About the Blog

Daisy Cruise and I have worked with the Ventura County Animal Shelter rabbits (the “Bunny Brigade”) every Friday from 3-8pm for the past 2 ½ years. With all the experience gained and lessons learned, I’ve decided to create this blog to discuss events that have occurred during our time volunteering and the facts of life that I have had to learn in order to cope with the ins and outs of rabbit care.  This blog is meant to educate the public on the subject of working with shelter rabbits and the common misconceptions that people have about them.  It is taxing work being responsible for so many lives, but the results are more than enough reward.  The stories that I relay in this blog are ones that I feel are important for the public to know and will hopefully reach as many people as possible.  

Blog Entry 1: Only you can Prevent Reproduction

Several times I have paid to spay and neuter rabbits out of my own pocket so that they might be adopted. I strongly believe in the benefits of sterilization for rabbits and other domesticated animals as an improvement to their quality of life.  Working at a shelter that is responsible for housing all of the homeless animals in the entire county, I have witnessed the effects of pet overpopulation first hand.  In the case of rabbits, over population happens fast and is very hard to contain.  Rabbits do not have a resting period between pregnancies.  A female may give birth and become impregnated within the same hour; rabbits are able to have babies every 30 days with up to 8 in each litter.  On average, the Ventura County Animal Shelter is home to at least 45 rabbits and at the time of this blog entry, the shelter is currently over capacity, with 62 rabbits in total.  That number wouldn’t be nearly as large if their previous owners had realized the need to take their rabbits to be fixed.
I had been a volunteer for about two months when I first witnessed the consequences of not spaying or neutering a rabbit.  I received a phone call as I drove up Pacific Coast Highway: the shelter had received fifteen Californian rabbits and needed extra help.  I reset my course for the shelter, and indeed fifteen brown nosed, red eyed bunnies were anxiously tripping about their cages. Apparently, someone from the Ventura County Fair had bought two rabbits and, about two months later, found themselves with thirteen more.  There was one rabbit who stood out among that particular crowd.
Brutus was a mess when I first saw him.  He was the biggest of all his kin and was soaked in urine because he had been brought in with another male, Nico, who instigated violent fights. Hormones are strong in unfixed rabbits and can lead to copious behavioral issues, many of which sterilization can circumvent.  I separated the two, but Brutus was already badly scarred across his nose. When I took Brutus out of the cage and began to brush his matted, urine stained fur, I fell in love.  He was such a gentle giant who never complained and seemed content just being close to me.  I decided to pay the $50 required as a deposit for neutering.  As a result of being neutered, he was adopted by a lovely family in whose household he would be the only rabbit—plus a dog and cat companion!  These knowledgeable adopters specifically asked for a neutered rabbit.  They knew, as do I, the benefits to spaying and neutering animal companions.

Blog Entry 2: The Tale of Snufflelufflegus

On occasion, a rabbit will arrive at the shelter and need help outside of what the shelter can do.  Snufflelufflegus was just such a case.  He arrived in the middle of June with respiratory problems and a prominent bulge on his leg.  Daisy and I stepped in to take him to her own house and set up a large cage for his comfort.  Each night I would fall asleep and he’d be at my bedside struggling to breath.  I would place him on the bed and pet him, something he couldn’t get enough of.
The next day we took him to a vet outside of the shelter, where we felt Snufflelufflegus would receive the best care.  There, Dr. Fowell discovered that the bulge on the rabbit’s leg was a tumor, and that the only treatment would be amputation.  She estimated that it would cost $1,300 for the surgery—a steep price for anyone, let alone a county-run shelter and volunteer group that relied on donations.  We simply couldn’t afford it.  A chance surfaced when a fellow rabbit volunteer told Daisy about Crowdtilt, a website where people donated money to different causes.  We immediately started a campaign. We raised the money within a month and Crowdtilt didn’t even charge the usual tax for the money raised for Snufflelufflegus’ surgery. Everything was going smoothly.
Then it wasn’t; his breathing wasn’t improving.  It seemed to be getting worse, despite the treatments prescribed by the vet.  He was losing weight.  On the last day of the campaign, Daisy and I took Snufflelufflegus to see Dr. Fowell again, who decided to perform an x-ray of his chest.  After waiting 15 minutes, a vet tech led us to a different room to view the x-rays.  On the screen, the vet pointed out several patches of pure white scattered across Snufflelufflegus’s lungs.  “Cancer,” she said.  What we had thought to be a sinus infection a month ago had in fact been the tumor spreading to his lungs. With my heart seemingly lodged in my throat, I looked to Daisy and I decided that putting our fluffy guy to sleep would be best.  He was put under anesthesia and given to Daisy to hold in a towel one last time and then he died quietly, quickly, and with dignity.  His eyes were open the whole time and had an expression that suggested life, where we knew there wasn’t.  I wanted to take him home—to have him not be gone—but I knew that he had been suffering and I couldn’t let that continue. It was difficult to acknowledge that only the night before I had voiced the idea of adopting him once I was financially secure and had graduated from college.  Our life felt like it was just starting together, but it turned out his was ending and we were privileged to be in his life for as long as Daisy and I were.
Crowdtilt gave us the donations even after we told them of Snufflelufflegus’s passing.  We are extremely grateful.

