Bringing Your First Bunny Home
So you are getting your first bunny? Awww!!! I'm excited for you. Bunnies are adorable bundles of soft fur with way more personality than most people imagine. You might have already purchased or built a hutch, had fun shopping for toys and even prepped hay, food and a water bottle. Can I share a few things that might make a big difference in terms of helping you get off to the right start with your bunny? It's the stuff that I wish someone had told me.
1. A happy, relaxed bunny is a bunny that feels safe. This seems like common sense, but it's not. Your bunny has a prey instinct and will likely resort to that instinct in new situations. Of course this isn't true for all bunnies, but if you bring your bunny home and it runs to the back of the hutch and crouches down, unwilling to come out, it DOESN'T hate you. It feels unsafe. What will change that? TIME and PATIENCE and CONSISTENT KINDNESS.
2. Before you bring your bunny home, talk to the breeder about what constitutes "normal" for your bunny. How big is it's cage/hutch. Does it get out to play? Does it have a box or a pillow or toys? What type of water bottle and food bowl does it have? Is it used to other animals? Does it live in a quiet place, or is he used to a lot of noise? What temperature is comfortable for it? Of course your home will not be like your bunny's old home, but having some things the same will help him adjust faster and feel safer.
3. It might be tempting to give your bunny tons of space to play, but you might need to work up to that. Consider that bunnies are all about "owning" things. Just like most other animals, they want a territory and they want everyone else to know that it's theirs. If a bunny is used to "owning" a 2 x 3 cage, then putting it in a 5 x 6 space might overwhelm it. How can it claim all this new space? Signs of stress would include charging, nipping, frantic running or pacing. Better to start with a small space, and as your bunny gives you cues of being relaxed, gradually add to it.
4. Two words. Sensory sensitivity. And two more that I'm going to say again - prey instinct. When you put your bunny in a new situation like bringing it home, it will go into hyper sensing mode, trying to sense dangers before it has to confront them head-on. New sounds. New smells. New people. New animals. New Sights. And everything is so BIG to a bunny. Consider giving your bunny time to adjust and be like a fly on the wall of your home. Don't pass it from person to person, or constantly invade it's space. If you moved next to an airport or a railroad, it would take time before those loud sounds became background noise to you. Your bunny is going through the same adjustment - filtering the harmless stimuli from the dangerous. Try to help with that process, not add to it.
5. Be aware of general bunny rules. Bunnies do not like to have their nails cut. Bunnies do not like to be carried around. Bunnies do not like water - except to drink. Bunnies hold grudges when you do something mean. Bunnies love banana. Bunnies like to stay pretty clean. Bunnies generally don't go on walks.
6. How do you draw a hesitant bunny out? This is a big question. One that deserves a whole post. Until then, the short answer is to be consistently pleasant, kind and to stick a pin in your own agenda. Your bunny can sense when you care more about what you want than what it needs.
Now, it's quite possible that you will bring home one of those bunnies that seems to have been hiding when the prey instinct was being passed out. It might hop into your house and adjust instantaneously. It might assume every dog or cat is a friend. If that's true, you might be in for a whole different set of issues. You might want to head those off and read my post on the Bossy Bunny.