Hello everyone!
It’s great to find so much good info in one place, we have a lot of reading to do.
We’ve always worked from home with our ten year old cocker spaniel called Lilly. Unfortunately our house rabbit Huggsy passed away last week and all three of us are very sad. Lilly is sleeping in his bed, he was a tenth of the size of Lilly but was very much the boss! Lilly happily shared her dinner with him which is rather odd as rabbits are usually vegetarian, we ended up separating them at meal times.

We found you as we’re thinking about adding another Cocker to our family, we aren’t in a rush, have a lot to read and we want to do this carefully and responsibly.
Thank you for putting a fabulous resource together and what feels like a friendly community.

John & Victoria

VictoriaH:  Oh dear. rabbits are beautiful pets and sorry you've lost him/her.

Welcome to the Forum.  I'm sure many will support you here

Agree.

Before I left home and had the dogs, I kept and showed Rabbits.

Most people don't realise that Rabbits are as inteligent as a cat.

I think it's harder to appreciate/see the intelligence in a herbivore than a carnivore.

I have three rabbits and a cat, and I’d say the rabbits are actually a bit more intelligent than the cat.

I taught mine a few basic tricks (beg, paw, high five, circle, jump through a hoop / over a bar, leave it, etc) using marker training and they took to it quite well. They certainly love a bit of mental stimulation.

Pixel the cat came to us at 5 years old and I taught him some tricks too. He seemed to find it difficult to grasp the concept that he could get food from me by performing a behaviour at first - the rabbits picked that up much more quickly - but he got there. And it improved my own training skills as well.

Sorry about your little guy OP, it’s always so hard to lose them. :(

Thank you all. He was a small bunny with a huge personality, the house feels quiet yet he didn’t make any noise! Lilly is still looking for him, we brought the vet box in from the car, she expected him to jump out like usual. She kept looking at the box and then us over and over

Victoriah>  > She kept looking at the box and then us over and over

Pre getting your Puppy, would it be so bad to have another little rabbit.  Can't replace Huggsy but may help Lilly.  Just a thought

Hoggie> we are thinking the same! Finding a pup could take a while and we’ve got space for a bunny too. Thanks for suggesting; you’ve sealed the deal; great timing there!

X

Pixel is a great name!

That was supposed to be a reply to Silverleaf!

Victoriah:  Go girl! x  Silverleaf's suggestion is fab!

Could you possibly manage two rabbits? They really do benefit from the company of other rabbits. Two of mine live together (they are brothers, littermates) and they absolutely adore each other. They groom each other and spend a lot of time snuggling, it’s so lovely to watch them interact.

My third (girl) lives right next to them and hopefully I’ll be bonding them into a trio soon so they can all live together.

As someone who has never had house rabbits. How do u manage with things like  chewing and housetraining ? Do they have free run of the house or are they confined to one suitable room

furriefriends:  > How do u manage with things like  chewing and housetraining

Just like a puppy they learn very quickly & recognise a what cat litter tray is or approved toileting place,  Sounds awful but if they pee outside the tray, you place the rag you have wiped the pee with and a bit of  their poo inside the clean tray initially.  Honestly they are so smart they will pick it up in the blink of an eye.  Re chewing - just like a Puppy, offer them alternatives, they can understand NO and they can be the cuddliest little things on earth.  Hope this helps

Wasn't planning on one just interested

furriefriends:  Alright .... sorry.  Silverleaf shows a lot of experience.

Mine have big cage + pen areas, and they come out for extra exercise under supervision. I’ve “bunny-proofed” the living room for them and all wires are protected. It only takes a little nibble on a wire and you’ve got a dead or seriously injured rabbit, so I’ve never relied on training or distraction.

I do provide plenty of appropriate things to chew but they can be like children in the way they prefer things they aren’t allowed, so I find it easier just to remove anything I don’t want used as a chew toy!

Litter training is easy because they pretty much do it by themselves. They like to eat and pee at the same time so all I did was line a box with newspaper then add newspaper pellet cat litter with a lot of hay on top. They go in there to eat and they’ll pee in there as well.

