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. Someone let the dog in by accident during Thumper’s run time and the retriever started to chase him.
#Thumper bunny free
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. After that we tried more toys for him to play with. 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. Mom had a coconut sitting on a newspaper on the kitchen floor waiting to break it open. Thumper was my first learning experience of how personable, playful and intelligent a rabbit can be. 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 bunny how to
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. 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. We had to medicate him many times over the years for his tummy problems and he learned a few tricks too. 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 learned to mummy wrap him and syringe medicate him. With the vet’s assistance we learned about what to do with diet and medication when that would happen. He was our first experience with a poopy bunny butt. We realize with the information out now, they were probably due to his leaving his mother a few weeks too early. 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. 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 checked out things geared for cats and bought a kitty harness and leash. As soon as she put the litter box in place, Thumper was trained. 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.
Besides our vet, Thumper himself proved himself a good teacher on rabbit care and behavior. Anything written was by breeders and geared towards raising rabbits as farm or show rabbits. Then he would zone out while I petted him.Īt the time Thumper arrived in our lives, there was no House Rabbit Society or internet to turn to for advice on rabbit care.
He would always squirm up until he had his head tucked in to my neck right under my chin. Thumper liked being picked up and held and would paw at my ankles or moms when he wanted some cuddling. He snuggled his head under my chin, stopped sneezing and went to sleep. I got him out of his cage, wrapped him in a towel and sat down in a huge upholstered rocker we had. 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 was still living at home but had just started my first full-time job. They helped us to learn about feeding, clipping nails, rabbit health, and so much more over the ten years of Thumper’s life. That is when we got lucky and found a small animal practice in our area who treated cats, dogs, guinea pigs, birds, and rabbits. 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). Mom got Thumper a cage, water bottle, food crock and some small animal pellets. 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. 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. We were very unoriginal and called him Thumper. My father picked out the spunkiest one in the bunch and brought him home.
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. A coworker of my father had two pet bunnies who had one litter of four bunnies and a month later another litter of eight. I met my first house rabbit back in 1980.
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