bottle, food crock and some small animal pellets. We had him in the kitchen which was the most interior room of the house, but even so, he caught cold during the first two weeks in the bitter northern Ohio weather (post on keeping rabbits warm). That is when we got lucky and found a small animal practice in our area who treated cats, dogs, guinea pigs, birds, and rabbits. They helped us to learn about feeding, clipping nails, rabbit health, and so much more over the ten years of Thumper’s life.

I was still living at home but had just started my first full-time job. It was a night job and I would stay up on my nights off. My first night off after Thumper caught cold, I listened to him sneezing like crazy. I got him out of his cage, wrapped him in a towel and sat down in a huge upholstered rocker we had. He snuggled his head under my chin, stopped sneezing and went to sleep. That began his reign as a snuggle bunny. Thumper liked being picked up and held and would paw at my ankles or moms when he wanted some cuddling. He would always squirm up until he had his head tucked in to my neck right under my chin. Then he would zone out while I petted him.

At the time Thumper arrived in our lives, there was no House Rabbit Society or internet to turn to for advice on rabbit care. Anything written was by breeders and geared towards raising rabbits as farm or show rabbits. Besides our vet, Thumper himself proved himself a good teacher on rabbit care and behavior. He picked out one place in the kitchen as a bathroom and mom wondered if we could put a litter box there and train him. As soon as she put the litter box in place, Thumper was trained. We checked out things geared for cats and bought a kitty harness and leash. As soon as Thumper realized the connection between being put in his harness and going outside, he would hold perfectly still so that we could get the harness just right. We would take him on short walks in the front and back yard and it was always funny to watch people do a double take when they realized we were walking a rabbit.

Thumper had some life long tummy issues. We realize with the information out now, they were probably due to his leaving his mother a few weeks too early. He was our first experience with a poopy bunny butt. With the vet’s assistance we learned about what to do with diet and medication when that would happen. We learned to mummy wrap him and syringe medicate him. We figured out a means on our own of giving him just a partial bath (more on poopy bunny butt baths) to get him cleaned up again. We had to medicate him many times over the years for his tummy problems and he learned a few tricks too. We would use a syringe for the medicine, but he learned how to not swallow and let it just drool back out of his mouth. When we would mummy him in a towel, he learned how to play turtle and get his face below the lip of the towel no matter how close we tried to get it under his head. The term rabbittude didn’t come to mind until later after other bunnies came in to my life, but Thumper was showing his rabbittude even though I didn’t recognize it as such at the time.

Thumper was my first learning experience of how personable, playful and intelligent a rabbit can be. Mom had a coconut sitting on a newspaper on the kitchen floor waiting to break it open. When Thumper saw it, he pounced on it, batted it into submission with his front paws, and then claimed it as his by chinning it to death. After that we tried more toys for him to play with. Our other pet at the time was a large retriever mix dog that we were careful to let out in the yard when Thumper was running free in the house. Someone let the dog in by accident during Thumper’s run time and the retriever started to chase him. We were terrified and so scared for Thumper, because both he and the dog were moving too fast for us to get to them quickly enough. Thumper was running at top speed when suddenly he doubled back straight through the dog’s legs. The dog was immediately thrown off-balance and while the dog was trying not to fall, Thumper hopped back in his cage and we closed the door protecting him again. We made certain they were never accidentally loose together again after that.

Thumper had his own personal rock star rabbit routine that he developed when he didn’t feel pampered enough that is a whole story all on its own. More about that next Thursday …

Keeping Rabbits Warm Enough

Thumper bunny rabbit

Thumper, my first house rabbit

I’ve changed what I planned for today to write something more topical for the weather here today. We are getting a very early taste of winter this year in Georgia with a freeze warning for tonight and possibly our first snow too. Since some winters we really don’t get any snow at all, this is likely to be an unusually cold night for us.

It made me think of bitter cold winter nights growing up in northern Ohio. When thinking of rabbits and cold winter nights, I can’t help but think of my first house rabbit experience with Thumper. My dad came home from work one day with Thumper for my brother who had just lost his hamster. None of us knew anything about having a rabbit as a pet and poor mom was scrambling trying to come up with the right food and accommodations for the new family addition.

Thumper was just a couple of pounds, he fit easily in my hands. He was still very much a baby bunny. Winters in Ohio are bitterly cold and the one when Thumper arrived in our home was no different.  Even though we were keeping him inside the house, he caught cold. Listening to him begin to sneeze almost continuously, we found a vet for him and took him in for his first visit. We found out that rabbits and especially baby rabbits can be sensitive to cold and drafts. A fur coat is not enough to keep warm enough when it is really cold, even if the rabbit is indoors. We found out we needed to get Thumper into a warmer part of the house and it would be best if we could get his cage off the floor, especially at night when it was coldest and cover it up to protect him from drafts. Getting Thumper warmer, allowed him to recover from his cold and live a decade with my family.

When Blaine and I got Tigger and Shadow, then Portia and now Leo, we had lived in Georgia for a time already. The winters are not the bitter cold of Ohio. It is more moderate here, but still I realized it was going to be important even with indoor house rabbits to keep them warm in the winter time and out of drafts. We have never placed cages or pens on outer walls of the house that can be chillier. At night-time we gauge the temperature of the house and cover cages with a sheet or blanket at least partly depending on how cold it seems or whether there is a chilly wind outside that could make the house draftier too. We make sure with covers to cages that there is an open space and not absolute 100% coverage. We want to be sure that there is fresh air circulation into the cage. We would give piles of hay so that the rabbits could snuggle into that too as well as have it to eat. It was good at those times to make sure the in cage litter boxes were really clean in case the rabbits wanted to sleep in their box.

