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.