lyndym
Well-Known Member
Hi everybody! I'm relatively new here, thought I'd start a blog thread about my rabbits so everyone can get to know us better. 
A little about me - My name is Lyndy, I live in Los Angeles where I am currently in grad school for music. I play the bassoon, and have done so for over ten years. I am 25, I'm a pretty big nerd (mostly Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter), and I have a long distance boyfriend, Luke, of 4 years who is also my bunny daddy.
My bunny history started back in college. I was at an Earth Day celebration, and there was girl carrying around a rabbit with a leash and harness! I had never seen anything like that before, and while I normally never stop and talk at length with people I don't know, (sometimes I'm shy like a bunny!), I just had to ask to pet her bun. His name was Pepper, he was an adorable little lop guy. I started joking with my friends and then-boyfriend that I wanted a rabbit, and the joke continued into my seriously wanting one! I was a freshman at the time, living in the dorms with a no-pet policy, so come sophomore year, I hoped to find an apartment that would allow pets. Sadly, I didn't. Even after a few months of being a good tenant and asking the landlord nicely, I was told no. I had been preparing myself and gathering loads of bunny info just in case I would be allowed a rabbit, so I was quite disappointed. Instead of getting a rabbit, I decided to volunteer once a week at the local rabbit shelter! I was there for almost a year, and it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. It helped me get to know many different rabbit personalities, from aggressive, growly ones that you needed to gear up to handle to the sweetest little fluffballs! I also learned tons about rabbit care, and when you're cleaning out 30+ litter boxes and cage pans in one afternoon, it's a breeze to take care of one or two rabbits of your own!
Fast forward a few years to moving to LA with my current boyfriend, Luke. He, of course, had known of my rabbit obsession for a long time, and was not surprised when I started pushing for us to adopt a bunny a few months after moving in together. We went to look at several local shelters, but no bun quite clicked with me. I also really wanted a young rabbit for my first bun, which is hard to find in shelters. Finally I found Bunny World Foundation, an organization that works to stop street vendors from selling baby rabbits illegally. They were having an adoption event at a local pet store, so we decided to check them out. So many cuties! I told the lady there that I was looking for a lop in particular, so she sat us down and gave us two gorgeous little black half-lops. They were brother and sister, and at first I was really liking the boy. He got squirmy and went back in his pen, so I sat with the girl for a bit. Then she was getting a little squirmy, and I started thinking that maybe I liked the boy better. While asking the lady if I could see him again, I mentioned I was only looking to get one bun. She said, "One bunny, how sad and lonely! Here, try this boy." She plopped a teeeeny tiny white boy with beautiful blue eyes into my lap with the squirmy girl, who settled down immediately and they started snuggling together right on my lap. I was completely sold. These two became our little Doc and Dora, or Dr. Hoppenheimer and Dora "The Explorer." (Luke gave Doc his full name and is very proud of it and tells everyone who meets Doc!) Another lady at Bunny World graciously looked after D&D in her home while we set up our apartment, then they finally moved into their forever home!
D&D's car ride home! They were so tiny!
Their first few months with us were certainly eventful. As they were so young at the time of adoption, they were not yet fixed. We took them to the vet within their first couple of weeks and set a date for their surgery. (Also found out they had coccidia. Got us familiar with syringe medicating quickly!) Anyway, we got lucky and both got fixed in the same day! We had a very good rabbit vet who was able to neuter Doc relatively early in order for them to go through surgery together.
Leading up to their surgeries and directly after, the fur started flying. D&D were not bonded when we brought them home, though I was not expecting to have to do it myself since the lady seemed very confident when she stuck both rabbits together in my lap. Looking back, I am a little upset that she seemed more concerned with adopting rabbits out than making sure they were good matches for each other. They were very young and hadn't been fixed so it would've been hard to tell, but she did not warn me about trying to bond before fixing, how things are rough just after fixing, etc. She did not even advise that I start by keeping them apart. (I knew they were too young to be sexually mature though, having made sure at the first vet visit that there would be no risk of a rabbit explosion in our apartment!) Their bonding process wasn't incredibly difficult, which was good for my first time. The most difficult part was I only had one cage and had to also use an ex-pen as the second enclosure, and we soon found that both Doc and Dora can't spend the night in an ex-pen with no roof, they would frequently jump over the side! Without a box or anything to give them a boost! One time, Luke even came home to Doc sitting on the outside of the pen next to a bag of hay with a giant hole ripped in the side. Anyway, as I remember it, they were pretty good during shared play time, most of their fighting occurred during prolonged amounts of time in the same enclosure. About a month of supervised bathroom play time and one lonnng car ride to Tahoe got them to love each other.
