A change of plan today, swapping around content between today and tomorrow since Leo was less than cooperative about having his picture taken today. So tune in tomorrow for the follow-up to Booda Don’t.
This is an adorable bunny in this video. I have never seen a bunny hold food this way or eat while on its back. This is just such a cutie.
A direct link to the video: Baby Rabbit Holds His Own Food
The title on this video caught my eye today. We are really struggling to get Leo to try new things in food. So seeing a video about a bunny titled My Best Friend Is Food, I had to take a look. Once I started to watch, I just couldn’t resist the cute face and cheeks of this bunny.
A direct link to the video: My Best Friend Is Food
The wind down of 2013 was a bit of a rough ride here. I am working on getting back to a blog plan and groove for the new year. Meanwhile on this first day of 2014, I hope that everyone is taking some time to rest and relax like these sweet bunny rabbits.
A direct link to the video: Bunny Nap Time
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Today I spent some time sorting out our Pinterest boards in to some new product shopping boards. If you are wanting to buy a gift for your rabbit, yourself or a bunny loving friend or family member, check out our new boards. There are boards by colors, one that is all jewelry, another with items for house rabbits, one that is fine art and art photographs and a final board that has rabbit themed craft supplies, instructions / kits to make yourself a DIY bunny item.
There are hundreds of items that are available. That could change as people go shopping or if a seller takes a vacation break. Over the weekend I’ll be adding more to these boards. Click any of the images above to be taken right to the boards.
One Monday, we will have more information about Rabbittude special events this month and upcoming sales.
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.
What is it with boy bunnies and labels? I will never forget the ripping noise I heard one time in the office and turned to see Shadow pulling off the adhesive labels I had on a set of storage drawers. I had to run to wrestle the labels away from him before he tried to consume the plastic with its adhesive backing.
So recently I hear Leo chewing at the baby gate and turn around to find him sitting up on his hind legs chewing at a spot on the side of the gate about a foot off the floor. I’m thinking, “Okay what is so interesting a foot off the floor as opposed to the part by the floor?” I went to look and there was an adhesive warning label stuck to the side of the gate. I hadn’t really noticed it because except for the text, the label was colored similarly to the gate. It didn’t really stand out to me. However, like Shadow before him, Leo had noticed the label and was trying to pull it off. Fortunately for me, the label on the baby gate was not so easy to pull off as the label tape I had used on the files that Shadow had gone after.
Unfortunately it turned out there were other hidden to human eyes labels in the office. I didn’t realize there were still labels stuck on the undersides of chairs, but Leo did. There were more ripping sessions and I had to take those away from him and spend some time on the floor staring up at the undersides of things to see what else he just might see that would be in reach of his little bunny teeth.
I am going to have to think if there is something safe I can give Leo or do for him that will be similar to finding things in unexpected places for him to “steal”.
The Atlanta Botanical Garden has had a wonderful exhibit going on over the summer that will continue through October called Imaginary Worlds. I’m sharing the rabbit and unicorn sculptures here and will try to upload other photos I took later to either Pinterest or Flickr. I’ve finally begun to set up the account on Flickr and need to begin loading some images there. I’ve had the account there for some time, but forgot about it and forgot how to get access to it. Oh well, time to see about putting it to use now.
The pictures of the bunnies came out the best the day we were at the gardens, because I was able to shoot the images mostly at them without much of the sky. It was a weird lighting day when we were there, one moment overcast and the next bright sunshine. That can be tricky to get the light and color right and I am still learning and trying to get a good working relationship going with getting the best images from our two digital cameras. I’m hoping we can go back again this month and enjoy all the sculptures again. Although the bunnies look like topiary, the garden calls the exhibits sculptures. That is a better description of the scope and size of these exhibits. The rabbits are some of the smallest, others are 20 to 25 feet in size. The inside image here with the running rabbit shows an example of the foundation that the sculptures are built on.
Tomorrow a story about Tigger and Shadow and rabbit transit …
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.
Little 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 …
Mostly when I have created jewelry and beaded accessories, I have created small things. Between all the hats of full-time and part-time work and caring for home and rabbits, small amounts of time to create things was what was available. I created this statement necklace and earring set last week. The design has been in my mind for a year now. Most of the materials for it have been here that long too. It was missing two things to make it a reality, time to really work on putting it together was a big factor. The final thing though was ordering some rings and a toggle clasp this fall that had a twist design. That was the last element needed to add to this design all the color and texture that I wanted it to have.
Even though we love having house rabbits, we also love our outdoor rabbits who hop all around our yard. They even come right up under our bay window bringing their babies with them to eat the tasty things amongst the grass. We have some wild strawberries that have grown threaded in through the grass by the back of the house.
Creating these pieces was a labor of love and exploration. I wanted to spend more time creating a really wonderful rabbit statement necklace and earrings set. It makes me think of those outdoor rabbits finding and hopping into a winter berry patch loaded with goodies. I wanted to share pictures of these here, because I love how beautifully the necklace and earrings came out. I have wanted for some time to create a lovely rabbit statement piece or set. I am always imagining rabbits getting in to all sorts of things and places. I have a number of rabbit jewelry pieces I wear. I love the idea of secretly sneaking rabbits in to places by carrying or wearing them with me as I travel around.
These two pieces contain materials I love working with: Sterling Silver, Swarovski Crystal beads and Czech glass beads. They also have the themes I love of rabbits, nature, flowers and leaves and rich colors. I loved how the garnet reds, olive greens, golden topaz and silver look together.
The sun is out here in Georgia on this day in the United States dedicated to giving thanks. I am thankful for wonderful things in my life. I have my loving supportive husband Blaine. We will be celebrating our 22nd anniversary this weekend. There was a wonderful decade of fun with our two rabbits Tigger and Shadow and just so many memories of them to treasure always. There is a new time now to get to know our sweet Leo the Lionhead rabbit and find out all his stories and be able to share those with others. I am thankful to have gifts to be able to share in helping others with bunny stories, web design and hosting and creative gifts with art and jeweled items.
I am my grandmother’s granddaughter. Mom says every picture of her mother she saw, grandmother was always the one wearing that extra little noticeable thing like another bow or piece of jewelry more than her sisters. I think grandmother and I both loved giving things including ourselves those extra special finishing touches, that cherry on the top feeling.
Have a lovely day today wherever in the world you are. Give your loved ones hugs and pet those bunnies too to let them know they are appreciated and loved.
~ Rebecca Pullin
 Shall I go up or down? |
 Well I hopped up one, but I'm not sure, do I really want to go up? |
 Nope! Coming down! |
 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.