Happy Ending for Brando and Princess

I have very happy news! Remember Brando, our little blind boy from a few posts ago?

I am very happy to announce that Brando has a wonderful home. We delivered him on New Year's Eve! And he even has a girlfriend - he went home with our foster bunny Princess!

This is one of the nicest adoptions we have had. I've had several emails from his new person, Sharmila, and it seems they are doing wonderfully, and bonding with eachother really well.

However, Brando apparently has a naughty side that I never knew about. He has been getting into some trouble at his new home, including knocking down a board, and getting behind the computer! I think he feels like a kid again to be in such a wonderful place!

Santa Loves Bunnies! Here are some photos of Santa (also known as Bruce in a cheap Santa suit!) with some of the bunnies of our group's members! A big thank you to Cayce for taking these photos!

Santa loves bunnies!

Santa came to our house this past Sunday. You know, he loves bunnies and always wants to hear their Christmas wishes.

We decided to make it easy for Santa this year, and so we invited all our bunny friends over to have a talk with Santa and get their pictures taken by wonderful Cayce! Here is Petey, proudly sitting on Santa's lap wearing his reindeer antlers. I'm not sure he realises that he looks more like a jackalope than a reindeer.

We had a lot of fun, and about 15 people brought their bunnies. There were big bunnies, small bunnies, Rex bunnies and fluffy lionheads. To take advantage of the good light, Cayce set up on our front steps, which caused some hilarity with our neighbors (who were having a party - their guests enjoyed seeing Santa!) and passers by.

My favorite moment was watching a passing bicyclist burst into laughter when he realized that Santa was holding a bunny!

And what does Santa suggest for a Christmas gift for the rabbit lover in your life?

Why, Equal Hoppertunity, of course!

Equal Hoppertunity is a documentary film about rabbits, the people who love them, and the myths surrounding them. Made by bunny lover and independent film maker Rebecca Sansom (nee Schiffman), it has both somber and light-hearted moments, a ton of valuable rabbit care information, and...many, many, many cute rabbits, including my very own Slidell!
This is where I have to put the disclaimer - I first met Rebecca right about the time she started this film, and she has become a very dear friend. Not only that, but I'm in it. A lot.

So if you watch the film you'll actually get to see my fostering set up, and a number of my former foster bunnies (most of whom have been adopted since the film was made). Just look for the wacky red haired woman in the funny bunny T shirt!

And you'll get to meet this beautiful boy - Andre! While making the film, Rebecca went to a rabbit farm, and when she left, she felt compelled to rescue Andre. He has been quite a handful, but we love him. My nickname for him is "The leetle sheep", because he does look like a tiny sheeplet!

So buy your favorite bunny lover (or yourself!) a gift! For more information go to http://www.equalhoppertunity.com

And a very happy holiday to you and your bunnies!!

We had a Board of Directors meeting last week, and there were some unusual attendees - Persy and Ben! You all may remember Persy as one of the baby bunnies we rescued back around Easter. Well, she's all grown up, and bonding with boyfriend Ben. Here they are, attending our meeting!

Their person, Laura, brought them to the Board meeting to see if being in a strange place would help their bonding process. Not that they seem to be having any trouble bonding! Laura tells me that Persy's new name is "No, no, bad bunny!" because she gets into so much trouble!

They were not allowed to vote in our elections though. I'm sure Ben would have elected himself President. Instead, we voted Heather in as President, I am still Treasurer, Kim is still Vice President, and Laura is Secretary. Beth and Bruce are both Directors. We are sorry to see Angie step down as President, but I know we'll still be seeing a lot of her (I hope so anyway!)

I got some nice presents at the meeting and thought I'd share these "hare accessories" with you. The first two really are "Hare Hair Accessories" from Beth.

She brought Miss Flower, one of our foster bunnies, a pretty pink bow. Flower is a lionhead, and has a very long mane of fur around her face. It can get quite unruly, so for formal occasions, this bow will be just the thing!!

I'm not sure what she thinks of it, but she put up with it for awhile at least!

I'm honestly not sure why Flower hasn't been adopted. She is a wonderful bunny and very cuddly. And who wouldn't want a bunny who wears hair bows?

