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How to convince housemates to get another rabbit?

yamazumi

Warren Scout
I live in a house with 5 other people, well, one we never see, and my girlfriend also spends all her time here because her housemates are horrible people, but that's not the point.

Me, my girlfriend, and 3 of my other housemates have shared custody over Chaplin, who was a rescue rabbit. We all put money in towards her food, vet bills etc but she lives in one of my housemates rooms. When it comes to the end of University one of us will take her, me and my girlfriend would definitely be capable of doing so, but apart from that only the one who has her cage could possibly take her but considering she can't even take her rats at Christmas I'm not so sure.

Granted, the idea to get a shared rabbit probably wasn't the best idea, not because of the level of care or anything but because decisions obviously have to be okay with everyone. Now me and my girlfriend want to get her a boyfriend (she's spayed) because we know rabbits do best in pairs. I see so many lovely boys on the rehoming board and I know one of them would probably be perfect. However, the housemate who keeps her in her room says that she doesn't need a friend, that she gets much better care than most rabbits (an absolutely terrible argument in my opinion, it's not about providing your animal with better care than someone else it's about giving them the best life you can). She's a welfare student yet had the audacity to say that if we did get Chaplin a friend then maybe she wouldn't be as affection towards us. It makes me sick, surely a animal welfare student should want to give their pet the best life and not be so selfish and prevent her from the basic need to socialise with their own kind.

There is nothing I seem to be able to do though, I tried linking her some articles on it, and I don't know if she decided to just ignore it, or read it and disagreed, my girlfriend has also brought the issue up with her. I'm not very good at face to face arguments and I don't want to anger her... I have to live with her for the next 20 or so monthz. One of my other housemates also said that if we got another rabbit the house would smell and she'd move out (she also said that about anymore rats >.>), I wish she would. I joked whilst in pets@home about getting this boy in the rehoming section and the way she snapped "no" back at me was quite uncalled for.

We have 5 guinea pigs, 13 rats, 2 hamsters, a snail and a rabbit in the house, which sounds a lot but between 7 of us isn't really. Point being one more rabbit would not make the house smell. All the animals are kept clean (especially my 8 male rats, I'm constantly on top of making sure they don't smell too much as not to offend people), we make up for the fact that we have so many animals in a student house by making sure that the house is constantly kept hoovered and tidied.

What can I do to convince her. The rabbit obviously has her moments where she's happy, she binkies around the house a lot, but there's days when we're gone for a few hours and she obviously gets no attention at night. She's sit underneath the table in the kitchen looking grumpy and sometimes she just doesn't leave you alone like she's craving some kind of attention. I just think she'd be so much happier with a friend, and no less affectionate that she is now.


I'm sorry this is a bit more of a rant about a person that about the rabbit, but I thought I'd gotten away from other people controlling my pets when I moved away to University. I've had rabbits before, I was young when I got them and obviously my mother was technically in charge of them. I always told myself if I had more pets, especially rabbits, I wouldn't let anyone do that because I know I know what's best for them. Being able to take my rats to the vets just because I think they seem a bit down gives me a huge sense of satisfaction, and not being able to provide Chaplin with the best care I know I could give her really gets me down.
 
If you got her a boyfriend how would you bond them? By having a rescue do it for you? Because i assume since you're in college you aren't around a lot and for at least the first week of bonding you have to be with them 24/7, in case they start fighting.
 
good grief.:shock:

too many animals. too many people. i'm surprised you aren't all going insane and reaching for axes and knives!

ok, now we've established that i'm a bit of a loner...


so, you want the best life for the rabbit. but you don't have sole charge of the rabbit. the rabbit has a cage in someone's room. that makes chaplin her rabbit, i think. she doesn't follow links/your advice. hmmm.

can you ask her for the cage and rabbit, so that you can make the serious decisions about rabbit welfare? you'd have to shoulder the cost. she might go for it.

have you examined your own conscience? you thought leaving home would be the end of people controlling your animals. have you 'animal hoarding' or 'collecting' issues to address? just wondering.

you are living with a whole load of people. life isn't lived by committee. if you want to have freedom to do as you wish, you need to live alone. even then, it's not perfect.

if you were mine, i'd advise you not to get any more animals, to stick with the ones you have until you have a permanent home. and to get out of any 'shared pets', 'shared houses' agreements as soon as you reasonably can.
 
