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Snuggle Bunnnies |
Nicknames: Lady Pie-Pie, The Empress, Sugar Booger, Sheegzoolzie, Precious, Sheegs, Reeses-Pieces, Snuggle Dumpling, Queen Reese Fuzzball the First Reese's Pro Wrestling Moniker: The Destructress Personality Traits: Very sweet, but with the heart of a ferocious dragon. Reese hates cats, dogs, rain, hail, mustard greens, and all bunnies except P.G. She loves pellets, parsley, romaine lettuce, being groomed by P.G., being petted, the taste of water, and exploring forbidden rooms. Reese is litterbox trained. We adopted Reese in November 2002 from our local House Rabbit Society chapter. She is a spayed female, whose age is unknown. Reese was left in the night-drop box of a humane society. She was very frightened when she came into our house, but she has grown to be confident and very regal. Reese is chocolate brown, with peanut butter colored patches. She has brown eyes with ruby red centers and is a small rabbit, weighing only 5 1/2 pounds. Reese was adopted to be a friend for our first rabbit, P.G. It was pretty much love at first sight with these two, a kind of unusual happenstance when introducing rabbits. After Reese came home with us, it took about five days before P.G. would accept her into his condo and into the rest of his territory. This is apparently a very fast bonding. If you are interested in learning more about bonding rabbits, the HRS has some articles about it. Now the two of them spend lots of time grooming each other and snuggling up together. Reese had some definite problems settling into our house. She seemed to expect something bad to happen to her for a long time. It took a few months before she felt at home. In the meantime, she did bite and charge at family members on several occasions. It was clear that she was frightened at these times, even though we couldn't always tell what had scared her. The smell of rabbits (other than P.G.) was one trigger for aggression. However, she was so sweet and friendly the rest of the time -- we really loved our little sweetheart and could tell she wasn't trying to be mean. One morning, our daughter woke up crying from a nightmare. She petted Reese and told the rabbit all about the bad dream. Reese ran to her food bowl and got a mouthful of pellets. She hopped back to our daughter, gave her foot a nose nudge, and dropped the pellets at her feet. Reese won our hearts with this gesture. We did our best to spend extra time with her, petting her, talking softly, and just letting her wander around us and get used to the place. Reese now loves to sit next to us and be petted, and she hasn't had an outburst in months. We took a T-Touch class taught by practitioners from The Integrated Animal at our local HRS, in an attempt to reduce her stress and the possibility of biting. This technique involves lots of touching in specific patterns. It took some time, but we think this technique really helped to relax her. At any rate, it didn't hurt to have her being handled frequently by various family members in a gentle, calm, soothing manner. Like most rabbits, Reese dislikes being picked up or held. We practice lifting and holding both rabbits briefly nearly every day, in case they someday need medical care or are in an emergency situation where being picked up is required. Otherwise, we spend time on the floor with them, where petting is welcomed. We tried to bond Owen and Gazelle with PG and Reese, to create a group of four congenial friends. However, it didn't work out. Although all four rabbits got along well outside of our home, once they came back here, P.G. became very territorial and kept trying to kill them both. Since they outweigh him by a hefty margin, he definitely wasn't winning any battles, but he wouldn't give up the fight. Both pairs of rabbits now live separately in our house, and have different playtimes.
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