Beth's other gift was a bag of these great brushes. Beth got them at her hair dressers, and found that they work really well for combing unruly bunny fur.

Beth recently adopted little Flea, and needed a gentle brush for his long fur. She found these work very well! I've been using them on Flower and several of our other bunnies and they are wonderful. Finally I have a brush that is effective without tearing out bunny fur. I love our Furminator, but on long haired bunnies it just pulls too much.

The black ones are scalp massagers and many hair dressers sell them. The red ones can be found at Sally Beauty supply. Apparently they are cheap, too!!

The next present was from Heather - Snacky balls!! They are pellet-dispensing balls and the opening can be adjusted to let just a few pellets out at a time. Since I have several foster bunnies who tend to wolf down their pellets and then choke, I was so excited to see these. I had been using some that were made for cats, but the opening could not be adjusted and the pellets came out too fast. These are perfect!! Thank you Heather!

The bunnies love them, too. They really enjoy nosing the balls around. When they have them it sounds like a bowling alley in here!

I love the box, too. Is that not the cutest bunny on the package?!! Snacky, indeed!! You can get these from Drs. Foster and Smith, in the "small animal" section.

Finally, I hate to say it, but sometimes plain old house rabbits get boring. Same old ears, same old naughty behaviour, same old cute bunny.

Thanks to Beth, I can give you some advice on how to upgrade your little darling. Why not take your tired old rabbit and turn him into....a Domestic House Jackalope!!

Just go on down to your local pet store and pick up a pair of those reindeer ears they have for dogs. You'll need the chihuahua sized ones. Unless of course, you have a New Zealand bunny. Then I would head for the St. Bernard sizes!!

Here, foster bunny Roo is kindly modeling his new "jackalope" look. Now there's a bunny Santa would love!

Brando needs a seeing eye bunny!

Beautiful Brando came to us several months ago from Huntsville Animal Services. Since he was an older bun (about four years old) we thought he might be happier in a foster care situation than in the shelter. He seemed a bit subdued, but we thought it was probably because he was distressed about leaving his old home.

Over the weeks he was still subdued - not the normal, bouncy, childlike Dutch bunnies we usually see. I wasn't sure what to make of it, but we didn't notice anything physically wrong with him. He was a big eater, his poops looked good, and nothing else seemed amiss. Still, even though I couldn't put my finger on it, something just did not seem right.

Finally, feeling like an idiot, I took him to Dr. Moore. What could I tell her except that he seemed subdued? I was glad I took the chance of making a fool of myself, as within just a couple of minutes Dr. Moore gave me the answer. Brando is blind.

It all made sense. He was subdued because he couldn't find his way around, and had to go slowly. This was undoubtedly made worse by my rearranging his pen, changing his toys out and generally trying to keep him from being bored. With a normal bunny this would have been great, but it was only making Brando more insecure. Everytime he turned around, his pen was a different layout, and he had to learn where things were all over again!

Dr. Moore also noticed that his pupils weren't contracting when exposed to light, but otherwise thought his eyes looked ok. We decided that Brando deserved to see a veterinary eye doctor, so we took him to Dr. Korsch. She's our favorite veterinary opthalmologist and works at Veterinary Eye Care in Bessemer.

Dr. Korsch checked him out thoroughly and told us his eye structures were fine, so the problem was apparently in his brain. He could see, but his brain wasn't processing the information. She asked us to get some blood work to rule out a liver problem and infections.

We ran every blood test imaginable! Well, maybe not every single one, but a lot of them! I'm happy to say they all came out fine, so he apparently doesn't have an infection or liver issues. On the advice of Dr. Strother we did give him a course of antibiotics just to be sure, but his problem is most likely the result of a mini-stroke or past infection. At any rate, he is stable and other than his blindness he is doing great.

He's much less subdued, too, since I have stopped changing his pen around! Since he now knows where everything is, he navigates quite well and bounces around with no problem. We've also found that he's very smart! He recognises his name and will come when he's called. He also knows the sounds of the pellet jar, and runs to his food dish when he hears it. Likewise when he hears me passing out veggies, he runs to his veggie tray. He likes to rearrange his cotton rug, and he's perfect in his litter box. I'm realising that the poor guy probably just couldn't find it all the time before. It's easy to have accidents when your litter box keeps moving!