Young love!
First birthday!
Our first year with D&D was great. They really had different personalities, and it was so funny to watch them interact. Doc is kind of a bumbley character - clumsy, not the brightest, but a big cuddler. Dora had a big sassy personality and was definitely the brains of the operation! Our vet joked that Dora was on her list as a little nibbler. She had a strict no-holding policy, but was a huge sucker for pets. I couldn't believe I got so lucky with my first buns!
Shortly after D&D celebrated their first birthday, Dora developed a little bit of a sniffle. I was so worried, especially since I had just moved to a new place with them after Luke moved to San Diego for school. It started as a little sneezing, then gradually she began showing a bit more mucus, and one night she did nothing but cuddle with Doc for comfort. Took her to the vet the next day and got some meds. It took a few weeks and two different types of medications to clear her up! I was a happy mom; the medications came in pill form, so I was crushing pills into apple sauce every day and trying to make sure she didn't separate medication from delicious treat.
D&D continued to entertain me and help me through my master's degree and being apart from Luke. (Luckily I have a roommate who can watch them for the weekend if I'm away visiting!) Everyone who came to the apartment would be amazed at their cuteness, and also their size. (I think everyone assumes "baby" when thinking "bunny," while Doc is a bigger guy at 8 pounds, Dora was tiny at 3.5!) My parents, too, grew to love them, and are designated bunny sitters if I go out of town.
Second birthday!
Mid-November of last year, Dora ran into trouble again. I started noticing a slightly gurgley tummy at first, and she was doing a lot of odd stretching across the floor. Pooping was still happening, as was eating and drinking and playing, so I took her off pellets and kept an eye on her. After a few days I didn't see any improvement and saw less frequency with pooping, so we visited the vet on our way home for Thanksgiving. The vet didn't seem very concerned as besides a few mild symptoms, Dora was acting like her normal spunky self, but she was glad I had my eye out as soon as I did and gave us some meds to help move food through her system. Thanksgiving weekend on the meds definitely seemed to get things moving, but after the ten days were up, all I had seen was mild improvement. With Dora still eating, drinking, pooping, and playing, I was more confused than concerned, but called the vet and was advised to try the meds for ten more days. The ten days came and went while we were visiting Luke, and I noticed that she uncharacteristically had been pooping all over instead of in the box. We decided that was a good thing, since it was a lot more pooping than she had been doing in awhile. After a day or so of that, she seemed a little listless, but was still enjoying her greens and pets. I was worried, but didn't know what else to do.
The morning of December 10, after waking up, I asked Luke to go check the rabbits while I took a shower. I asked him how Dora was, and he said she was sitting in their litter box and he had given her pets in exchange for teeth chatters. He left to get something for breakfast, and I soon went out to the living room to take care of bunny chores. I knew something was wrong when I got to their cage - Dora was lying underneath their little wooden house, and all I could see were her hind legs, but I could tell she wasn't lying normally. Sometimes one of the buns is just lying down in a strange manner and it makes my heart jump until they startle at my voice, and I hoped this was one of those times, but she didn't get up when I opened the door or lifted the house to see her. She was lying on her side, she must have had a seizure, and I feared she wasn't breathing. I immediately got shaky and out of breath and began crying, but I checked closely, and she was breathing in a very shallow way. I made very quick phone calls to a rabbit friend in the area and our regular vet for a recommendation there, and found one five minutes away. In between all this commotion of also calling Luke to come right back and blow drying a sweater to cover her with to keep her warm and trying to keep Doc from disturbing her, we had a brief quiet moment where, looking back, I know she passed. Her whole body stretched out, and my hopefulness convinced me she was trying to get up, so I began petting her and telling her it was okay and she would be okay. She then let a breath out of her mouth, which my hopefulness mistook for an expression of pain, not her lungs letting out their last breath. I believed we still had time, and Luke got home and moved her into the carrier. He stayed with Doc, and I drove to the vet telling Dora she would be okay while mentally rearranging my savings account in the hopes that every penny I had could fix my baby. The vet tech immediately rushed the carrier away from me, but I had barely signed the consent to pay for emergency procedures when the doctor came to tell me she had gone. Actually, he said "he" instead of "she," and started talking to me about all of these things and using "he." I was bawling, and even after interrupting him to tell him "she" and that her name is Dora, he kept on making the same mistake. Luckily the vet tech was very nice, and she showed me to an exam room and brought Dora in for me to say goodbye. I remembered as a kid having hamsters, and when they would pass away, I wouldn't want to touch them because it creeped me out. But with Dora, she was so pretty even then, and I petted her little head and told her how pretty she was and how much I loved her, and I thanked her for being my first bun.