So before we go to bed tonight, we will be sure to be tucking in some cover around Leo’s cage to keep him safe from any colder drafts on this freezing night to come.

The Story on Bunny Baths

Makes a cute photo, but rabbit baths are not needed

Using bath props with a rabbit makes a cute photo, but in real life bunny baths are not needed

The video we shared earlier today was mostly cute and fun, but had one picture of a soaking wet rabbit with the comment that the rabbit was going to seek revenge. I don’t blame the bunny at all. Rabbits do not need  baths.  Yes, I know that pet shops in stores and online have pet shampoos and some of them show bunnies in the pictures. Some might even call themselves a rabbit shampoo. If you are new to having a bunny pal, you do not need to buy anything like that.

Rabbits are incredibly self-cleaning. They clean themselves quite regularly absolutely head to toe. It is amazing to see how very flexible they are. They are able to clean every inch of themselves by themselves. There is only one time you might have to consider using water to clean a rabbit. Sometimes if a rabbit has digestive problems, they might develop a poopy butt. If this happens and it is the first time with your rabbit, you want to check with or visit your vet to make sure that you know the proper diet / medications necessary to get your rabbit’s digestion back on track.

My first experience dealing with poopy butt was with Thumper, the very first pet rabbit my dad brought home in 1980. Thumper came to us at a time there wasn’t a lot of information about rabbits as house pets. He was just six weeks old and his first family was finding homes for one group of baby bunnies because a second group had now arrived. Long after Thumper was gone, we learned that the on and off lifelong digestive issues he had might have been because he left mom before eight weeks of age. Those first eight weeks with momma rabbit are important for a rabbit developing what is needed for lifelong digestive health. So leaving mom too early may have been the cause of Thumper’s issues.

At the time, we just knew we had to help him get healthy and get the poopy butt clean.  Mom and I learned how to do a bunny butt bath. There wasn’t any house rabbit info to consult, so we just thought the situation out. We didn’t think a whole bunny bath was  needed, just his butt was a mess. So we would fill a bucket with warm water and one of us would lower him in so that he was in the water from below his waist. While one of us was holding him, the other would run hands through his fur as the water helped to loosen what was stuck in his fur. Thumper was a really good bunny about the butt baths. It was almost like he enjoyed it as if it was a bunny hot tub. He would lay back against the edge of the bucket in the hands of whoever was holding him and just let the other set of hands go to work massaging the mess out of his fur. When he was clean, we would lift him out and towel dry him.

When we got Tigger, Shadow and Portia, the first one to have poopy butt issues was Portia. She was a bit too heavy and having trouble cleaning herself and she was beginning to experience health problems. When her first butt bath was necessary, I knew Portia would be a great deal more feisty than Thumper. She was not going to just relax for a bucket hot tub bath. This video did not exist at the time, but what we did with Portia is exactly as shown in this HRS video, Do Rabbits Need to Be Bathed. We used a litter box lined with a towel and with a small amount of warm water in it. Then we would towel dry her afterwards.

Tigger late in life started to develop her first poopy butt when she started to have some digestive problems on and off. As she aged further, she developed hip mobility issues. She wasn’t moving around as much, got a bit heavier than her normal and due to the weight and hip issues had more trouble cleaning herself. She also had trouble hopping in and out of the litter box, even though we continuously got lower and lower sided ones. Near the very end of her life, she was having not only poopy butt, but some urine that would remain on her fur. So Tigger as she aged started to need some very regular butt baths.

We knew Tigger even though aging would be even more of a handful than Portia. Like a cat, Tigger hated being wet. So I thought about how we might get the absolute least of her wet that was necessary. I thought about how baby baths were angled so the baby would be sitting up. I wished we had something like that so that Tigger’s behind could be in the water while the rest of her was out of the water. I thought even if we had a baby bath to convert to bunny use, it would be too big since Tigger was only five pounds. So I started thinking about anything that might work instead. The picture below shows a stuffed bunny as standing in to show my solution. We bought a new plastic paint pan.  We could fill the paint well with warm water and line the angled part with a towel. In that way everything of Tigger except her butt could stay dry.

Bunny Butt Bath

With Tigger after her late in life butt baths, we would pat her as dry as would could with a towel and paper towels.  Then we would use a blow dryer on a low setting for heat and air so that it was less noisy and not too warm. With age her skin was more sensitive and delicate. We wanted to make sure she was dry and not irritated by any lingering wetness. Also with age, she was more prone to illness, so we wanted to make absolutely sure she was dry and kept completely warm to prevent illness from being too cold.

Nitrile GloveNow you might be reading this and thinking this sounds really messy and perhaps you have some skin issues of your own that using a bare hand would not be a good choice.  Have no fear, lightweight gloves are readily available now. We pick up boxes of powder free nitrile gloves from our local home improvement store that we use for many  household tasks.  We use the nitrile powder free gloves because powder is a lung and skin irritant for us, so we avoid any gloves that aren’t powder free. We are avoiding latex gloves, because they can cause allergies in humans. I wear a glove on just the hand that needs to be in the water doing the poopy butt clean up. Due to eczema, my hands are sometimes prone to issues of it flaring up if my skin comes in contact with water too often. Our choices in how we care for the bunnies are based on our own experience of blending the needs of both bunny and human. I am sharing about the gloves for anyone else like myself where a poopy butt bath could present a challenge to best maintaining your own sensitive skin without harm.