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.

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.

Treasured Tuesday – Rabbit Transit – Bunnies On the Move

Bunny Bungalow

Photo © BusyBunny.com

More of Shadow hiding in plain sight

Arrow points to Shadow hiding inside

shadow-gallery-8

I’m waiting …

This is a blast from the past today since it looks like the Bunny Bungalow has been discontinued. The first image is from one of Busy Bunny’s old catalog pages. We found the Bungalow early on with Tigger and Shadow.

They loved this as a hideout and play area. But they also re purposed the use of this. They liked to have this be a bunny bus.  Shadow in particular loved to hop inside and have us carry him somewhere else in the bunny bus. Sometimes they would both hop in together and just wait there looking at us until we would go and pick the box up making sure that we carried it slowly and close to the ground just in case somebunny decided to make an unexpected departure.

Tigger and Shadow hated to be picked up and held and carried around.  But they were very calm and easy-going when we would give them their bus rides, waiting until the box came to a stop on the ground before disembarking. It seems that having their feet on a floor made a difference to how they felt about being picked up and moved. With the Bunny Bungalow as bus, their chosen rabbit transit, they actively sought to be moving around  in it at times.

Sometimes at night, Shadow would get a bunny bus ride to his cage.  There were evenings he was really avoiding going back in his cage for the night. He would hop all around evading us and then he would hop in to the Bunny Bungalow. We would pick it up, take it to his cage and place one of the openings at his door. If Shadow was in good behavior mode, he would hop in for the night. If he was in bad behavior mode, he would escape out one of the other doors in the bus and we would have to begin again. Sometimes he got a number of bus rides before he decided to call it a night.

 

Treasured Tuesday – Tigger & Shadow

Plant tray as bunny furniture

This is Tigger & Shadow on their plant tray lounger. They are covering so much of it you can barely see it the dark green edges of it. When we brought them home as babies, we looked around first at things we had that we could use for them. Then if we didn’t have something we could repurpose, we would look for things to buy. We had some green plastic plant trays about 6 inches wide by 30-36 inches long that we weren’t using. The pictures below show how we thought those plant trays would be used, to hold their pellet and water bowls in their play areas. We naïvely thought that trays would be used as trays to catch spilled food or water.

Plant trays being used as feeding traysLittle did we know, but the bunnies showed us that the plant trays were actually the perfect size for bunny furniture. Over the years, they would lounge on them and especially when older, I think they liked the ease of getting on and off them, but also still having a bit of support with the low sides. Perhaps part of their liking might also have been that the trays were plastic and maybe a bit cooler than the carpet on some of the hotter Georgia days.

I included a link in the first paragraph to clearly see a picture of the type of tray we used. These are available lots of places, but I am using Amazon for some sample pictures of things we have used with the rabbits, since I can pin things on Amazon to our new Pinterest board: House Rabbits at Home. I plan to use that board to show some of the things that we have used or are planning to try now with Leo so that others can get ideas or give comments on items on the board if they have used similar things.

Tomorrow some of the things that are up in the studio here …

Shadow Negotiating the Stairways – Mom’s Fascination

Shadow on the stairs

Shall I go up or down?

Shadow on the stairs

Well I hopped up one, but I'm not sure, do I really want to go up?

Shadow on the stairs

Nope! Coming down!

Shadow on the stairs

Coming through!

Although our vet wasn’t happy that we allowed the rabbits to run up and down the stairs, we taught them to do it safely very early on.  We understood the vet was concerned because she had seen many injuries to animals from stairways.  However, we knew that Tigger and Shadow were way too focused on going wherever they wanted to go.  We felt the safest way to prevent them from having any accidents on the stairs, was to teach them how to navigate them safely.  Since the house is a tri-level with two sets of stairs running openly through the middle, we weren’t at all sure our bunny proofing would completely prevent them from getting to the stairs anyway.

We started when they were just a year old and were very swift and agile.  We would block off one stairway so that the training only involved one set of steps at a time.  Blaine or I would sit on a step near the top while the other would sit on a step near the bottom. In that way, we used our bodies to block a good portion of the stairway and were within arms reach of the rabbits should they have a misstep.

However, this was the one thing in life that Tigger and Shadow took with caution.  Until they really had the lay of the stairs and the feel of going up and down them, they took them quite cautiously and slowly.  With practice and time, they would fly up and down the stairs and seem to not touch some of the steps at all.

