Top Bun

In the interest of creating more room in the Smart Pen, the house/lounges became a two story affair. Sydney was the first one to enjoy the top floor. Although not as brave as Tyler when it comes to interacting with humans or breaking into forbidden zones, Sydney is fearless with the vacuum, and   has a greater appreciation for a room with a better view.

Here you see, however, although Sydney is comfortably ensconced,

 she has a visitor and it's getting mighty crowded.

Tyler has his way and chins the edges of the doorway; 

this penthouse is mine.

Tyler installed.

Sydney reminds Tyler 

 she has more spots 

 and always will.

Daikon; The Movie Trailer

I made this little movie for our foster, Daikon. It's my first attempt at working with video in iMovie, but as you can see he is a super star!

Never Gone

You know that your blog has been neglected when you get Email solicitations from people wanting to write for it. The most recent offered to write for free, if she could put a link into the text. Get you own blog. And there are people wanting to advertise, or have me write something they suggest. Nope, nope, nope. The Qi Papers is a non-profit, free speaking blog.

Sydney concurs

The latest improvement here at the warren is the introduction of the Smart Pen, not my name for it, Paula from Pensicola called it that, and frankly it has a snappy sound. Since our move more than a year an half ago I have been unhappy, nay miserable, with the Xpen on a shower curtain, washable wool and sheet enclosures. They are fussy, the shower curtain moves in mysterious ways baring the rug to teeth and claws. Also the shower curtains are objects of rippage and potential GI blockages if consumed. Even the most careful placement of the pieces never insured full protection. They seemed to take forever to clean and set up.

A bird's eye view of The Spot's Smart Pen unit outfitted with all amenities. 

The Smart Pen is constructed with a Pure Bond Plywood floor with Marmoleum flooring. Purebond is a formaldehyde free plywood and is sold at Home Depot. It is a little more expensive than regular plywood, but a small piece to pay for safe product. Formaldehyde has been linked to cancer risk. Marmoleum is linoleum made from cork. It is a sustainable and non-toxic product and they use a rabbit in one of the banner headers on the website. Again an expensive product, but I got a good deal on  some over stock at a local store. All and all I paid less for materials than for some vet visits I could mention. The railings are pine scavenged, with permission, from a local construction site.
The railings hold the X Pen sides stable over a sheet that is pulled tight through corners left open. It takes less than ten minutes to clean a pen. The other system could take half an hour or more. Mind you that ten minutes does not include dumping and cleaning boxes or laundry. In addition to time savings the Smart Pen safe guards the landlord's carpet better than the previous system.

Corner of Smart Pen, just yank the corners of the sheets though,
drop and the fence and maid service is done.

I made two Smart Pens that are about 40 inches by 60 inches, any larger and moving them would difficult without help. The bunnies are NOT confined 24/7 to their pens, but rather it is home base for litter boxes, hay racks, food and water. Tyler and Sydney's has a couple of cardboard houses. They are confined to their pen at night as Sydney will box with Amelia at 2 a.m., if possible. The other pen is divided in half for Amelia and Harriet, I am hoping this is a prelude to being able to share without a fence between. In future  I plan to extend each unit with module porches and two story boxes.

Nail Patrol

Although rabbits are categorized as self-cleaning mammals,

they do need help with their nails,

a nail that is too long can catch, break off and cause lots of bleeding,

or in extreme cases a broken toe.

For almost a couple months, twice a month, I've been volunteering at the Rabbit Haven adoption show trimming nails, cleaning scent glands and performing minor grooming. Free nails trims are one of the services that the Haven offers the rabbit community. Donations are welcome, but not required. Rabbit nails need to be trimmed every 6 to 8 weeks, though some rabbits need to have them done every month. It took me quite awhile to be able to trim nails on my own rabbits, they were good teachers. I have developed three possible holds for the procedure, depending on what the rabbit will let me do. My preferred hold is to have the rabbit on it's back on a towel, slightly cradled between my thighs. This is not trancing because the rabbit's head is not tilted back and it is not unconscious. The position is comfortable and calming for many rabbits. The hind legs of some rabbits shake. Holding the rabbits legs so they stop shaking will not make the rabbit less afraid. Shaking is not a bad thing, it is, in fact, a good thing. Shaking is a neurogenic reaction to stress or fear. It is the body's mechanism for releasing tension/trauma. In a stress and shaking study using chicks it was found that the chicks that were stressed and shook were more resilient to disease and subsequent stress than chicks that were not allowed to shake after stress AND chicks that were not stressed at all. Sometimes people shake too, you may have experienced this if you have had to do public speaking, given birth, or been in scary situation. It is possible to access our shaking abilities and shake out old traumas to our emotional and physical bodies, the system is call TRE and you can find out more by clicking HERE.

