Well, I expected to be back much sooner today, but nothing has gone as planned. So I will stick with something amusing to follow.
I could really use an end of day laugh. How about you? So BunnyHugga has this great guide – How to Train a Human: A Guide for House Rabbits
Then if you dare you can continue on to see what your rabbits have been up to in the other training areas:
The answer to this one came in the Etsy forums this morning. Tissue alert, it had me in tears. I can just picture this so clearly! Click here for the answer. Thank you Deb Shaw for sharing!
I will be back with a Follow Friday later today …
Click image above to go to treasury and view items
This week, I find myself dealing with an on and off summer cold or allergy. So today I felt like visualizing myself enjoying one of those crisp clean days of autumn walking out in the woods where everything is so fresh and clean and you feel so good. It is not too hot or cold, the birds are singing, little animals are scurrying and nature’s fall colors are gorgeous.
I love to create treasuries on Etsy since I can take myself visually anywhere I want to go with them. At the same time I can show some goodwill to other sellers by featuring their lovely items. Enjoy!
Call me confused, but I found out earlier that my blog has been blocked by a group. It appears it happened about the time I posted a cartoon this morning. Perhaps I should not have admitted that we actually have some regularly occurring greenhouse gases here from time to time. Or maybe the cartoon of the greenhouse gas producer in the act was too much.
It is also possible that having a blog that talks about bunnies and is tagged with keywords bunny, bunnies, rabbit and attitude have caught up. After all, everything that talks about those keywords must be rated XXX, right? I really must resist the urge I have to do a photo with the stuffed rabbit Peeps that I have. I can only imagine what trouble that show would cause.
So, I am scratching my head here. I guess I don’t ever want to write about some of the things that Tigger and Shadow choose to do. Fixing bunnies only stops rabbit reproduction. All I intend to say on that is if you have bunnies and children, do expect at times to hear the following question, “Mommy what are the bunnies doing?” Looking to see what they are doing and finding a kid friendly explanation could at times be a challenge.
Gasp… Can’t breathe, eyes are tearing up and watering … One of the roaming rabbits has an issue … She is spewing toxic gasses today. Every where Tigger goes an SBD* cloud follows. Oh pooh!
*Edit: SBD = Silent But Deadly
Tigger & Shadow on the hop
Its morning and I just let the rabbits out and now have the pitter patter of roaming rabbit paws around the house. They are here and there, up and down, chewing this, checking that. Oops! I left open the door to one bathroom and there they are ready to zoom in …
Be back later today …
Etsy Treasury by NYHop - click image to go to it
This is a wonderful Etsy bunny rabbit treasury created by NYHop. Thanks so much for including our dust bunnies!
Tigger with plastic water and food bowl hooked to cage wall
Tigger with her plate of parsley
One thing that happened due to an accident, turned out to be a lot simpler for us long run. Tigger has always gnawed on her cage bars, even when the door was open and she was on the outside. One time as a baby, something spooked her and she pulled back without her teeth being free of the bars and injured her teeth and mouth. She lost the ability to use a water bottle with that injury. We switched her over to a heavy plastic water bowl that screwed on to the cage bars.
After we got Tigger and Shadow together, he started using the bowl instead of his bottle and we just switched him over too. We also found plastic bowls that hook over the cage bars for a small amount of pellets. We discovered how much easier it is to clean the bowls compared to the water bottles. You can just pop them in the dishwasher along with everything else. We have two sets of water bowls and food bowls, one set is in the cages while the other is either in a cabinet ready to use or in the dishwasher being cleaned.
When Tigger and Shadow are out for run time, we put down plastic plates for them of various greens. The plastic plates are inexpensive outdoor picnic style plates which due to Georgia’s warm climate are available in stores year round here: discount, food store, pretty much everywhere. These plates can also be put in the dishwasher. We have a set for them of about a half-dozen plates. Tigger likes to toss the plates if they are empty or the greens aren’t to her liking which gives a new bunny rabbit meaning to the term tossed salad.
