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?
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?