Blog Entry 3- A Day in the Life

Being a Bunny Brigader—a moniker used by the staff in reference to the rabbit volunteers-–is a demanding job.  Unlike with cats and dogs, the staff has little to do with taking care of the rabbits. The Bunny Brigade takes up the tasks of feeding, watering, cleaning, and grooming the rabbits.  We teach potential adopters proper rabbit care and help them to find the rabbit best suited for their family. I usually volunteer Fridays from 3 in the afternoon to an undetermined time, usually between 7 or 8 at night; I’ve been volunteering for over two years. To start, we usually go to the front rabbit room to top off—meaning we give them fresh hay, pellets, and water.  The main cleaning on Fridays occurs in the barn, where many of our other rabbits who haven’t been at the shelter as long reside.  On busy days like Saturdays, the front room gets a full cleaning and the barn gets topped off.
In the barn, we fill water bottles, give pellets, clean the litter boxes and fill them up with newspaper and hay, and let the rabbits into their outside exercise area unless it’s too hot or it’s pouring rain.  Depending on how many rabbits we have in the barn, it can be a demanding job.  Litter boxes are usually cleaned out with a hose and soap but can also be sprayed with vinegar water and the grime wiped out with towels.  Most of the new rabbits go to the barn if they are caught by an animal control officer. It’s not an easy job but these rabbits need people to come and help take care of them or the consequences may be dire.  These rabbits would be euthanized without the Bunny Brigade and the volunteers within that organization.
My love for rabbits has increased since I began volunteering.  I was attacked by a rabbit as a kid and began to be a bit afraid of them, but now I can pick them up by the scruff and get them in and out of cages.  I can even “baby” them, which is when you turn a rabbit onto their back and cradle them like an infant. The rabbit goes into a trance and they remain completely still.  It is theorized that this reflex has to do with when they were babies or in the womb.  To want a rabbit as a pet wouldn’t have even crossed my mind a few years ago; this shows how influential this whole experience has been in my life.  It can be just as moving for others who want to volunteer their time as well.  This is a life changing experience.  

