Aww bless her!  
I came in this evening to find absolutely no evidence that Clover had explored the downstairs of her hutch. Apparently she wasn’t sure of the ramp/stairs to go down.
So I’ve lifted her down, and she’s had a good sniff around and now she’s going up and downstairs in her hutch like a pro!

On Rabbit adoption and romance

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single male rabbit in possession of a large hutch, must be in want of a wife. Something I should have learned when trying to find a companion for Willoughby the first time round. I knew rabbits were social creatures and by then had come to learn that rabbits were meant to live in pairs or more when kept as pets. Darcy was tiny, and I’m fairly sure Willoughby bullied him into line and afterwards they got on like a house on fire. Wentworth on the other hand, was of a comparable size and further more was a bit of a scrapper. With Willoughby and him in the same room it was world war three. Fur flew everywhere, there were cuts on both sides and on at least one occasion Willoughby, thinking I was Wentworth when trying to separate them, sunk his teeth into me.

I was more dilligent after this episode.

I have since made it my business to learn about rabbit bonding techniques, and realised why trying to bond two un neutered males was an abject failure. They just won’t cede priority to the other rabbit, because the other rabbit is /clearly/ in /their/ territory and should therefore be run out of town and once they had had a few fights…they remember and hate each other accordingly. They are perfectly happy with lying either side of a wire screen however, so they became frenemies with occasional battles when I was not sufficiently dilligent in keeping a wire gate closed or a door shut.

A few days after Wentworth lost his arch nemesis, I decided that it was time to start looking for a new companion for Wentworth as it really isn’t fair to keep a rabbit on it’s own. Hopefully one I could successfully bond, and instead of buying a rabbit from a pet shop, which I could not return if things did not work out as had happened with Willoughby and Wentworth, I had a look around the rescue sanctuaries for a suitable unattached female. There were several options, a nice little lion-head called Bunty from an unexpected litter, a lop called Buster (mis-sexed and dumped when the kids got bored with the rabbit), Honey who looked lovely and was being re-homed because the owner was moving to a place they couldn’t keep pets, and Clover a dwarf lop who was found in Grimsby as a stray, and who subsequently was sent to the Burford Blue Cross centre.

My mother and I paid a visit to Burford to suss out what was required for adoption, and to see if any of the ladies were suitable and also to see if Burford did the bonding or if it was up to me (It’s up to me – they don’t have the space to do bondings even if I was paying for it). As we were going to be going away for a weekend to visit my niece in Aberdeen. It was more of a testing the waters than a serious hunt, I wasn’t going to be unfair to a rabbit and adopt it, bring it home, and disappear for four-five days straight away before it had settled in with only a friend looking in to feed the pets. Burford have an excellent policy of not permitting a person to reserve an animal for more than three days, so on the wednesday after I got back, I gave them a call. Honey and Bunty had already been re-homed. Buster was now in the process of being bonded to another of the centre’s rabbits, but I already knew which bunny I wanted if she was still available. Clover, having been living as an indoor bunny for so long is already half trained as a house rabbit. She is a lovely looking little thing, has been neutered and s only about 2 years old. I think I can give her a good home. I spoke to a lovely lady, who discussed everythign with me, and I reserved her.

I pick her up tomorrow :D

I can’t wait!

This is the lady in question:

https://www.bluecross.org.uk/pet/clover-476306?type=adopt

I cleaned out the rabbit hutch today. I suspect Wentworth might be a bit put out that his sunbathing shelf is off limits now lol, but I’m sure he will adjust, and if the bonding goes well, it will be back in a couple of months.

To start with, Clover gets sole use of the hutch, Wentworth my room with very occasional swaps.  After five weeks of adjustment to each other’s presence, and scent (via bedding swaps), they go on supervised dates.

This will probably be quite an amusing process.

I will keep you updated.

Wish me luck!

27/12/12

27/12/12
I wrote these down in the middle of the night if my handwriting is anything to go by, which is why they didn’t make it into the main post of the other dream I had.

I dreamt that Willoughby appeared in dad’s garden. Dad disapproves of me keeping him, I hide him overnight and tidy the garden which Will had made a mess of. I also had a fragment in which there was a train and kids escaping in it. It wasn’t very vivid – I noted that down, and a person I knew at Uni was in the dream. Chris Banks. The dream ended on Freshwater east beach. No idea why.

20/5/12

20/05/2012
I dreamt of my baby bunny Wentworth.  He was in his outdoor run (the little sod managed to escape by jumping over so I’m going to have to make a new total cover lid.  There are other bunnies too, young and friendly with Wentworth.  They are white the other rabbits.  Willoughby is outside the run, as is a chestnut/red spaniel.  It’s excited and is playing with Willoughby and trying to get into the run to play with the other rabbits.

23/4/11

23/4/11
 
Last night I had the weirdest dream.  I was in one house and had to get to another.  Possibly for work.  It was very stormy out, and there was someone waiting for me at the other house.  I give a little girl something when I am there, and tell her to look at the bottom of the cage her rabbit lives in (there is an envelope which I suspects contains money)  her bother put it there I think, and he’s the one waiting for me.  I know there was more before and after that scene, but I don’t remember.  I do remember putting on my wet weather gear.