Harriet is comfortable and ready for her nails to be trimmed,

Amelia is also comfortable in this position,

Sydney likes to sit up like a baby in a lap,

and Tyler must be done with four feet on the lap,

this is tricky and takes much twisting on my part, but it can be done,

and he insists it is the only way for him.

When I clip nails I work more slowly than the other people who are on nails. Unlike others I cannot talk while I am working. In my case the rabbits can tell if my attention wanders and it's then they will squirm over. They are still teaching me, have no expectations, just sit in the moment and see what it brings, clip nail. This last week I worked on a rabbit for the second time, I've been doing it long enough that I get repeats! The first time I was warned that this rabbit was very bad for nail trims and had been just awful the last time. Her nails were very long, I presume her human had been avoiding the issue as long as possible. I introduced myself to the bun, and petted her for a bit, then turned her over on my legs. I tried to stay focused and calm, and let the bunny turn over when she wanted, which was after each foot, then turned her back over. When it was done I massaged her and told her she was good and beautiful and perfect. This time she over turned once, for the first paw, then was still and relaxed for the rest. Everyone was happy.

Amelia patrolling in the Blueberry Bunny Park.

Furry

Being an Angora, Bernadette is all about her fur. When she first came to visit for fur re-hab and to wait for her fur-evah home her facial fur was shortish. It was evident that the person who had her before, and who did quite a bit of de-matting, had had to cut her face fur. I am told, by those who know (TWK) that Angoras DO NOT LIKE to have their facial fur cut. They find it embarrassing, humiliating, and very depressing. When she first came Bernadette was skittish; to be expected, but as I observed her longer it became evident that part of the issue was vision. Her fur was just in the way and things had a way of sneaking up on her. Now that her fur is almost grown out it can be styled away from her eyes and she is more confident. TWK said that a simple barrette was fine, in fact a good thing. Actually the words used were "baby barrette", by which I was not sure whether a barrette for babies was meant or a small sized barrette. I looked for both. I went to three different stores looking for the perfect Bernadette barrette. I could not fine a small enough one with rhinestones so settled for a card of a variety of colors. I do her hair in the morning, removing the barrette each night.

Today was a blue barrette day.

I think she likes it.

Now I can tell when she is looking at me.

Changes

I am trying again to make my bunnies happier than they are. Sydney has been chasing Harriet frequently, and pulling her fur, and chasing her away from food. Harriet has been completely good natured about it, but in general she is the bun odd out, except for the occasional grooming session by Tyler; she is alone in a group of three. For months Amelia and Sydney have been the only ones boxing through the fence, Harriet has given up violence for a more spiritual path, it would seem. If Harriet and Amelia could bond there would be less lonely buns about. Three bathtub dates were uneventful and I graduated them to a 4 x 4 pen in computer/gamer den.

Amelia tries to get some attention, maybe she try the other end?

Ah, that's better, they are both requesting grooming, who will be the groomer?

In an effort to create more bonding through safe stress, I pulled both big girls into my lap. They stayed for quite a while, Amelia popping up and out first for a snack. Harriet stayed for many more minutes, a warm pool of soft agouti fur.

Parsley is an excellent dating snack.

Advanced Techniques

Amelia would like to use this post to demonstrate astral projection using a rock. There has been much conjecture about the rabbits an their rocks. It has become quite evident the uses are multiple. Astral projection using a rock is fairly advanced and should only be attempted in the safety of your own home.

Amelia: First find a rock that wants to be your friend. After asking permission, place your front paws on your rock. Clear your mind and imagine your body is perfectly clear. I like to do alternate nostril breathing, but it's not critically important. Visualize your destination.

Amelia: Once you feel very certain in your mind regarding your destination, once you can almost feel it, taste it, smell it; lean forward until your ears are parallel with the ground. If you have prepared correctly you'll fly through the astral dimension to your destination.

Amelia: You can stay at your original destination or tour around. When you are ready to come home, just touch your back feet to the rock. It's easy and fun, once you get the hang of it.

Pictures and Text

If real life pictures of a spay procedure are likely to upset you and your family, please go no further than this photo of a big, very big California girl bun in post-op recovery with a Rabbit Haven volunteer. You can read more about the Spay-A-Thon HERE. There is a slide show as part of the article, I took the photos even though the credit says Rabbit Haven, these things happen.

For those of you who will read on here is the story. You will recall that there was a huge rescue in our area, Aptos to be precise, 114 rabbits all of which were not spayed or neutered. Over the course of the days many were in San Jose and Palo Alto, driven over by intrepid and dedicated volunteers. One of our local vets on hearing of the rescue asked what she could do and the Spay-A-Thon was born. Just to be clear there were also neuters being performed but somehow a Neut-A-Thon doesn't have a ring to it at all. Three rabbit vets, Drs. Hawklyn, Stern and Sollenberger along with vet techs volunteered their time and expertise at the Santa Cruz Animal Shelter on 12/4/11, where two of the rooms were turned into a surgery. Rabbit Haven volunteers took care of the rabbits after their operations. Anesthetized rabbits can not be put back in a cage until they are awake enough to hop or they can hurt themselves trying.