Click image to see treasury and items on Etsy
If you can’t find a bunnysitter to physically get away, at least take visual vacations. That is what I like so much about treasuries on Etsy. I can curate 16 items that take me away to somewhere else for a time. Sometimes I buy an item and sometimes by doing the treasuries I help a buyer and seller connect by promoting other’s on Etsy. This treasury celebrates the end of summer and that special quality of light seen this time of year as summer is closing out.
Enjoy!
Click image for small animal section
One thing that was really hard for us early on was finding all the supplies we needed for Tigger and Shadow. Although we are in metro Atlanta, many of the good products for rabbits weren’t carried by any distributors in Georgia. We had to have nearly everything for them shipped in.
Ordering delivered direct had issues, like huge shipping costs. I was always scouting for the online store that was located the closest so that it would have the lowest UPS / FedEx / US postal shipping costs. It was frustrating at times to have the shipping be equal to or more than the items I needed. It was also tricky at times to balance the amount of shipping time needed versus when things were running out.
Doctors Foster and Smith have come along way in the ten years of Tigger and Shadow. At the start, they were mostly dog and cat. Now they have lots of small animal products and all the things ours love best like Oxbow products, Peter’s grass products, treats, toys and lots of other stuff.
Shipping has been $5.99 per order which is a dream and I see they have it listed on the site as free shipping for orders $49 dollars or more. They have a catered pet program. You call to sign up for regular delivery of products direct to your door. You create your menu which can be different items, quantities, and schedules. Every 10th shipment is on them!
I think it is time for me to order some pellets, hay, papaya tablets, treats and some grass mats! I think it is also time to get myself an organized shopping list and sign up for the catered pet program.
Small bungee cord holding baby Shadow's water bottle
Alligator elastic clip holding adult Shadow's haybin
As promised yesterday, here are images of bungee cords and elastic alligator clips in use for bunnies. The last photo shows an outdoor resin storage bench that we had in the bunny room in our apartment. It stored stuff for them, but you can see they loved it too. We used some small rugs to make it a comfortable less slippery place for them to hang out. We held the rugs to the arm with elastic alligator sheet clips front and back and used giant metal paperclips to hold the arm rugs to the seat rug.
The bench backed up against a window and the bunnies loved to wiggle through the holes in the bench onto the window ledge which we had to cover with cardboard to protect it from teething. They would often take naps in the afternoon on the bench or the window ledge. We had a second floor apartment. I wondered if anyone looking up and seeing animals sleeping in the window ever realized it was rabbits and not cats.
I will have a follow friday suggestion later this evening.
I can imagine the visual this title created. I am talking bungee cords for bunnies, but to keep things organized, not for bunny jumping stunts. I am also talking about bunnyproofing uses for the alligator clip elastic straps that are used to keep sheets in place on beds.
This has been a crazy day, so I haven’t had a chance to get photos of these in action. I will post a couple of images tomorrow. I first saw these baby bungee cords in action at our first vets office. These are just 3″ and 6″ in length and they were using them to hook around water bottles and hold them to the cages. I never realized that the home improvement store carried ones so small!
Most water bottles come with a metal hook to hold them to the cages, but I liked the idea of these bungee cords the minute I saw them. My family’s first bunny, Thumper, while in his cage would bounce his water bottle up and down until he unhooked the metal hook and his bottle would then fall off the cage. Fortunately for Thumper, someone was usually at home, otherwise he would have gone thirsty. So I loved the fact that the bungees would be something the bunnies could not disable while in their cages.
The larger bungee / the elastic sheet alligator clips work well to hold plastic hay bins onto the cages. The little clip-on plastic pieces built onto those have never work right for us. The hay bins would constantly be falling off without these bungees / sheet clips. We have also used the sheet clips to hold some rugs in place on outdoor plastic furniture we had giving the bunnies a slip proof surface to hop up on.
So anything you need to hold in place for the bunnies, these can help you out. They also serve as a chew toy for the bunnies from time to time. Occasionally one gets chewed through. It hasn’t happened too often though. I am assuming they got a bit of elastic snap that discouraged that particular chewing activity.