Shadow was always able to negotiate the stairs throughout his life.  Tigger late in life began to go blind and we had to block her access at that time which wasn’t hard since she herself was no longer feeling safely able to use them.  If Shadow went downstairs, we would see Tigger at the top wanting to go down too and would carry her down to be with him. Then we would block the stairs until we could make sure they both safely made it back up, Shadow on his own and one of us carrying Tigger back up.

When my Mom first visited, she was fascinated to see the rabbits running up and down the stairs and determined to get pictures of them on film.  Tigger was way too swift for her to catch, but I think Shadow with his sweetness recognized what Mom wanted.  There was a time shortly before she was due to leave on that visit that Shadow slowed down and paused on a step or two to allow Mom the ability to take these pictures showing him navigating the stairs.

There were only two occasions when I was scared that the rabbits would be hurt on the stairs.  At first we blocked access to the stairs with a baby gate that was about 30 inches tall.  That actually proved to be too short for Shadow’s athletic jumping ability and he leaped the gate and very fortunately landed squarely on a stair.  After that if we blocked the stairs at all for the rabbits, we did it with a fence 48 inches high.

The second time I was terrified, it was due to one of Tigger’s stupid stunts. Tigger had been hopping on Shadow’s head to hump him. We began to recognize that certain look on her face and had begun telling her no quite strongly. So then she became a bit craftier and would just take a flying leap onto his head. That would usually land her more onto his body rather than his head and she would be giving him a full body hump. However, Tigger being smaller than Shadow, her paws would be dangling above floor level and Shadow would just hop out from under her.

So one evening, Tigger, Shadow and I were all standing at the top of the stairs. I saw that look on Tigger’s face, yelled ‘NO!’ and she took the flying leap anyway. Tigger’s backside landed on Shadow’s head with her body sprawled across his back with her front paws and head by Shadow’s tail. That is when Shadow decided to take off, … right … down … the stairs. I watched in horror as they went down them piggyback. I was expecting at any time to see rolling balls of rabbits. I do not know how Tigger managed to hold on and stay on Shadow’s back and I have no idea how Shadow saw where he was going with Tigger sitting on his head, but they made it all the way down, safely. When we told the vet about it at our next visit, she told us we had better hope that Tigger didn’t enjoy the ride or she would try it again.

That was a rub my eyes did I just see that moment and a time I wished the whole house had been wired for video to have captured it. I think the adventure must have scared Tigger, she never leapt on Shadow by the stairway again.

Senior Tigger

This is going to be a bit long, because I am going to share the hardest illness of Tigger’s life to deal with which actually wasn’t the very end. At the very end, it was a gradual slowing down, stiffening up, eyesight fading away, hunger coming and going over a period of months until it was quite clear the end had arrived.

Is Tigger resting or in pain?

Tough call position: Tigger would hen up to nap, but would also hen up if she was in pain. The difference in judging was often the length of time she stayed in this position. More than a few hours with an unwillingness to move when nudged, meant she was in pain.

The vet started talking about Tigger as an elder bunny after turning eight years old. At that point there really wasn’t much other than a slight slowing down and gassy tummy issues occurring more often to show that she was getting up in years.  Most of the time, Tigger was Tigger, sassy and getting into everything and hassling Shadow if he wasn’t paying her enough of what she deemed the right attention.

When she was nine and a half years old, we had a crisis hit the neighborhood, literally when a bolt of lightning zapped all the way down into the ground.  I heard the thunder, saw the bolt of white light, felt the ground shake and everything in the house went off, all at the same time.  Frazzled doesn’t cover the feeling, everything needed checking on all at once … First I made sure the house hadn’t been hit and the bunnies were all right.  Then began the rounds of everything else.  Electricity was off for several hours, when it came back on, I began to realize that we had problems with a lot of systems and equipment.  The phone line was coming and going making calling for assistance hard.  This one taught me to always make sure my cell phone was charged.