Blog Entry 4- Touchdown with some Hands on Experience

The Ventura County Animal Shelter is a special shelter in that it has a hands-on approach when it comes to their animals and volunteers.  The volunteers and rabbits tend to get the most benefit out of this.  A part of this hands-on approach is to have volunteers bring the rabbits outside in the x-pens and allow them to run around for a certain amount of time.  This allows the rabbits to expel their pent up energy and to promote socialization when the volunteers spend time with the rabbits. I believe this connects volunteers more closely to the animals they work with, which has positive effects for both human and animal.
The hardest part is bringing the rabbits inside.  It can be quite difficult to catch them and you have to be careful about how you catch them.  You never hold a rabbit by the ears, because it causes brain damage.  What I do is, like with dogs or cats, go for the scruff which is an area of extra skin behind the rabbit’s neck and closer to the upper back area.  The scruff is created by their mother pulling and moving their young when they are babies by using their mouths to grab that piece of skin.  Rabbits can move quickly; sometimes I have to wait until they calm down or grab them by the lower back hip area in order to capture them at all.  It’s important for rabbits to experience being picked up by a human because rabbits are going to need transport to and from their hutch or area where they sleep. It makes them feel vulnerable as a prey species.  Rabbits will never like being picked up, but they can get used to it and be more accepting of it, which allows the benefits of socialization.  Another tactic includes covering their eyes with your hands while holding them, to prevent them from trying to jump out of your arms.  It can also calm the rabbit down.  Rabbits do not have depth perception, so they have no idea that when they’re held, jumping from a certain height might not be a good thing.
Sometimes rabbits go to extreme lengths to avoid getting picked up. Once Daisy was trying to get a rabbit out from the x-pen and the rabbit somehow found its way into a deep hole that had been blocked off by a rubber ball and a brick.  Daisy laid flat on the ground and put her whole arm inside.  The hole was so deep, she could barely touch the rabbit’s tail, even with her arm all the way up to her shoulder in earth.  It took a good hour and a half to get the rabbit out.  The rabbit came out fine, but Daisy’s arm was scraped up.  What we do for rabbits! 

Blog Entry 5- Match.com for Rabbits

Bonding can either be an easy experience or one of the hardest things for a person to try to accomplish, and it doesn’t always work.  Rabbits mate for life and usually benefit from having a companion.  I have bonded, or been involved in the process of, bonding many rabbits.  This especially needs human intervention when adopters want two rabbits bonded, and so take them home and bond them. Though rabbits need companionship if they’re going to remain at the shelter for a long period of time before they are sent to a rescue or adopted, some bonds are utter failures.  It’s akin to dating people: it doesn’t always work. One must have a combination of interests, likes, dislikes, and a chemistry that allows one to work together.  For rabbits, the latter is probably most prevalent.  What I look for in a pair I want to bond is not what they look like.  Although many adopters foolishly adopt a rabbit to bond with their own rabbit regardless of factors or what we advise, many people come in wanting the same color or breed of rabbit to look like the rabbit they have at home or want the same gender of rabbit, but that doesn’t always work.  Looking cute together and having the chemistry to be together can be a completely different ball game.
It’s very important for a rabbit with a dominant personality or a very outgoing personality to have a shy, submissive counterpart.  That’s usually the ticket to success in a bonded pair.  A few years ago, Daisy and I decided to bond two rabbits at the shelter named Opal and Tim.  Tim was from the fifteen Californian group and Opal came in with a bunny named May, another female who was more feisty.  We tried to bond them and at first found it difficult because they had very similar personalities: they were establishing who was dominant and who was submissive.  Eventually and unusually, Opal (the female) was dominant over Tim (the male.)  This is not how rabbit relations usually turn out.  From bonding other pairs, my experience would indicate that it is usually the case that the male is the dominant one and the female is the submissive one.
Gender is incredibly important in bonding. It is possible to bond two rabbits of the same sex but I highly recommend not bonding two males unless they are related, though not father and son, but brothers can work.  Two females are more likely to work out as a pair, but once again it depends on the chemistry and if the females are related they have a greater chance of being able to bond than pairs that aren’t related.  The best pair I would recommend to anyone trying to bond their rabbit is a pair already bonded or rabbits of the opposite sex.  Both rabbits have to be fixed, however, because the hormones of the rabbits will get in the way of the bonding process, otherwise.  And, of course, a litter of bunnies is always guaranteed when you put two unfixed rabbits of the opposite gender in a pen together. However, having both rabbits fixed even if they are the same gender, would get those hormones out of the way and allow the rabbits to bond more easily.   Having the rabbits interact before committing to adoption is also a good idea, allowing you to see if bonding is possible.  