Rabbits are anesthetized using a gas and mask, they are also attached to a heart monitor. The gas smells funny to them, but only briefly.

The abdomen is shaved clean and carefully sterilised.

Everything is kept very sterile. The incision for a spay can very tiny, leaving a barely visible scar and lessening pain and healing time.

Bunnies are kept warm and comfortable while they wake up. The females received subQ fluids to help with their recovery. To aid with waking the bunnies need to be stimulated, touched and petted on their ears and face, they need to be more upright than not.

Why do rabbits need to be spayed and neutered? I'm so glad someone asked that question. The answers are multiple. The first answer is that rabbits have an exetremely rapid rate of reproduction. The gestation time is about a month and a female rabbit can get pregnant immediately after giving birth. Sexual maturity and ability to breed occurs between 3 and 8 months. Doing the the multiplication on this problem yields that a female rabbit and her offspring could, theoretically, produce 50,653 rabbits in three years and 69 million in five years and a whopping 64 billion in seven years. In the wild this degree of fecundity makes sense, rabbits being breakfast, lunch and dinner to so many other guests in nature's restaurant, but for the domestic rabbit and it's caregivers it does not. Even if a rabbit is an only rabbit spaying will keep the animal from developing uterine cancer, very common in un-spayed lagomorph females. Neutering a male helps with box training and reduces/eliminates spraying. Although one would think that personality of males would be significantly changed by removing the testes from the hormonal picture, I can attest the Tyler, though not a humper, is very protective of his girl friends and competitive when it comes to other males. He has tried to take on a male rabbit 4 times his size, luckily there was a fence between them.

There are 8 rabbits left from the Aptos rescue that need homes, if you can help please contact the Rabbit Haven. They must be out of the shelter by the 18th or they are in danger of being euthanized.

Costumes

All the rabbits are working on their costumes, which of course have to be homemade using the materials at hand.

Tyler is thinking of going as a Dead Bunny, definitely very scary.

Harriet thought it would look cool and scary and kinda, I dunno, steampunkish if it looked like she was pierced with a cardboard tube.

Work in progress for that one.

Amelia would like to go as that popular Santa Cruz attraction The Mystery Spot, where gravity seems to defy the laws of physics.

Possibly a little too conceptual....

Sydney and Hermes are still working up some ideas.

Everybun Must Get Stoned

Do forgive the poor quality of these photos, but at least they do illustrate the point.

Sydney demos another therapeutic placement of the magical healing stones; this balances two sides of the body, the Yin and Yang.

Harriet shows how to gently rest one's dewlap on a stone to cool the upper jiao (upper part of the body in Chinese Med lingo) for better meditation practice, the second lower stone serves to root the treatment in the middle jiao (stomach).

The frog is not technically a stone, but Amelia is very close to her frog and seems to derive something from that proximity.

Also, an interesting aside, that might help other buns. I have been in contact with Basil's human, you remember Basil, the Flemish Giant? anyway she established by trial and error that Basil was allergic to hay (to be more precise the DUST on the hay) and it was manifesting and sometimes runny eye and sometimes slight reddish around his sweet, sweet eyes. She now takes his hay outside and sort tosses it in a colander before feeding and that seems to take care of the problem. How cool is that?

Evolution

All animals develop and adapt in a variety of ways to continue their particular species. Some animals are fast, some are fierce, some have special housing that keeps them safe. Rabbits are really good at breeding, somewhere back in time the Great Big DNA Rabbit said "If everyone wants to eat us, we'll show them, we will breed so fast that they'll choke if try to eat us all, so ha, ha, ha" or something like that. And so rabbits can produce a new litter every 28 days.

The charming family you see here was born to a mother who was still nursing three week old kits. The father, who had been neutered three weeks before, jumped into the mom's play pen for literally one minute. Female rabbits are "Inspired Ovulators"; all they need is to be around a male and their eggs are ready for action. Lucky for these little bundles of bunniness they will be adopted quickly; handled from birth and cuter than buttons they will make someone wonderful companions for 12 to 15 years.

All photos 05/27/2011

Activities 5/25/2011

resting

drinking

accusing

Together

Tyler and Amelia 5/22/11

May twenty first two thousand and eleven

The Spots at play.

Sydney pretends to be raptured.

The unbearable lightness of bunnies.

5/20/2011 in the morning

Amelia looks for petting every morning.

Amelia 05/20/2011

towel

Thanks for all the encouraging words everyone! This morning, 05/18/2011 Amelia did some cute things with a towel.

3:19 P.M. DST

At 3:19 p.m. today everybun was self installed in a structure and participating brain wave synchronization and harmonization, that is to say napping.

All photos taken on 05/17/2011 at 3:19 p.m. DST

Buns from top to bottom are Amelia, Harriet, Sydney, Tyler.