21/9/10

21/9/10

The first dream I had last night was just a little bit gross and disturbing. I was back at mum’s place and was playing with the rabbit, Will. I noticed his tail had a load of scabs and sores on it, but on closer inspection, I could see it was actually things embedded in the tail, which became quite large. Deciding to clean out the crap, so he didn’t get an infection, I then proceeded to pull out bits of potato and swede covered in dirty grey brown pus, which left large holes in his tail. I have no idea how they got embedded in the first place. But it was really gross pulling them out, and the tail looked just awful at the end, after cleaning it was pocked with craters of raw flesh. It didn’t hurt him or anything though, and he wasn’t bleeding at any point. Even more surprising, he didn’t seem to mind all the manhandling, and this is a rabbit that strongly dislikes being pivced up.

The second dream was much cooler, and much less disturbing.

I remember seeing a naked young woman painted all in blue and green. She was in some kind of ritual ceremony, possibly a salute to the sun as she had her arms raised at one point. Then she takes a burning torch, climbs to the top of the ceremonial mound and plunges it into the water, which promptly sets alight. She dives in, and as she rises, the flames go out. (all the fuel must have burned or something), then the dream shifted and I was in some kind of cavern with friends. We were as usual hunting for something (possibly the fuel that caused the water to burn in the above ceremony. I ducked into one cavern, and ended up plunging into a frothing pool of water. It was quite light from bio-luminescence on the walls. I duck out of the cavern, under a lip of rock and find myself on dry land again, in another cavern which has ropes and wires suspended from the ceiling. It was used for some kind of storage and it was morphing into a proper room. My friends and I ended up traversing the room via all the ceiling cables – as if they were oddly places monkey bars.

10/9/10

10/9/10

I had two dreams last night, both of them work related. The first was set at my current work place. I had been processing data in the office and for some reason I go out into the effective stress lab. There’s a crowd of people around the sample preparation bench. Andy is preparing one of the samples in the normal manner and there is a big block of soil (looks like the modeling clay straight from the bag with its edges trimmed off). Michael comes up with a tray of drinks (tea coffee etc) and puts it down on the workspace just in front of the big clay specimen. Andy promptly starts to tell Michael off for being so careless – he could have disturbed the sample (even though it really doesn’t look all that delicate to me). Phil and Nick meanwhile are preparing another sample on the floor of all places. Nick is doing the trimming on his knees (and he is behind the bench so I can’t see him from my perspective) while Phil stands over him, directing/watching what he is doing and making suggestions. The Roger walks out of his office on the way to the advanced lab for some reason, and I ask him what the test is about (as I have never seen a test on such a weird (and large) specimen.). Roger explains it to me very convincingly (I can even hear his tone of voice in the dream) and then goes off to do whatever he was going to do (he is holding onto some papers) while my response was, “Huh”.

The second dream was based in Preston and centered around my old job of care assistant. For some reason I was up in Preston (probably visiting mum as per my usual reason for being up there) and Apex has convinced me to do a shift (they must have been utterly desperate). So I have gone to this place (it looks like it’s where nanny’s old care home is sited – and we are going into a house that is what I would call the ‘gatehouse’ that is to the side of it to an assisted living accommodation. I have gotten a lift or am driving a car very much like mum’s and I have Chloe the cat with me. No idea why I had brought her up north with me. Anyway, mum turns up and she has Will (her house rabbit) with her (hutch and all). We therefore decide to introduce them. Interesting thing about it. It isn’t Chloe (who has proved herself a cold hard killer of all things rodent and avian) who attacked. Will bit her on the nose! She kept wanting to make friends, and he kept attacking her. Then I notice how odd the weather is getting. There has been a storm building for a while with dark grey clouds and wind etc…now I notice that there’s what looks like the funnel of a twister coming down from the clouds . It is BIG and very threatening looking and I can still /see/ the twisting vortex of the water vapour in the twisting wind. It keeps trying to set down, but never quite reaches the ground. But the clouds above are getting ever blacker and there are some curious black sparkles in it that I /think/ are stars – as if the storm is peeling back the atmosphere and revealing the utter black of space, punctuated by the stars (either that or it was dead black cloud (I mean it was so black it could have been sapping the light from the surroundings) with tiny lightning globs at random points. I keep thinking it would be a good idea to get in the car – or in the building, but the sight is really mesmerizing…and then I got woke up by Chloe using me as a springboard.

7/6/10

I had dreams last night, but I don’t remember much about them except that dad was there, and WillowB (will) the bunny and the wild one from the church yeard. Dad kept shifting the rabbits around and letting them escape (I keep having to keep an eye on them and shoo them back) Dad was searching for something of his, though I know the drawers and desk were mums. The bedroom we were in looked like the upstairs at my mum’s neighbours house (Barbera) though there was a corridoor to a bathroom and the stairs were in the wrong position… I am fairly certain I had another dream in which a war was being fought and I was hunting for shelter and a home…but that one was very very fuzzy.