Blog Entry 6- The Big, Bad Pet Industry

The pet industry is one of the biggest reasons why we get so many rabbits in the shelter.  Pet stores that sell rabbits do not bother to educate their customers, which encourages impulsive purchases that result in either the rabbit being sent to the shelter, or dying from lack of proper care.  Some people end up releasing their rabbit in a park or garden, not knowing that domesticated rabbits lack the essential instincts to survive on their own.  Thankfully, the number of rabbits being sold in pet stores has gone down dramatically since the late 1990’s.  Big brand pet stores such as Petsmart and Petco no longer sell rabbits, and have started promoting rescues.  People are becoming more aware of the health and safety risks toward animals sold in this type of environment.
Breeders are still a huge problem.  Rabbits, prolific by default, are bred over and over and sold at cheap prices—I once saw a craigslist ad selling baby rabbits for $5 apiece.  Some breeders find their market at small business pet stores, where they can find a steady flow of clientele.  Some are backyard breeders—people who sell rabbits from home.  Often the breeders themselves have little knowledge of what rabbits need to be properly cared for.  The shelter received 53 rabbits from one home last year, when the woman who lived there up and left, leaving behind her failed breeding “business.” It was a struggle for us to keep working without burning ourselves out.  Heaven forbid another breeder wanted to empty their wares on us at the same time.
 Those in the pet industry rarely ever think about what is best for the animals they are selling.  They make it about profit, and the consequences of their greed ends up on the shoulders of the people who truly care.   

Blog Entry 7- You Better Behave, Young Man!

The behavior and temperament of a rabbit is an important thing for potential adopters to be aware of in order to find a good match for their family.  No two rabbits are alike, and the behavior of a single rabbit can change drastically after they have been fixed.  Patrick was a rabbit that was born at the shelter before my time.  He was adopted at the age of two months, too young to be fixed, but his new family claimed that they would get the procedure done when he was old enough.  Eight months later, Patrick was back at the shelter, never neutered, and labeled a “biter bun.”  His hormones were strong and made him terribly aggressive toward people.  He sprayed urine, grunted at anyone who walked by his cage, and was pretty much an all-around nightmare.  Needless to say, he was put on the top of the list for the next spay and neuter run.  Three weeks after the surgery, Patrick finally began to calm down.  The biting ceased, and petting was demanded.  He became the biggest cuddle-bun, ever.  His personality could finally shine.
Stella is really outgoing and great to hang out with, but she’s not a mellow rabbit like Brutus.  She’s energetic and can be quite frisky, and would be considered a dominant personality type.  She’s a love bug and loves to be pet, but also enjoys to go outside and have fun.  However, some rabbits have behavioral issues, like Domino, who is kind of like a grumpy old man.  He is cage territorial, which means if you try to get him out of his cage, he will attempt to bite you until he is out where he proceeds to act like a normal rabbit.  It’s all for show of how tough he is and once he’s out of the cage he isn’t a problem.
This is unlike the case of the first bunny that bit me, Fluffy, who would seriously bite a person with either a pressure bite or a bite that might break the skin. A pressure bite is when the bite itself is more like a bruise than a bloody bite.  Lovey also bit but she bit for other reasons, being a dominant female who sincerely did not like other rabbits.  Some rabbits just can’t be with any other rabbit because they’ll attack them and injure them.  That’s who she was.  She stopped biting people and was really good with them.  Members of the Bunny Brigade kept trying to bond her with other rabbits which never worked out.  It’s rare but it can occur in an overly aggressive rabbit.
The point is, just like people, not all rabbits are the same and behavior is very important because it can be changed.  The shelter cannot take the place of a home and the positive socialization and safety that animals receive by being a pet in a person’s home, is priceless even at the shelter, and no matter how hard they try they cannot replicate that.    

