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worst ever newbie owner mistakes...

P

purplebumble

Warren Veteran
ok i will fess up my worst..please dont think me awful...we have all made errors and some more than others..well i beat the lot of you:oops:

my first bun was from a pet store...we got her and her cage etc all on the same day after seeing her many times the week before. it was a big mistake due to health probs we found..but i wouldnt go back and not get her..she taught me everything..and i loved her loads.

first off decent bunny care books were limited...i got the rabbitlopaedia and carole james guid to bunnys i think it was..very short cutely cartooned book.

the only net we had was on the ntl box..the actual internet wayyy before BB appeared.
sites working on it were few and far between but i did my best. I also sought advice from pet shops and finally when i got a decent bunvet..asked the vet.
but before that...i used to think she was bored with her food and change it every now and then..the type that is..and when i ran out i gave her dry weetabix and cornflakes till i got to the petshop in the morning.
The pictures in the rabbit books showed a full food bowl..so like an idiot i copied it:oops:
she was very il after her jabs and the vet said she couldnt be from the jabs but might be..what? then she had the runs one day...actual runs and he gave her some antibx.

i went saying she smelt funny and her mouth was sore....all buns smell he said.
so i had to get her spayed as she was soo aggressive but she was too oyung. the new bunvet needed to do a dental and spayed her at the same time as she was having a phantom pregnancy followed up by her toy cow becoming a baby substitue for ehr and our cat! oh yes she never left him alone.
i fed her lots of curly kale..she loved it..carrots...apples..pears..strawberries...peanuts in shells only the odd one now and again but even so:shock: also used to feed her corn on the cob with the green husks still attached:shock:

looking back.....i know only too well how bad i was even tho i tried. the vet told me about special hays but they didnt sell any..and i had no net at all by then.
the reason i didnt feed her more hay...her jaw was so badly misaligned...shed had oral syphilis.....and had her front teeth damaged by a water bottle whos secure thingy..snapped!! but id pick her soft grass..cut hay into pieces....etc.
she had terrible eye and ear infections....dentals every month at least.....she was a determined bun.

looking back...it must have been elongated tooth roots doing the damage too...but the vet never said anything and i was so naive to trust the vet totally.

her aggression was from pain i now realise...but learning what i have over the last 6 yrs she was actualy a very friendly bunny who indeed did love me...the only bun who ever has!!

i just feel so awful about her life and tkaing the vets advice to have her pts as another dental wasnt fair on her. now i could kick myself....

with each bun ive learnt something new..usually too late:cry: but also soemthing about their wild bunny ways stillaffecting their actions as a house bun.

i have been able to go to librabries and my best ever read was living with a house rabbit. since then of course i have bought books and have access to the internet and several really helpful forums about bunnies..including this one.
so sad that even now the same attitude and advice is being handed out in most pet shops and vets...really shocks me.

i have a lot yet to learn about bunnies....id had cats for 13yrs but have only been keeping buns for 7 or 8 yrs......

i look at what ive typed and it makes me fume...how could i have been so stupid...:oops::cry:
 
Im lucky ( and my buns too) that I only had rabbits for a month before I found RU. In that time I had kept them in a 4ft hutch on shavings with unlimited bunnimix and not much hay cuz they didnt eat it. (because they were full of mix). I was also terrfied of them because at 4 months old they had discovered hormones and were ripping me and each other to shreads but I didnt know why!

Thanks to RU I invested in a shed and the gorgeous Dutchie who has taught me so much about what rabbits do and dont like so thank you RU
 
Like Webbkath, I feel so lucky that a friend recommended this site to me after we had our rabbit for only a couple of weeks. We are still only about 5 months in, but think we have done ok so far... (and hoping to get a husbun for the little one soon, so hopefully we'll be good parents to him too :))

We were also very lucky that the lady that we got our bun from was incredibly helpful and had a lot of patience to answer all our stupid questions. She gave us a lot of information about how best to look after our bun e.g. space requirements/cuddle requirements/diet/toys/vaccinations/neutering/fly strike info/nail clipping etc etc.

I still have so so much to learn, and am really only touching the surface of what there is to know about rabbits. However, I really dread to think what we would have done (thinking it was for the best of course) if we hadn't had this great source of information :) On top of the great info in the forum, I find it is a great way of getting book/website recommendations etc.

Thank you everyone :wave:
 
hmm I agree, when I think back to what I did with my first bun before coming on here :shock: I think for every sale of rabbit they must come with a recommendation to look at this site!!

I had my bunny at 4 weeks old - from the start I was feeding her veggies, dry mix everything really!! and she did selective feed too! I Wouldn't feed her pellets because i thought they looked 'boring':oops: and also didnt give her fresh hay (she had straw to start with!).