Over the next week we had a whole series of repairmen trooping in to fix things.  It was August and extremely hot, so we had to rent a portable air conditioner for a day for the rabbits room until we could get the A/C rigged to just run until a part of the switching system could be replaced.  After an exhausting week, we thought we had things back to normal again.  That is when we noticed that Tigger wasn’t eating and drinking enough.  We tried the usual tummy routine we had for her when she would seem gassy.  We would give her Simethicone, extra water and tummy rubs.  Usually that would have her responding back to normal within 12 hours at the most, but it wasn’t working this time.  We took her in to the vet and didn’t find out anything more than we knew before we went in.  We were told to keep up with the Simethicone and feed her with Oxbow Critical Care as needed.  We also tried wilted greens as suggested.

Over the next week, there was no real change, no improvement.  We went in again and the doctor did another exam and suggested putting Tigger under anesthesia to do a good exam of the teeth.  We knew the anesthesia at her age was risky, but didn’t feel we had a choice.  She had begun grinding her teeth on a regular basis.  It was obvious she was in pain somewhere.  The vet brought her back in fairly quickly, really groggy from the anesthesia and said she had found one tooth that was a little pointy but didn’t know if that was the problem.  We were somewhat surprised she hadn’t just taken care of that while Tigger was under the anesthesia, but had been seeing the vet for years and really trusted her judgment and care, so didn’t push for asking why she hadn’t acted on that.

We were sent home again without much more than the bill for the trip, still told to do Simethicone, Critical Care and had a little bit of pain medicine for her. After another week with no improvement, we were reaching exhaustion trying to care for Tigger ourselves at home making sure she had enough feedings each day, enough water, pain meds and then still care for Shadow too and try to eat, sleep and work ourselves.  Tigger was still not wanting to eat much on her own, was still grinding her teeth in pain and was seeming as tired and unhappy as we were.

We weren’t getting much help when we would check in with the vets office by phone.  I would call and go through everything that was going on and be told someone would call me back.  Hours would pass and when I would call back, I would be greeted with surprise that I was expecting a call, because the chart had been noted Tigger was doing well ??? We went online seeking help from Etherbun.  It was suggested that we really needed to discuss the situation quite openly with the vet about what Tigger’s options and prognosis really were at this point.  Should motility drugs be tried?  Was she at a point where she might not recover?  Was it possible that euthanasia was the compassionate choice if she was in constant unrelieved pain?

We made another appointment with the vet with the intention of discussing and being open to knowing where things stood, however that might be.  It was an awful visit right from the start.  Tigger was in pain and completely freaked out.  After being weighed, she took a flying leap off the scale straight up into the air and landed teetering on my shoulder.  I had a split second vision of what a fall from five feet would do to her.  Fortunately for Tigger, I had early in life emergency training on how to help someone who is in danger of falling to the floor, by putting myself between them and the floor while doing a controlled fall myself.  I immediately fell forward onto my stomach across the exam table.  That shifted Tigger onto my back, surprised her and in the moment of surprise the vet tech was able to safely grab her.

The exam by the vet showed nothing any different from previous weeks and when we tried to discuss all our options, medications or whether this might be the end, the vet completely shut down the discussion and said she would never consider euthanasia for any animal she felt still had life in them.  Then she left the room.  I have never felt more tired or frustrated.  We didn’t want to lose Tigger, but we didn’t want to have her grinding her teeth in pain hour after hour, day after day either.  That was simply no way to live.  We left the office with basically the same thing we had from the previous two visits, another bill and instructions to keep doing what we were doing.

We reached out again on Etherbun and were put in touch with a rabbit rescuer who had a great deal of experience dealing with rabbits in stasis.  He was wonderful.  He told us to get to another vet ASAP, to get as much water into Tigger as we could and what pain and motility medicines to call up and insist the current vet provide us with until we could get a second opinion.  The increased water and pain medicine helped Tigger be a bit more comfortable.  The motility drug, we had to stop after two doses, Tigger developed seizure like head movements which was one of the serious side effects noted to watch out for.  We had an appointment set for a new vet in a just a couple of days.

With the new vet, we were dismayed that the record transfer we had requested from the other vet had not taken place as we had been assured it had by the other vet’s office staff.  We went over the whole history and everything that had been tried and everything Tigger had gone through.  The vet was very patient and took her time with a thorough exam.  We told the vet we didn’t know what to do, it was obvious Tigger was in constant pain and although we didn’t want to lose her, we could not continue to put her through nothing but pain either.  The vet gave us the option to try having an exam done under anesthesia to see if there was a tooth issue that needed to be addressed.  She warned us that since Tigger was elderly and had been under anesthesia just a little over a week before, there was a much greater risk that she would not wake up.  We did not see any choice but to try.