Blog Entry 8- Oh Baby

Sometimes you can’t avoid the inevitable.  Rabbits are going to have babies, and that’s just the way things are.  That’s why at the shelter we take in babies and moms.  Baby rabbits come in a lot, most of the time without their mom.  Sometimes they come in when they’re old enough to survive on their own and other times they still need their mother.  If a mom comes in with baby rabbits, it takes longer to get the mother adopted because she needs to raise her young for several months.  There is the option of sending them to rescue or getting them into foster care but sometimes that’s just not possible.  Baby rabbits are really cute at any age, and they aren’t as afraid of humans as adult rabbits.  We usually don’t promote adopting baby rabbits until they get older because their personalities aren’t fully developed yet and are less predictable in what temperament problems they will develop as they get older.  Usually people want to adopt babies which is a mistake to underestimate the older rabbits.
The most famous case that I can recall was when six babies came into the shelter with two adult females.  At first, everything seemed normal, but the babies seemed a bit anxious and so did one of the females.  She had pretty big swollen mammary glands (breasts) and nipples, so Daisy and I put that female in with the six babies and something I have never seen before and probably will never see again occurred.  Usually baby rabbits only feed from their mother at dusk and dawn but since these babies had not had their mother’s milk for a long time, they began feeding from her the moment she went into the cage. The babies started suckling from their mom’s breasts.  We named the mom Demeter after the goddess of the harvest.  There were three boys and three girls.  We named the three boys Peridot, Fergus, and Eskimo.  The girls were named Merida, Persephone, and Ella.  The babies grew rapidly over the coming weeks and eventually the mom and babies were rescued together by Santa Barbara Buns, a rescue for rabbits and other small animals.  Fergus was probably my favorite out of the baby bunch, because he was pretty outgoing with humans and he had a cute little personality that always made him stand out from the rest.
Although they went off to rescue, I’ll never forget them.  They taught me what baby rabbits and mother rabbits are like together.  I learned a lot about them and their behavior.  Demeter was a good mom who allowed others humans to interact with her babies without being aggressive.  It’s important to know about mothers and babies for the rare occasion we get both of them in the shelter at the same time and how to take care of them properly.  

Blog Entry 9- Daddy can I have a Bunny?

Children should not be expected to take on the responsibility of pet ownership without the support and help from their parents or other family members.  Owning a pet means becoming the caretaker of a vulnerable being, and leaving the fate of an animal’s life and wellbeing in the hands of a child alone is foolish and irresponsible.  Children lose interest quickly.  No matter how strongly or how often they  pester their parent to get them that pet, once they discover the hard work and commitment it takes to care for an animal, they can move on to the next thing and neglect their duties as a pet owner.  This is especially true when a child gets a rabbit. There are only three outcomes I have ever seen in this sort of situation: The parents bring the rabbit to the shelter, the family sets the rabbit loose in the wild where the animal is defenseless against predators and exposure, or the rabbit dies from neglect.  Whichever way, you’re always going to have a heartbroken child in the end.
When a rabbit is adopted as a family pet, and the care is the shared responsibility of the entire household, the joys of owning a rabbit become much more rewarding for all involved.  In families with children, we recommend the kids be a little older than ten years, and have adult supervision with any child younger than that when interacting with the rabbit.  

Blog Entry 10- The Story of Ruben

On one of my Friday’s we got a rabbit in, a male lop.  He was lethargic, barely moving in his cage.  The officer who brought him in, said that the family found him in their backyard.  They didn’t think there was anything wrong with him, but Daisy took one look at him and declared he was dehydrated and was going into Gastro Intestinal stasis.  I named him Ruben, and called another member of the Bunny Brigade to bring fluids like pineapple juice to bring this poor limp rabbit back to life.  Daisy began taking care of Ruben while I took charge of the work that still needed to be done. We originally took Ruben to the vet at the shelter and sent out a notice for foster.  We left him at the shelter in the vet’s office, and returned an hour later when we found a foster home that would take him in.  However, by the time we got back, the vet hadn’t even seen him yet.  They didn’t even know what GI stasis (as it’s also known) was.  Daisy and I took Ruben back to a volunteer’s house for the night and were up with him through the course of the evening.  However, he didn’t get any better.  By morning we brought him to Dr. Fowell where she discovered his kidneys were failing, either from dehydration or something toxic. This was in turn causing his digestive tract to freeze up.  Which is what GI Stasis is, it’s when the body starts shutting down because the rabbit did not receive enough nutrients or was harmed or poisoned in some way. By mid-afternoon, Ruben was gone.
It’s tough work being a rabbit volunteer.  No matter how hard you try, sometimes it just isn’t enough.    