First off, dont get any more shared pets :lol: You will always have a difference of opinion of sorts and it can get to be quite a power struggle, especially when it comes to when you split.

Does she have any other pets that she thinks should live in groups, like the rats or piggies? You could maybe say that keeping her alone is exactly the same as keeping the rat/piggie alone.

The problem is that, at the moment, she is probably viewing the rabbit as hers and thinking she will take her home when you all go your separate ways eventually. And if she is going to be taking on the rabbit, you cant really force her to have another one. If you do get another rabbit you have to make it very clear to everyone and agree amoungst yourselves that to split them would be cruel, so whoever takes the rabbits has to take both of them.

Do you have a lounge? If so, see if you can get the rabbit moved into the lounge, or kitchen if not, so everyone can enjoy her. At the moment the rabbit is pretty much 'hers', it lives in her room, she owns the cage, she probably does most of the water changing, feeding etc. If you get her put in a communal area then you take away the power and sense of more ownership that she has.
 
good grief.:shock:

too many animals. too many people. i'm surprised you aren't all going insane and reaching for axes and knives!

ok, now we've established that i'm a bit of a loner...


so, you want the best life for the rabbit. but you don't have sole charge of the rabbit. the rabbit has a cage in someone's room. that makes chaplin her rabbit, i think. she doesn't follow links/your advice. hmmm.

can you ask her for the cage and rabbit, so that you can make the serious decisions about rabbit welfare? you'd have to shoulder the cost. she might go for it.

have you examined your own conscience? you thought leaving home would be the end of people controlling your animals. have you 'animal hoarding' or 'collecting' issues to address? just wondering.

you are living with a whole load of people. life isn't lived by committee. if you want to have freedom to do as you wish, you need to live alone. even then, it's not perfect.

if you were mine, i'd advise you not to get any more animals, to stick with the ones you have until you have a permanent home. and to get out of any 'shared pets', 'shared houses' agreements as soon as you reasonably can.



Just wrote a whole long reply only for my laptop to turn off, gosh darn it.

I know it sounds like we have a lot of animals, and we do, but we are all individual people who came together and happened to have a few pets each.

I myself have 8 males rats that all live together, I've had them all from babies and I've bonded them, I dedicate a whole lot of my time to them because I don't know what I'd do without them and I'm constantly trying to improve their lives. I have no issue with taking them to the vets at the first sign of anything being wrong. I find it quite offensive that'd you think I may have "hoarding issues" I own one species and am certainly not overrun by them nor do I intend on getting anymore.
My issue at home was that my mum was reluctant to take my pets to the vets unless she thought they were dying. When I was 11 I had two rabbits, who lived quite happily together until one died just before I went to University last year. I brought the other inside, litter trained him and brought him a crate so I could keep him as happy as possible since my mum would not allow me to have another to bond him with, and despite offering him free to a good home on this forum and on preloved I was forced to keep him since there was no interest and he was cared for by my parents when I left home, after him I vowed to myself I wouldn't let other people control how my pets were cared for. Now I'd never commit to an animal I couldn't care for for it's entire life, but you honestly cannot blame an 11 year old for having pets and not thinking ahead that they might still be around when they move out (I wasn't even thinking about Uni at that age, and quite frankly neither was my mother).

My girlfriend moved into her house with 3 guinea pigs, who, at the time were all living separately, two of them now live together (her original intentions) and the other lives alone, it was actually dumped on her by a friend, and she also has 2 female rats. However, despite being allowed pets in the contract, and the landlord having no problems with them she was forced to move them to our house as her housemates said they posed a health risk and they didn't want them in the house (yet they let a random cat into their house >.> and the place in constantly a bomb site), they told the landlord that they ran around the house, although they never actually left her room.

Other than that one girl has 3 rats, one has 2 hamsters and one has 2 guinea pigs. Whether or not I'd agreed to help with the rabbit they would have gotten her, but I figured that if I was helping care for her and putting money towards her costs I'd be able to input on exactly house she was cared for. I insisted they got a pair, but alas, they didn't. At least my suggestion of spaying her was actually put into play.