Shes still here so I must have done something right but do look back and :oops::oops:

(she now is a house bun, has fresh hay all day and is on excel pellets)
 
purplebumble said:
ok i will fess up my worst..please dont think me awful...we have all made errors and some more than others..well i beat the lot of you:oops:

my first bun was from a pet store...we got her and her cage etc all on the same day after seeing her many times the week before. it was a big mistake due to health probs we found..but i wouldnt go back and not get her..she taught me everything..and i loved her loads.

first off decent bunny care books were limited...i got the rabbitlopaedia and carole james guid to bunnys i think it was..very short cutely cartooned book.

the only net we had was on the ntl box..the actual internet wayyy before BB appeared.
sites working on it were few and far between but i did my best. I also sought advice from pet shops and finally when i got a decent bunvet..asked the vet.
but before that...i used to think she was bored with her food and change it every now and then..the type that is..and when i ran out i gave her dry weetabix and cornflakes till i got to the petshop in the morning.
The pictures in the rabbit books showed a full food bowl..so like an idiot i copied it:oops:
she was very il after her jabs and the vet said she couldnt be from the jabs but might be..what? then she had the runs one day...actual runs and he gave her some antibx.

i went saying she smelt funny and her mouth was sore....all buns smell he said.
so i had to get her spayed as she was soo aggressive but she was too oyung. the new bunvet needed to do a dental and spayed her at the same time as she was having a phantom pregnancy followed up by her toy cow becoming a baby substitue for ehr and our cat! oh yes she never left him alone.
i fed her lots of curly kale..she loved it..carrots...apples..pears..strawberries...peanuts in shells only the odd one now and again but even so:shock: also used to feed her corn on the cob with the green husks still attached:shock:

looking back.....i know only too well how bad i was even tho i tried. the vet told me about special hays but they didnt sell any..and i had no net at all by then.
the reason i didnt feed her more hay...her jaw was so badly misaligned...shed had oral syphilis.....and had her front teeth damaged by a water bottle whos secure thingy..snapped!! but id pick her soft grass..cut hay into pieces....etc.
she had terrible eye and ear infections....dentals every month at least.....she was a determined bun.

looking back...it must have been elongated tooth roots doing the damage too...but the vet never said anything and i was so naive to trust the vet totally.

her aggression was from pain i now realise...but learning what i have over the last 6 yrs she was actualy a very friendly bunny who indeed did love me...the only bun who ever has!!

i just feel so awful about her life and tkaing the vets advice to have her pts as another dental wasnt fair on her. now i could kick myself....

with each bun ive learnt something new..usually too late:cry: but also soemthing about their wild bunny ways stillaffecting their actions as a house bun.

i have been able to go to librabries and my best ever read was living with a house rabbit. since then of course i have bought books and have access to the internet and several really helpful forums about bunnies..including this one.
so sad that even now the same attitude and advice is being handed out in most pet shops and vets...really shocks me.

i have a lot yet to learn about bunnies....id had cats for 13yrs but have only been keeping buns for 7 or 8 yrs......

i look at what ive typed and it makes me fume...how could i have been so stupid...:oops::cry:
Click to expand...

I'm not shocked at all. I've not owned rabbits that long and when I did get them I got them from a good rescue who made sure I had all the facts required for looking after them. I had done a good 10 years or so reserch first as I wasn't allowed pets as a child. I had to wait until I bought my own house. I really noticed a change in the advice given from when I did my original reasearch until the time I really got stuck in and did intensive stuff ready for my guys.

You seemed to go to the people who should have been there to give you the best advive- pet shops which look after animals all th etime and should be giving out decent info to epople whomay well be acting on impulse and your vet who has studied animals for years plus you are paying for a good service from the.

Sounds to me that you were doing all you could but had to wait for the rest of the world to catch up first :wave:
 
there have been other threads like this. really, it does no good to dwell on things we can't change. we've all made mistakes and none of us meant to do harm, we did our best, or did what most people around us would have done.

this is an informative forum. people are very supportive. i've certainly found it very helpful - i only called by 'once' and i haven't been able to leave!

i'm trying to work out if there could be a system for pet-acquiring - first, meetings, then classes, then registering, housechecks, licensing and finally, bunny. my brother is about to keep bees and he's been through all sorts of procedures.
 
Im really lucky i got reccomended this site otherwise i would have realied on information i got from a petshop.
 
sorry not been here for a while so dont recall the threads:oops::oops:

no i was curious if anyone else had begun with good intentions as theyd already had 3 cats and knew in depth what was required and knew each oet was unique.

i cannot belive how stoopid i was...but was very flattered to have a neighbour ask me over to their house one morning as theyd got a bunny a little major fluffy lionhead doe..gorgeous and soo friendly...i gave her the quick health check and was surprised....and she was soooo sweet. But we all had keot bunnies at different stages of our lives and different ideas. they were shocked to hear how things have chnaged..about having buns spayed now etc.
I lent them my folding pen for about a fortnight i think....so they could sort out a different hutch..the one theyd bought out of yellow pages wasnt ideal but till they could get soemthing else. its an outdoor bunny but inside each time it rianed etc..i think itll become a house bun....the lady of the house is smitten with her..but not half as much as her OH an he hates admitting it:lol::lol:

with access to the internet now things are so diferent...and this os one the best forums around.:wave:

how different things could be with hindsight.

i would love to make up basic info sheets into a package the pet shop have to give out....and buns not sold the same day..till the people have had time to read the booklet and think hard.

sadly tho i have also been naive enough to trust vets who werent at all bunny savvy.


mind you i never read up on children before having any either...:lol::lol:
 
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