The only other blind buny we have had was my old guy, Mark, and he was bonded to other bunnies who helped him get around. I'm hoping that some kind hearted adopter with a very gentle senior bunny girl will fall in love with him. I think he'd be happy to have a girlfriend. Perhaps she could be his seeing eye bunny!!

Photos of Brando copyright 2009 Casey Savage. All Rights Reserved.

Bunny Hugging!

We had a yard sale and Open House/Bunny Hugging event last week - it was wonderful! We raised $513 for the foster bunny's vet fund, did some great rabbit education while selling the items people donated, and, of course, hugged bunnies.

Here's Capt. Reynolds getting some loving from Laura. He's obviously enjoying the "bunny hugging" part of the event!

A big thanks to everyone who donated items - people we didn't even know gave us boxes of good stuff to sell. Once again I'm touched by how many people love bunnies! I had been worried we wouldn't have enough to sell, but once again the bunny fans came through and we had tons of stuff.

Friday was our best yard sale day, as usual. I think the serious yard salers come out on Fridays, so we did most of our sales then.

It rained torrentially late Saturday morning, but I was surprised to see that it didn't stop people from coming to the garage sale. Apparently if your sale is at least partly indoors people will still come in the rain. There are some hard core yard sale folks out there! Some of them were real characters, too....!

Despite the rain we had a good turnout for the Open House as well. Most of our folks came, except for a few who live further out.

I love it when adopters come over with photos and updates on how the bunnies are doing. And the food was amazing, too (although the foster buns were disappointed that there wasn't more salad....)
We did have one mystery - during the yard sale on Saturday a woman drove up in a black SUV. She jumped out of the vehicle, ran up to Bruce and handed him a ten dollar bill. "This is from Swiffer!" she said, and jumped back in her SUV and drove off.

You all may remember that Swiffer is one of the babies we took in around Easter. But this woman wasn't his adopter, Jaime! In fact, when we saw Jaime later that day, she didn't know who this woman was!! Does Swiffer have a secret girlfriend?!!


Swiffer, you need to watch yourself!!


And speaking of Swiffer, Jaime and Justin told us he has gotten very big - much bigger than they expected. But judging by the photos they brought he is one handsome bunny!

Introducing - Project Furball!!

I spent an hour this morning with a baby bunny sleeping on my chest. This is Vickie, one of the Decatur lionheads we rescued. She was probably about five to six weeks old when we took her in, and she is still tiny even though she's probably doubled in size.

Vickie is also known as "Flea", because she is small, black, and hops. This bunny doesn't just hop. She can actually go up about three feet vertical. Jumping on our bed is no problem. In fact, nothing seems to be a problem for little Flea.

Jumping on tables? No problem! Jumping on the toilet seat cover? No problem! Jumping in the bathtub?

Big problem. Fortunately no damage was done, but Flea is not allowed to keep me company while I'm taking a bath anymore!

She loves big brother Cousin It, aka: CoCo. Well, he looks just like her so it isn't surprizing. What is surprising is that she has no problem with boxing him in the face if he won't groom her. He's easily three times her size, but she doesn't care!

We've been trying to socialise her with everything from visits to our vet when we take other bunnies (so that she learns that it's a happy place where the front desk people give her big kisses!) to bringing her to a Petco adoption day (where she was allowed to stay in her carrier and peak out at all those crazy people!).

I have to say, it may have back fired a bit. She's now totally fearless and even put her ears back and boxed at one of our cats through the bars of our condo the other day. Oh dear!!

She does slow down though for cuddle time. Yesterday Molly came over to drop off yard sale things and held her for almost a half hour. And this morning she bounced up on my chest and put her head down for groomies. A few minutes later her eyes closed, she did some tooth purring and then...

I didn't have the heart to wake her up. So I turned on the TV and watched the goofy bimbos on VH1 for awhile!!

Here's another photo of the two cuties. Clearly Flea wants to be just like CoCo when she grows up!!