Blog Entry 11-Humans aren’t the only Ones with Special Needs

 There are many special need rabbits out there.  They can’t survive on their own and need human intervention to aid in their survival.  This has to do with the domestication of the rabbit, which the animal study theorists suggest makes the domesticated animal completely dependent on humans for their own survival especially with domesticated rabbits, if they are released into the wild, they have a high chance of dying because these special needs aren’t addressed.
Daisy saved a rabbit named Mammoth from GI stasis. She stayed up with him for twenty four hours and treated his malocclusion which was preventing him from eating which caused him to go into GI stasis in the first place. Luckily he came out of the condition and is alive today and happily living at his home in Simi Valley.  Malocclusion is a special needs issue in domestic rabbits.  It’s when a rabbit’s teeth are crooked, and can’t be filed down properly.  Rabbit teeth never stop growing, and when they can’t keep them filed, they turn into tusks and prevent them from eating. Oddy, a current female rabbit at the shelter has a malocclusion as well.
Other disabilities besides malocclusion occur in our shelter as well. Skipper came to the vet’s office with something wrong with his eye and I am not aware of the specific circumstances of why Skipper lost his eye, but this lead to the removal of it.  With rabbits that are blind, humans need to approach them slowly because they see differently from humans who stare straight ahead, compared to rabbits who have eyes that stare in two opposite directions.  Without vision they are scared and more vulnerable.  If you are reaching for a blind rabbit and they can see out of one of their other eyes, you need to make sure you show them your hand to the side of their face that is not blinded. And be very slow picking them up.  

Blog Entry 12- Hey, Rabbits have a Diet too?

When I was growing up I thought rabbits just ate vegetables from the garden and lots of carrots, because that’s what popular culture has led many people to believe.  But this is an ignorant belief based in fiction.  They can eat vegetables, but they should be considered as treats and not a staple of their diet. In actuality, 80% of a rabbit’s diet consists of hay.  It can either be Timothy hay or Orchard grass.  There really isn’t a distinct difference between the two types of hay, it’s just that one isn’t as thick as the other and the color is a bit different.  Hay is used in rabbit litter boxes for them to eat and use as bedding.  Usually two litter boxes are better than one, but at the shelter we don’t always get that option.  They also eat pellets that are made of hay.  This should also be given to rabbits in small quantities because they’re something to chew on and not their main source of food.   Their main source of food is the hay itself.  Alfalfa can also be used, but it’s very rich and is only recommended for rabbits who are severely underweight, are very young, or are refusing to eat their hay.
When I first got to the shelter, I had no idea what rabbits were supposed to eat. I thought that Bugs Bunny displayed the normal eating habit of a rabbit, but it’s far from the truth.  If rabbits don’t eat hay, they can get very sick and get to an unhealthy weight.  A lot of people who have dropped or abandoned their rabbits at the shelter have fed them incorrectly.  It’s really sad, because if they just did a little more research, went to google and typed in a few key words, they would have discovered a whole list of websites that talk about proper rabbit care.  One of the best sites is the House Rabbit Society, where you can find all sorts of information about what is safe for rabbits to eat. Adopters need be educated and be informed about a rabbit’s diet so that both pet and adopter are happy. 

