Whilst this blog mainly focusses on the trials and tribulations of our pampered pooch, we also have another member of the family who we love to fuss over. Dexter is our harlequin rabbit. We first got him when we moved to the city and he’s been with us ever since.
They perfectly balance each other out in the health department, whilst Stella is constantly coming up with new ways to break herself, or having a genetic nightmare of a time, Dex is super healthy. Aside from his regular checkups he’s only ever needed the vet once; for GI Stasis, which was scary but we managed to get it resolved quickly for him.
Still going strong
Our friends and family have been shocked to hear how old he is, to be honest, most domestic rabbits can easily live to be ten and beyond with proper care. Here’s a few of the things we do to keep Dexter a healthy bunny:
- Good food: Dex has never been on muesli. He’s always been on a diet of Timothy Hay and Excel pellets. His favourite is the mint flavour. We do also give him fresh vegetables daily, usually things like kale and leafy cabbage leaves. He also has fruit and carrots as an occasional treat but they’re not great in large quantities.
- Timothy Hay: We actually stopped buying meadow hay and switched to Timothy because the regular stuff made our eyes scratchy. I don’t know if this is normal, but Dex is also fussy with certain hay brands. He really likes Science Selective Timothy Hay. This fills his cage all day every day, he never doesn’t have access to fresh hay.
- Safe exercise: When we first got Dex, I read SO much material on rabbit care, and one statistic which shocked the hell out of me was that statistically every rabbit will break a leg once in its life. Luckily we haven’t had that with Dexter (yet, but please no!) He’s a caged rabbit, but we allow him out of the cage as much as we can, as such we make sure the space he’s playing in is roomy enough to get some good runs in, but we discourage jumping. He will hop on low furniture and there have been instances were we misjudged just how high he can jump. But for the most part we keep his excercise areas open and flat as best we can.
I’ll do a fuller post on everything Dex’s care routing looks like, it seems to be working well for us anyway. He’s more docile these days compared to the boisterous boy he was when we first got him, but that’s okay, old man needs to relax.
Dexter and Stella live in the same environment, though Dex is in a large cage in the living room with us. We don’t tend to let them out together. They seem fairly disinterested in each other but can both be quite territorial, so we just have them out in different rooms. They interact though the cage quite a bit, in terms of a sniff or a ‘WHY is HE getting treats and I’m NOT?!’ type of scenario.
I don’t super recommend having a dog and rabbit, but as long as you’re realistic about their safety and can give them both they space they need to exercise and enjoy life then I see no harm.