Do you think I'm Nuts?

Mikoli · Jul 18, 2006

Well, I own a 6-7 month old male lop rabbit. He's an outdoor rabbit, but I know him really well and I see him a lot. Well, anyway, when he was only about four months old I trained him to accept a harness, and he'll even listen to some of my signals now. When he was around four and a half months old, one day I was really bored, and I took my rabbit for a walk in my backyard on the harness. There was a bunch of twigs on the ground, and I put my rabbit in front of it to see what he would do. Well, he jumped over it. Anyway, since then I've trained my rabbit to jump a course of jumps I've made. Sort of like how a horse jumps a course of jumps, but in miniture. He's really active and loves running and going nuts, so I taught him to focus his energy on jumping. He'll jump two jumps double his height without taking even one hop in between them. He really loves it. Most people think I'm nuts to teach my rabbit to jump. What do you guys think?

manda · Jul 18, 2006

your not crazy! i do that with Alex, my holland lop. but not with a harnes. i will just pat what i want him to jump or go under...

for exampe i have a box with a tunnel all the way through it. if i pat the top of the box he will jump on top, if i pat the floor infront he will go through. but its a pretty rare ocassion when he will listen to me and not do his own thing

jordiwes · Jul 18, 2006

There are people in Europe and North America that train their rabbits to do this as well. I believe there are competitions in Europe for this!

I believe Flopsy does this:

http://rabbitsonline.net/view_topic.php?id=8196&forum_id=6

Jess_sully · Jul 18, 2006

You're absolutely NOT crazy! Rabbit jumping is an amazing sport. I haven't read much about it being in the USA, but check out this link:

http://www.kaninhop.dk/uk/- especially the pictures page attatched to the specific rabbit hopping page. Excellent pictures! The links page has TONS of other rabbit hopping pages attatched

Wish I could do it

Mikoli · Jul 19, 2006

Yay! I'm not crazy!

I didn't know it was a sport. I spent like four hours one afternoon searching on the internet for things like rabbit jumping and bunny hop and stuff and I couldn't find anything. But at least I'm not crazy.

I heard of one place that does that sort of thing, but it's in New South Wales in Australia, and, though I'm in Australia, I'm in Victoria and it would be like a 3 hour car drive to get there and I don't want to stress my rabbit out. I'll see if I can get some pictures of my rabbit jumping.:rabbithop He sometimes scares me with how high he can jump. Thanks for the links! That rabbit on that website is jumping so high :shock: My rabbit can only jump about half that.

Anyway, thanks!

Rachel.

Jess_sully · Jul 19, 2006

No problem

If large breed bunnies could do it, and if they had competitions in the USA, I'd definitely do rabbit hopping. However, neither of these is true, so....