Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Don't Dig the Carpet!

Walter moved into our new apartment yesterday.  He was not pleased about the change.

We did most of the moving on Monday, but were too tired by the end of the day to finish the job, including Walter and his cage.  When I returned to Paul's apartment after work yesterday, I let the rabbit out of his cage so that he could hop around while I finished packing.  He loved hopping in, around, and on the empty moving boxes.  But, unfortunately, packing also meant taking down Walter’s cage and putting all his toys in boxes.  The rabbit went from happy to slightly confused to completely terrified in a matter of seconds.

He hid under the couch for as long as we would let him, and luring him into his travel carrier was more difficult than usual.  Paul and I had to resort to serious cornering tactics and then basically just shoved the rabbit into the crate: not my preferred method of getting Walter in there.

Once we got to the new place, though, Walter settled in pretty quickly.  I set up his cage and put the playpen around it so that the rabbit couldn’t discover any unpacked wires or wood items strewn about.  The apartment, as I mentioned in an earlier post, has one major downfall:  carpeting.

It took Walter maybe an hour to discover the joys of digging at the carpet, even within the confines of his playpen.  I am starting to worry that the combination of the rabbit and the carpet will become disastrous and expensive.  What recommendations do you have to deter a rabbit from chewing or digging at carpeting?

5 comments:

  1. The pet stores sell some kind of peppery spray specifically for to get rabbits not to bite things. It's fairly easy to find in any mega pet store, perhaps that might help. Good luck!

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  2. Read "Help! My Rabbit is Digging in the Carpet - What Can I Do?"
    http://exoticpets.about.com/od/rabbitcare/f/rabbitdigging.htm

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  3. Anonymous - Any idea what the pepper spray is called, or could you provide me with any reviews of the spray? (I've heard of using lemon oil or bitter apple spray, but never pepper spray as a deterrent!)

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  5. Here's the link, I'm not sure now if it has pepper or not, but I know it's bitter and rabbits don't like it http://www.petco.com/product/6433/Fooey-Ultr-Bitter-Training-Aid.aspx?CoreCat=OnSiteSearch.
    It reminds me of when my mom use to put tabasco sauce on my fingers so I wouldn't bit my nails LOL

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