I can't have sole charge of the rabbit, I could afford it, but I don't have anywhere to put her. She has a XXL dog crate, and I have a box room (short straw), my girlfriends pigs live on the landing outside my room and there is literally nowhere else in the house to put her other than one bedroom opposite mine and the room she's in at the moment. Hopefully a housemate will be moving out soon, and my girlfriend moving in which will give us a lot more room, only then am I going to suggest the rabbit moves upstairs.

Saying all this however, the rabbit spends very little time in or near her crate. She much prefers to be upstairs watching the pigs or sleeping under one of the beds. My girlfriend is caring for her over Christmas and there will be a 3 week period where it's only 3 of us in the house caring for her... which doesn't include the girl who has her in her room.

I don't want another rabbit for the sake of having another pet. I want Chaplin to be as happy as possible. It would be much easier to just have one rabbit to care for, it would lessen the tension between us all certainly.


When it comes to bonding, I'll admit I have no experience in the slightest with bonding rabbits, but I've been reading about it and I'd be more than willing to put all the effort needed into it. Despite us being students we really don't spend much time away from the house. I for one never go home, we only have one day a week where we are out all day, that's a Monday. Other than that the only days where no one is here is Thursday mornings for an hour and a half, Friday mornings for an hour and a half, and Friday afternoons for 2 1/2 hours. We also have around a month off at Christmas. I wouldn't be past finding a rescue to bond her though given the chance.

3 of us wanted to move out of this house in with some friends, friends who certainly wouldn't have any issues with us bringing two rabbits with us on top of the rodents, but obviously finding a student house that allows pets is hard to come by, and we cannot risk giving up this house because it's very unlikely we'd find another.



First off, dont get any more shared pets You will always have a difference of opinion of sorts and it can get to be quite a power struggle, especially when it comes to when you split.

Does she have any other pets that she thinks should live in groups, like the rats or piggies? You could maybe say that keeping her alone is exactly the same as keeping the rat/piggie alone.

The problem is that, at the moment, she is probably viewing the rabbit as hers and thinking she will take her home when you all go your separate ways eventually. And if she is going to be taking on the rabbit, you cant really force her to have another one. If you do get another rabbit you have to make it very clear to everyone and agree amoungst yourselves that to split them would be cruel, so whoever takes the rabbits has to take both of them.

Do you have a lounge? If so, see if you can get the rabbit moved into the lounge, or kitchen if not, so everyone can enjoy her. At the moment the rabbit is pretty much 'hers', it lives in her room, she owns the cage, she probably does most of the water changing, feeding etc. If you get her put in a communal area then you take away the power and sense of more ownership that she has.

I wouldn't even mind the rabbit going with the girl when we move out, I just want her to have the best life possible. Other than the issue of not having a friend she has a great life.
The girl has 3 rats. I'm not exactly sure on her stance with them needing company. She originally got a girl rat from the pets@home rehoming centre that was apparently going to be put down, and from what I've heard she only got her a friend in order to try and make used to humans. I think someone she lived with also got a lone rat and ended up dumping it on her which is the only reason she has 3. Honestly I think if the original rat hadn't been completely insane she'd be keeping her on her own, which would be something I know a lot about rats and I couldn't bare to see one living alone. Spaying and neutering fixes any rat aggressive problems the majority of the time.
I can't really use pigs as an excuse because we do have a lone pig, who's even been neutered but is down right terrified by any other pig and it just seems too stressful on him to get him a friend (he's the one who was dumped on my girlfriend).

We don't have a lounge, nor do we have room in the kitchen (silly student house, but we will have room on the landing within the next few weeks, which is second most social place in the house after the kitchen, and I really want her moved there when we do have room).
 
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Wait.... you have a rabbit at home? Why dont you bring him up and then suggest that they live together?
 
Sorry I didn't make it clear, he died earlier on this year at the age of 10, I miss him like mad, he was the soppiest, loveliest rabbit I've ever encounted, if he was still alive he would have been straight at Uni with me this year.
 
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