Many of us with house rabbits choose to confine them to their rooms when we are out or asleep for their own safety. It's one thing to 100 precent rabbit-proof one room, but over a whole house there is so much unexpected catastrophes waiting to happen for a little fluffy beast - especially one who can and will squeeze into or jump onto something without properly assessing a safe escape route. Then when you let them out roaming, if you do hear a tremendous crash, or the sound of a scrabbling stuck fluffster, you can go running to the rescue.
But if you are going to shut them in somewhere, especially if they will be shut in at dawn and dusk when rabbits are naturally at their most active, you need to make sure that space is sufficient for them to run about and play. My own bunnies get a 120 square foot room, which seems like a decent space for them. The Rabbit Residence Rescue suggests a minimum space of 60 square foot if they will sometimes be shut in it, which happens to be the size of our spare room where RRR foster bunnies sometimes stay.
Bunnies like Tate are generally here in our house out of necessity, as in Tate's case where his fragile body wasn't coping with the outdoor temperatures at the Rescue. I try not to feel bad that I can only give them the minimum space as by the time they have asked me, the RRR team generally don't have any better options, so being stuck in a 60 square foot space for the time they are here is often preferable to the alternatives. As it has turned out, Tate has somehow managed to wrangle them lots of free-roaming time, so the foster bunnies have themselves a pretty sweet deal here and I dread to think of the demands for premium service the RRR staff and volunteers are going to have to deal with from them when they go back.
One thing I think they will be grateful for when they go back though is the improved view. They can't really see much outside of the spare room except sky (the window is high up the wall if you are a rabbit) and occasionally a grumpy-looking elderly lop glaring at them from down the hall.
"Foster" .. that's the surname that means "He hasn't admitted to the inevitable yet" right?
ReplyDeleteRight! Don't know why BHV has to go through this little routine. It's like whistling in the dark. "Just fosters here, nothing but fosters." BHV, it's time for a little "who's your daddy?"
DeleteI try to keep a safe emotional distance from foster bunnies to make it easier for them (and me) when they go back. As an aside, I believe this is the reason I don't have a close relationship with A+B, I treated them as regular fosters for over a year, right up until Whisky died. They were effectively trained to treat me as just some guy that brings their food and clears up after them.
DeleteHowever, Tate is a fragile bunny who the vet keeps telling us won't live for very long, so when he went badly downhill last month and we were not expecting him to survive more than a week or two, that went out of the window. I went into full-on parent mode and tried to make his life in our house as enjoyable and homely as possible. But...
Much as I love Tate, he is very high maintenance and I don't have the time, money or close proximity to the vets that he needs. It was in fact one of the reasons I agreed to house them for the winter - I knew I really *couldn't* look after him long term and would *need* to send them back at some point. That point is now - Tate has been stable all this month and they are due to return to the Rescue this week (assuming the weather sorts itself out later this week). I will miss him terribly, and I suspect he will miss me to a degree, but back he is going.
On the plus side, that may mean he starts popping up on "Big Ears, Tiny Tales"!
DeleteBHV, thank you for everything. Being a BHV brings with it a lot of painful choices and hardship that others (me) don't consider. Again, thank you for all you do and have done. Please give little Tate our best wishes for a long and bright future and again thanks for jumping in when he took a turn for the worse.
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