They do leave a fair amount of poo outside the litter box but it’s tiny dry pellets so no big deal. They just sweep up. But for pee they like to go in the same place on a soft surface and they take to a box as easily and instinctively as a cat does.

All bets were off after my boys reached sexual maturity though (before they were big enough to castrate). They lived in neighbouring pens so they didn’t lose their bond too much and they’d flick wee at each other and mark along the boundary with the other pen. It took a few weeks after neutering for the hormones to calm down and cleaner habits to return.

My girl has always been perfect apart from a single pee outside the box when she first arrived as a young but sexually mature adult. (She’s spayed now.) And I’d say 80+% of her poos go in the box.

Thank u silverleaf .thats really interesting I've often wondered how people arrange things with house rabbits . Now I know :)

I had a house rabbit many years ago.  To be honest, she house trained herself.  But she was a sod when I'd been shopping.

She would pester to be given access to look in my bags.  Then would love to empty them for me!!!!!

Intact males are difficult in a lot of ways, I have to add. My previous male Neo used to pee in the dog’s bed. He weed on the dog herself once!

My current boys were totally obsessed with each other before neutering as well. Lost all interest in me, spent all their time buzzing* at each other and engaging in “Hey, groom me!” “No, you groom ME.” power struggles through the bars. And the pee smells worse, same as with tomcats. But when they’d lost those hormones they bonded beautifully once they’d got over the constant humping stage.

*Yep, they buzz/hum. Usually when sexually aroused, but I still hear it occasionally from my boys as a dominance thing, shortly before the more submissive boy gets humped. It’s such a weird noise, not what you’d expect a rabbit to be able to make at all.

> Thank u silverleaf

No problem, I’m always happy to give people for more information about rabbits than they probably wanted/needed! I just love them.

Like Tom Cats entire males spray.

> She would pester to be given access to look in my bags.  Then would love to empty them for me!!!!!

They are such nosy little objects! Anything new has to be investigated. Mine are nightmares when you’re cleaning them out, they’re so inquisitive they just have to be exactly where you’re trying to clean. Meeple likes to sit in the dustpan when you try to sweep. Nemesis used to jump up onto your back if you bent down to get something from under a shelf. And if you try to lift a litterbox out you can guarantee at least one rabbit will jump in there to see what’s happening.

> Like Tom Cats entire males spray.

My first ever rabbit used to jump and flick his legs in the air with joy (rabbit people call it a binky) and spray at the same time. It was quite impressive how far it could go with that extra boost.

That's how they do it, most often in your face.

When I had Rabbuts in tiered hutches, I learnt to keep the boys in rhe bottom ones.

At shows, stewarding on the table, when they started to drum just before a spray, you learnt to hold the root of the tail to the table, but even so you'd be lucky to get home with your white coat unchristened!!!

Gosh I just learned more about rabbits in the last 5 mins than I ever have known  before :)
Thank u

furriefriends:  Yea.  Rabbiits are wonerful creatures I find so many baby leverts dug out of borrows in the fields and find it rewarding to return them to the worid when strong enough. (different from Silverleaf with pet rabbits but still a joy to see finding their freedom.)

Lot of years ago I had a tiny brown hare - long story, it came up in the middle of a field with the potatoes on a harvester I was working on one October- he ended up in the house, he house trained himself onto a newspaper (on plastic) in a corner, he beat up my two moggies, had a neutral truce with the dog, if you rustled a bit of silver paper he would suddenly appear on your lap and his favourite treat was Rabbit flavour cat kibble!!!

Sounds most like a GSP!!! Xx
what you snozings after !?!?!  Is a very well used phrase in our house!!

Our rabbit joined us 9 years ago after being rejected by one of the kids’ friend’s parents. We had a couple of scary moments when our then year old Cocker Spaniel Lilly carried him in her mouth, at first glance it looked like she was about to swallow him!
We used newspaper to toilet train, started off With a few sheets and slowly reduced it to one. He had the run of the house and we have carpets upstairs, no problems, rabbits are very clean.
The rabbit was the boss here, he would eat Lilly’s dinner at the same time as her, they both shared the same bed, he would chase Lilly off if she came too near his dinner! He was a small rabbit with a big personality!