Blog Entry 13-Easter Crazies and the Abandonment of Bunnies

When I refer to Easter Crazies, I am referring to a certain breed of impulse buyer.  Around Easter every year, we see a sudden influx of interest in rabbit adoption. Unfortunately, the majority of the people coming in haven’t done any research on rabbits and are there simply because they want to get their kids an Easter Bunny.  The promotion of Easter makes rabbits look adorable, cute, and hardly any effort to take care of. While the first two descriptions may be true (how can anyone resist those twitchy noses and fluffy fur?), a rabbit is certainly not an “easy pet.” The Easter Crazies who do succeed in getting a rabbit eventually find this out.  By the time summer rolls around, the shelter becomes overrun with owner turn in rabbits.  The rabbit has grown up and owners don’t think their rabbit is so cute anymore and return or give them to the shelter.  The shelter does have a policy that no one can adopt a rabbit on the day of Easter.  Just like on the day of Halloween, no one is allowed to adopt black cats, for similar reasons, as the rabbits rise in impulse buys during Easter.  So Easter has its pros and cons due to this spiraling of media attention and really shows the power of suggestion and of popular culture.
Yet this is also why people chose to domesticate certain animals in the first place.  Either for the purpose of aiding man or for the purpose of being cute and cuddly man’s best friend.  It’s why rabbits became as popular as pets and were domesticated.  Maybe not necessarily due to Easter but the domestication was probably strongly influenced by the rabbit being the cultural icon of Easter.  It’s another example of the problematic human-animal relationship but in a different way.  

Blog Entry 14-The Encounter of Different Breeds of Rabbit

Different breeds of Rabbits usually can make or break an adoption.  Many people want a specific breed of rabbit, because they believe that they have a certain type of personality. Many people believe this about dogs and cats as well.  Take lops for example-most people think lops are gentle and kind compared to other rabbits because they have a more demure look about them, but this is far from the truth. Depending on breeds for personality is usually a faulty way of adopting a rabbit. The truth is that lops are just like their straight eared siblings in terms of behavior and personality.  What is true about certain breeds of rabbit like Californian’s and Himalayan’s is that they are more sensitive to touch than other rabbits and often do not like to be petted as much as other rabbits.  The areas of sensitivity is the bridge between their nose and head where most rabbits love to be touched.   Most breeds don’t like their butts scratched, it makes them run away from the person petting them.  They usually prefer the head area for petting but once again this depends largely on the rabbit and less on the breed.There are rabbit breeds that have more hair than other normal looking rabbits and usually this draws adopters further in.  Lionheads and Angoras are the common types of rabbit with fluffy appearances or hair around their heads that can make them look very different from a normal rabbit.  Lionhead’s are thought to have spunky personalities but once again it depends on that rabbits’ unique personality more than anything else.  Certain breeds tend to be quite large in size or very small in size.  Flemmish giants are the largest breed of rabbit compared to the dwarf which is the smallest breed.  It is harder to get the bigger rabbits adopted than the dwarves because many adopters like small things.  The truth is that dwarf’s need more room to run around than larger rabbits, and that giant rabbits can be timid or very sweet in personality most of the time.  

Blog Entry 15-Big no no’s in Rabbit Care

When an adopter comes into the shelter looking for a rabbit, a volunteer needs to drop what they’re doing and go deal with an adoption.  Without adoptions, rabbits would be put to sleep just like any other shelter animal and that’s why adoptions take first priority.  There are people who have questionable behaviors or weird attitudes when they come in wanting to adopt a rabbit, which they really shouldn’t be exhibiting.  One of these behaviors is the “my rabbit died” story. Now, if it was an old rabbit or a rabbit with a health condition, that’s one thing, but what I’m talking about is when people find rabbits or buy baby rabbits like micro rabbits. Often people will come in and say, “We had a rabbit but it died.  It was a baby, we didn’t know how to take care of it.”  This is a huge red flag statement. We usually discourage people like that from adopting a rabbit because they obviously don’t know how to take care of rabbits and usually are looking just for baby rabbits.  We try to educate them, regardless, but most of the time people like that just don’t want to learn. Sometimes breeders will come in looking for rabbits to impregnate with their other rabbits, since having to put a deposit down and getting the rabbit fixed before adoption, we’ve had less breeders looking for rabbits but we try to never adopt out to rabbit breeders.
An adopter needs to be educated on how to take care of a rabbit or want to learn the proper education on taking care of one.  Otherwise, they just want a rabbit for frivolous reasons.  We encourage adopters to do their homework first and to get everything on a list we provide for families so that they’ll be fully equipped when their new rabbit comes home with them.  We also discourage impulse buyers if at all possible.  They just want a rabbit because their child wants one or because of the popular culture icon of the rabbit.  It’s always a good idea to get a rabbit because you want that specific pet for the right reasons.