Thankfully, the vet filed down the sharp tooth the previous vet had noted and Tigger did awake easily from the anesthesia.  She started to recover after that and was back to herself again soon.  I have never written about this before, because it was just such a painful experience to go through for all of us.  I am not sure if the stress of the lightning strike played a part in Tigger’s illness or if all the lengthy repairs after the strike just kept us from noticing a problem sooner.  I have no idea why after years with the one vet, the communication took so many seemingly wrong turns.  I am writing about the experience now so that hopefully others won’t have to go through the same thing.  Even if you have a vet you have loved who has been great in the past, if it suddenly seems that you aren’t being heard or helped, seek a second opinion. Your reward for acting to find another option might then be the same as ours, more time to enjoy with your rabbit.  We were blessed with another year and half with Tigger after she recovered.

This weekend, a gallery of Tigger photos and next week Shadow’s stories begin …

Princess Lady Bunny

Little Lady bunny Tigger with paws just so.Tigger had a way of positioning herself that was just so very proper that we called her the little lady bunny.  She would always have her little paws lined up side by side completely even and balanced.  It always reminded me of old movies or TV shows with the ladies in hats and gloves who would have both hands side by side holding their purses so very properly.

We called her Princess because she decidedly had a sense of what was due to HRH Princess Tigger bunny rabbit.  When she would enter a room, she would pause and thump.  It became the Tigger has entered the room announcement, pay attention.  She also thumped when she was mad.  If you offended the royal rabbit by picking her up and messing with her for medicine or clean ups or feedings, as soon as you put her back down there was a thump or two or more of outrage depending on how big she deemed the offense. If she became really frightened, she would run into the sheet tunnel we had for the rabbits or under the guest bed and would become a serial thumper.  After she calmed down, she would have that over the shoulder little nose in the air, pouty look.  Or sometimes she would hop away while flicking the back feet showing herself to be offended.

Now Tigger was very catlike in being quite independent, but when Princess Tigger wanted attention, you were supposed to be ready, willing and able to pay her the attention she deemed fitting.  I made the mistake once of sitting on the floor while talking on the phone and forgetting all about her.  That is until she snuck up behind me and gave me a pinching nip on my behind and took off running away.  I had been warned I was behaving offensively.  I squealed into the phone as she nipped me and had to apologize and explain.  Then I stood up to finish the call and went to attempt to soothe Princess Tigger’s outraged feelings of being ignored.

Her sneak up and nip wasn’t limited to my one phone experience.  If she didn’t feel Shadow was paying her enough of the right attention, she would sneak up behind him and give him a nip and take off running.  It was a good thing she was quite a bit faster than he was.  They would run and tire themselves out and then forget why they had been running and go back to being as they were again.

HRH Princess Tigger just absolutely delighted in going right into the middle of the room in front of the fireplace to eat her soft serve cecal snack or give herself a head to toe bunny bath. Why wouldn’t everyone want to watch her every bunny move?  Ah, well, she knew she was cute and she knew she was special.  She worked it for all a bunny could to get the attention she wanted when she wanted it.  It wasn’t at all hard to mentally picture a sparkly tiara on that little bunny head.

Tomorrow boarding a Tigger & spay time …

Ballerina in Jammies

Tigger groomingTigger showing off the bunny onesie jammie legs.When Tigger would sit up on her hind legs to clean herself or roll over on her side or back, it really showed off the white and black coloring of her underside. The way the fur was colored and separated by her hind legs always looked like she had on a bunny rabbit version of baby onesie jammies.

Tigger was so very particular and precise in her movements, it was like watching a ballerina moving from ballet pose to pose. So it was especially cute to always see what looked like an infant bodysuit on a little rabbit ballerina.  It was fun to watch her meticulously clean herself head to toe to tail and move from one ballet like pose to another with such grace and such cuteness.

Stretch and hold that pose Tigger ...

Stretch and hold that pose Tigger ...

With Tigger, there were just so many sides to her with both her coloring and fur and her personality. I think that is what was so engaging about her.  Everyone who met Tigger just had to fuss over her.  It was a blessing and a curse for our little baby girl.  She just loved being fussed over verbally, but like many small children, she would have preferred not to get those hugs!

