Toilet Training Tilly

Hi,

As some of you know I am currently trying to bond my two buns, Tilly and Bernard however I need to toilet train Tilly as when she is free ranging in our bedroom she is going to pee on our mattress :shock:

We are not sleeping on it at the moment anyway and will be getting a new one very shortly but this is not the point!

We have put newspaper down in her cage and every time she pees on it we put that bit of newspaper in her litter tray so that she will learn to go in there.. The only thing i don't know is how to stop her peeing outside her cage? She is going to be a free range house bun once they are bonded with open access to the cage so I really don't want her to be going all over our carpets etc.

I have noticed that she has got yellow feet at the bottom, I don't know if this is due to being at the RSPCA and not being litter trained so possibly standing in urine a lot. I really hope this is not the case as the RSPCA should have realised. Now I think about it they didn't tell me whether she was any good with her litter tray and I should have asked them really :?

Should I wait until they are bonded and move them in together so she can see where bernard goes and hopefully learn from him?

(sorry if your all sick of hearing about my buns by the way as I have have bombarded RU with questions over the last few days, poor Angie is getting it the most :lol

Leave a litter tray outside her cage and do the same with the newspaper. Put hay in it too so she can nom and wee.

chul said:

Leave a litter tray outside her cage and do the same with the newspaper. Put hay in it too so she can nom and wee.

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Thank you I never thought of that! I will try this now and see how it goes

ETA: How is Bunski? Is he any better now after yesterday?

Thats how I did Bunsk. He wee'd on sawdust so I put that in his tray, along with some poops. Put the tray in a place she currently likes to wee. It helps!

On the flipside, as a warning, not all bunnies will ONLY go in the litter tray :wave:

Ginger is impeccable, 90% of the time. But i still get the occasional wee on the carpet, or in the dog crate etc.

Mainly territorial however.

Bunnies are territorial creatures, no matter how well litter trained they are, they COULD still go anwhere.

During bonding litter training can go out of the window! :wave: I wouldn't worry about it until they are bonded and settled. Too many hormones flying around.

prettylupin said:

During bonding litter training can go out of the window! :wave: I wouldn't worry about it until they are bonded and settled. Too many hormones flying around.

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I thought this too thank you xx

GrahamL said:

On the flipside, as a warning, not all bunnies will ONLY go in the litter tray :wave:

Ginger is impeccable, 90% of the time. But i still get the occasional wee on the carpet, or in the dog crate etc.

Mainly territorial however.

Bunnies are territorial creatures, no matter how well litter trained they are, they COULD still go anwhere.

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I'm glad you replied GrahamL as you have helped me out with Bernard a couple of times before. I think you are right about it being territorial as she did it on the carpet when she had a sniff arund Bernards room.

(I bought the dog crate from ebay it's fab!)

Ok, so now I have bonded the buns, I really need to get Tilly toilet trained. She is terrible! Pees everywhere and I am led to believe that it certainly is territorial rather than a spot that she likes to wee in.

She is doing it on the sofa, on the carpet, even in the little tunnel in the living room that we have for them.

we have put all soiled paper in the litter tray and have put some hay in it soshe can nom and wee. We have also tried moving it but then end up with a mobile litter tray as she keeps going in different places.

I'm pretty stuck on what to do now? I think the room must STINK of Bernard which is why she is doing it but I don't know if she will stop oonce she is satisfied that her scent is as strong as his.

On top of this the cage stinks of smell poops which Bernard had started doing after his neuter a couple of weeks ago and Tilly started doing the same smelling ones when she arrived. We came to the conclusion that it is when they have been through a bit of stress.

Can anyone help me please?

as you can probably tell from my threads im pretty new to the bonding thing - but when we first got daisy and duke a few years back we had a bit of a struggle with them. dont think either of them were already house trained so we started from scratch - the difference here though is that they were both already settled in a firm bond and neither had been recently spayed etc

we found we had to use 3 litter trays,2 were storage boxes and one was a corner tray used in the spot where they seemed to decide to go 1/2 times a week.

for us with those two the key was getting a box big enough that they could both sit in together at the same time

hope that helps a little....

Leigh said:

as you can probably tell from my threads im pretty new to the bonding thing - but when we first got daisy and duke a few years back we had a bit of a struggle with them. dont think either of them were already house trained so we started from scratch - the difference here though is that they were both already settled in a firm bond and neither had been recently spayed etc

we found we had to use 3 litter trays,2 were storage boxes and one was a corner tray used in the spot where they seemed to decide to go 1/2 times a week.

for us with those two the key was getting a box big enough that they could both sit in together at the same time

hope that helps a little....

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It does help thank you. We have a few litter trays so I will put a few out, each with some soiled paper in and maybe a bit of hay so that she can get used to going in a tray.

Two of the litter trays are big enough for two buns so hopefully they will be ok with this.

Bernard is fine, completely litter trained and is infact tidier than myself and OH!
He keeps trying to tidy up after her when she makes a mess :lol:

personally i would definitely put the hay in and quite a bit of it - we put the hay from our bales in the litter box. until we put loads of hay and got big enough boxes they decided pretty much anywhere was fair game. it did take a little while but they got the hang of it in the end

Leigh said:

personally i would definitely put the hay in and quite a bit of it - we put the hay from our bales in the litter box. until we put loads of hay and got big enough boxes they decided pretty much anywhere was fair game. it did take a little while but they got the hang of it in the end

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I have put lots of hay in so they can nom and wee together, hasn't worked very well so far as she is sat outside the litter tray with her head in nomming :roll: hehehe

Oh well I'm sure she will get the hang of it soon.

Thanks Amy x

My experience is that it can take a long time! I thought my two would never be litterbox-trained but now they are! As Graham says though, there'll always still be the occasional accident elsewhere. These days, it makes me smile when they run around the living room foraging for their dinner and then go and sit in the storage box litterbox politely having a poop!

I think you've had some really good advice

I thought my two were litter trained, but I recently moved them into a new hutch and I'm back to square one!:roll: