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Our rabbit goes to the toilet EVERYWHERE!!

Jujube

New Kit
Hi everyone, this is my first post! Sorry, it's a bit long!

We got our lovely black otter mini lop rabbit about 6 weeks ago

He's very friendly, he sits with us during the day either under the desk by our feet or by the couch, he's quite naughty and chews books and he's destroyed some magazines... But nothing major.

We may have given him too much freedom too soon - he's a house rabbit, and we live in an apartment, it's got a really big living space but it's very open plan so we can't really confine him to one room.

We work shifts and so he's never left more than about 5 hours, so we just leave him in the house with the cage open (it's fully rabbit proof, no wires or anything like that) he's been fine.

But recently, in the last week or 2, he's started a bad habit...

He's hardly touched his litter tray in his cage since last week. He still eats his food and drinks from his cage but otherwise rarely goes in there for very long. He prefers to be out and about.

Now, that isn't a problem, we like him out and about, BUT he now poos wherever he feels like it. Sometimes on the floor, mostly on our couches. He also wees on the couches, and stains the covers.

Whenever he goes in the hallway (small, maybe 8ft by 4ft, quite cold due to the window sometimes being open) he does literally a dozen or more poos and a wee.

He also hopped on our bed the other night and weed on the bed.

I'm looking at him lovingly now, he's flopped on his side having a snooze by my left foot, and he looks very angelic.

Before getting our rabbit we did a plethora of researching online and we always assumed toilet training wasn't an issue? They pick a place, they go in their place, they stick to that place for future 'rabbit raisins', and that's it - that's according to all of the guides we looked at online.

What's going wrong and what can we do?

We try to discipline by loudly clapping our hands once and delivering a verbal 'NO!' - that's ok when he's chewing the life out of a book, but if he's having about 15 poos (a natural, unstoppable action), they're falling in between the sofa cushions, we can't tell him off for answering the call of nature, can we?
 
Is he neutered? Unneutered bucks will wee everywhere to mark their territory.

Mine are litter trained, always wee in their tray, but we still get stray poos, but they're easy to sweep up so not a problem!
 
It'll probably be because he isn't neutered if he isn't, otherwise he's probably just being a pain!
 
If you got him 6 weeks ago, assuming he was about 10-12 weeks when you got him, he's still only going to be about 16 weeks or 4 months old. Unfortunately at this age they just do go everywhere usually. Once he's 6 months and can be neutered you should see a major change in him. Both litter training wise and probably also behavioural wise.

It also takes a while for them to get used to new surroundings. I'm also assuming from your post that he has the run of the whole house? Sometimes it's better to limit their space to begin with and gradually increase it. Maybe room by room. One other thing if he does have the run of the whole house how many litter trays are there? He may need one in every room at least to begin with, then you can maybe take out the ones he doesn't use as he gets acquainted with where they are.

Also just thought, what are you putting in the litter trays? They tend to wee when they graze on hay so this is the best place to put it but make sure it is topped up regularly so there is always fresh stuff for him. Also what sort of box do you use? I've found the best boxes are underbed storage boxes as it gives them plenty of room to forage through the hay and no chance of any weewees accidentally going over the sides which we had a terrible problem with until I went with Sky-O's advice of these underbed boxes!

All this is academic though until he's neutered. You may want to know though that even neutered boy rabbits sometimes wee on soft things like sofas and beds! They seem to have this inbuilt nature that means that if it's soft (usually hay which is helpful cos this is usually in the litter tray!) it's time for weewees! I get around this by covering my bed with a tarp when I get up. During the night if Mischa jumps up I put him back on the floor.
 
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