Next week will wrap up the stories that are all about Tigger.  Stories of Shadow begin July 1st.  For a full final celebration of Tigger, there will be a story each day Monday through Thursday.  On Friday I will post a gallery of images of Tigger.  Stories of Tigger as she was with Shadow will be coming in September.

Tigger the Mini Race Horse

Always ready to runWatching rabbits run is incredible.  Tigger ran like the wind.  She was just so fast and so light.  No one could catch her until she would tire out.  When she ran up the stairs, it looked like she was sailing over some steps, not touching them all as she flew up or down them.  Looking at a rabbit sitting still, it is hard to imagine them so fast.  The build of front legs to back legs looks so out of sync and balance.  It would seem that a funny hopping motion would be all you might expect.

But when I watched Tigger sitting as she is in this first picture, I noticed how very long and straight her front legs were.  They were so light and slim in comparison to the rest of her body.  It made me think of race horses with the very slender legs that look like they shouldn’t be able to support all the body weight and yet the horses are pure poetry in motion.  I realized watching Tigger that she would often have the same way of holding her head and front legs as I had seen in horses right before they would leap into a full run.  She also had the same way of straightening her head out level with her body that you see in horses when they race.

Tigger’s Bunny 500 racing was so regulated,  we would say that the Tigger Train was running.  We tried to make sure that there were always easy open running areas around the full perimeter of rooms, because she would run around and around just like a horse running a racetrack.

We also kept those running areas clear of things.  Tigger like a horse was also easily freaked.  A weird sound or movement and she would be off like a shot.  We often said her motto was, “Run first, look later”. Sometimes her freakazoid runs would start Shadow running and we would have an out of control bunny stampede with them banging into things and each other at high-speed.  Their cage at one point was six feet long with a door at each end.  They stampeded into opposite ends of the cage meeting head on in the middle.  They stunned each other a bit, but fortunately were not hurt.  As time went on though, when something would send Tigger into stampede mode, Shadow learned to be in sync with her.  You would see the two of them running full speed side by side as close together as two race horses running in tandem shoulder to shoulder to make that finish line first.

Tigger in ready, set mode ...There was one time that her mini horse racer speed saved her. We would always look at any sofa or chair before sitting down and look for where the rabbits were too as a safety measure.  One evening, Tigger wasn’t as far away as I had judged.  I started to sit down and Tigger decided to jump up and race across the sofa as I was coming down.  I had no ability to catch myself and literally felt her brush underneath across my lower back as she raced through.  I am not sure who was more scared with that one.

We had a couple open-ended boxes with a sheet draped over them as a tunnel for the bunnies.  Something set Tigger off once while she was in the tunnel and she took off top speed.  Somehow, she got wrapped up in the sheet, pulling the boxes down so that she couldn’t run through them.  She kept running pulling everything with her as she then barreled sideways into a hay bowl overturning that, before she ran free of everything and then sat there blinking all the hay dust out of her eyes.  We were sitting there within four feet and this took about 30 seconds.  We couldn’t even stand up to help her before it was all over.  Well, except for the call to the vet to find out what we should look for if the hay in the eyes had caused a problem. Fortunately, she was fine again within 24 hours.

Like a race horse that would become agitated, at the vet we often helped to calm Tigger a bit during exams by covering her eyes.  There was one time the vet told us that the rabbit digestive system was closest to that of a horse.  Watching Tigger, I thought there were many similarities and that we often had a high-spirited mini race horse in our home.

The one regret I have is that we didn’t have an opportunity to catch lots of Tigger and Shadow on video. With my first family bunny Thumper, I was just learning how to take photos with point and shoot cameras.  So there aren’t many photos of him.  With Tigger and Shadow, we were making the switch from film to digital cameras.  So we got a lot of images (lots of bad ones during the learning), but never had the chance to really start learning how to capture them on video.  Something to learn with bunnies of the future …

On Friday, Ballerina in Jammies …

Tigger Toys … aka Baseball Bunny Rabbit

Tigger with lots of toy choices

So many toys, what to choose ...

So what on earth do I mean by calling Tigger a baseball bunny?  Well, she liked to pitch and she liked to bat.  In the picture above, you can see she had lots of different chew toys to choose from and she did like all of them.  But her absolute favorite things to play with were the ones she could throw.  Tigger liked to pitch things.  It really was not so safe to be too close to Tigger if she decided to play, because she could really throw.

Tigger getting ready ...

Tigger getting ready ...

Tigger in action with her throw!

Tigger in action with her throw!

I took the first picture here as she approached her toys and was taken completely by surprise when she picked up her Bounce Back Bunny treat holder, whirled around and heaved it at me like a bunny shot put champion.  Fortunately, I wasn’t hit.  I was amazed she could pick it up and throw it.  The toy had a weighted base to help it bounce back up as a rabbit would try to pull a treat out of the slots in the body.  The size of it was easily equal to the size of her head.  This was the first time she tossed it and I was lucky enough to catch it on camera. Through out her life, she loved to pick up and throw that bunny and any other cat style throw toys we gave her.  We would hear bells ring and knew she was pitching, but when the bell sound was followed by a thump, we knew she was shot putting the Bounce Back Bunny.

Tigger loved to pick up empty paper towel holders and swat things with them.  I discovered how actively she would put that to use in one vet visit.  I took her in and put a paper towel holder in the carrier with her to keep her occupied while we were waiting.  She wasn’t happy about being in the carrier and at the vets, so she picked up the paper towel holder and starting smacking it around and hitting all the sides of her carrier.  We were in an exam room at the end of the hall with the door closed, but she was making such a racket that the vet techs kept coming in every few minutes to make sure everything was okay.  Uh, yeah, just my little rabbit batter doing her practice training and taking a physical means of stress relief.

Her love of throwing things extended also to sometimes tossing the plastic salad plates of greens that we would put down on the floor and flipping over large round bowls of hay.  She had a middle of the night habit sometimes of picking up the corner of her litter box with her teeth and dropping it, repeatedly.  Even up a flight of stairs, behind a closed bedroom door, we would hear thump, whump, thump … pause … repeat …  Sometimes I would get up to go see what she wanted.  Tigger would be sitting at ease in her cage looking at me with that questioning look on her face, “Hey, what are you doing up?”

On Wednesday, Tigger the mini race horse …

Tigger Requests a Window Seat – Part 2 – the Redesign

Hanging out in the new space ...

Hanging out in the new space ...

Tigger blending in with the cardboard and night sky ...

Tigger blending in with the cardboard and night sky ...

Tigger & Shadow enjoying the window bench

Tigger & Shadow enjoying the window bench seat

We thought we had the space all figured out when we got that nifty window ledge arrangement set up that I detailed on Wednesday. Then Tigger decided she wanted to show us some bungineer skills and change things up, big time. She started sinking her teeth into the wall around the window and pulling the drywall out through the plaster. When we heard and saw her do it, we couldn’t easily get to her with the way things were arranged. We had to disassemble the whole set up to get to Tigger and stop her.

We knew Tigger was not going to leave it alone and now had to figure out what to do. Chewing the plaster and drywall up was really bad for our apartment security deposit. It was also potentially extremely harmful to the rabbits. I had contact in later years with a woman who had a rabbit chew up some plaster and become poisoned from it. It required an emergency visit to the vet and fortunately the rabbit did pull through.  I didn’t know about the poison potential at the time we were rethinking this, but just did not want either rabbit chewing the walls.  It seemed like a really bad idea all the way around. 

There was a resin patio storage bench we had purchased for the room that was on the opposite wall. So we swapped the room around putting all the shelf and storage bin units where the bench had been. The bench was a beautiful fit for the window space and the openings in the back allowed the bunnies to easily crawl back and forth through from the bench to the window and back. We extended cardboard up the side of the wall to discourage Tigger from chewing the plaster.

The openness of the bench was not only loved by the bunnies, but it allowed us to get to them easily if we needed to relocate a misbehaving rabbit. It was a wonderful hang out spot. We had a carpet runner on it that was held in place with some elastic sheet straps with the alligator clip ends.  We had one set of straps in front holding the rug in place and another set that looped back through the outermost holes in the back.  We tied a couple bright purple cotton scarves over the sheet straps in the back to discourage the rabbits from chewing  through the elastic. 

Once Tigger and Shadow were fixed and bonded, they would often nap side by side on the window sill in the afternoon soaking up the sunshine. We had a second floor apartment. I often wondered if anyone walking by and looking up or in backyards near by realized it was rabbits in the window and not cats.

Next week Tigger toys …