Losing Dora came as a huge shock to me. She had been battling gas and stasis symptoms for several weeks despite my efforts, but she was still only just over 2 years old. Her passing was a lot harder on me than it was on Doc - I had always heard of bunnies getting depressed after losing their mate, but our vet assured me he probably knew it was coming and understood her death long before I did. I still think of Dora every day, and she has a little memorial in my room with her ashes in a tiny cedar box, some of her toys, and some pictures.
Parsley noms!
Dora gets into the holiday spirit.
Pretty Little Boo.
This has been a long and emotional first post, so I promise the next one will be lighter and tell of our new addition, Aurora!
A little about me - My name is Lyndy, I live in Los Angeles where I am currently in grad school for music. I play the bassoon, and have done so for over ten years. I am 25, I'm a pretty big nerd (mostly Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter), and I have a long distance boyfriend, Luke, of 4 years who is also my bunny daddy.
My bunny history started back in college. I was at an Earth Day celebration, and there was girl carrying around a rabbit with a leash and harness! I had never seen anything like that before, and while I normally never stop and talk at length with people I don't know, (sometimes I'm shy like a bunny!), I just had to ask to pet her bun. His name was Pepper, he was an adorable little lop guy. I started joking with my friends and then-boyfriend that I wanted a rabbit, and the joke continued into my seriously wanting one! I was a freshman at the time, living in the dorms with a no-pet policy, so come sophomore year, I hoped to find an apartment that would allow pets. Sadly, I didn't. Even after a few months of being a good tenant and asking the landlord nicely, I was told no. I had been preparing myself and gathering loads of bunny info just in case I would be allowed a rabbit, so I was quite disappointed. Instead of getting a rabbit, I decided to volunteer once a week at the local rabbit shelter! I was there for almost a year, and it was one of the most rewarding things I have ever done. It helped me get to know many different rabbit personalities, from aggressive, growly ones that you needed to gear up to handle to the sweetest little fluffballs! I also learned tons about rabbit care, and when you're cleaning out 30+ litter boxes and cage pans in one afternoon, it's a breeze to take care of one or two rabbits of your own!
Fast forward a few years to moving to LA with my current boyfriend, Luke. He, of course, had known of my rabbit obsession for a long time, and was not surprised when I started pushing for us to adopt a bunny a few months after moving in together. We went to look at several local shelters, but no bun quite clicked with me. I also really wanted a young rabbit for my first bun, which is hard to find in shelters. Finally I found Bunny World Foundation, an organization that works to stop street vendors from selling baby rabbits illegally. They were having an adoption event at a local pet store, so we decided to check them out. So many cuties! I told the lady there that I was looking for a lop in particular, so she sat us down and gave us two gorgeous little black half-lops. They were brother and sister, and at first I was really liking the boy. He got squirmy and went back in his pen, so I sat with the girl for a bit. Then she was getting a little squirmy, and I started thinking that maybe I liked the boy better. While asking the lady if I could see him again, I mentioned I was only looking to get one bun. She said, "One bunny, how sad and lonely! Here, try this boy." She plopped a teeeeny tiny white boy with beautiful blue eyes into my lap with the squirmy girl, who settled down immediately and they started snuggling together right on my lap. I was completely sold. These two became our little Doc and Dora, or Dr. Hoppenheimer and Dora "The Explorer." (Luke gave Doc his full name and is very proud of it and tells everyone who meets Doc!) Another lady at Bunny World graciously looked after D&D in her home while we set up our apartment, then they finally moved into their forever home!
D&D's car ride home! They were so tiny!
Their first few months with us were certainly eventful. As they were so young at the time of adoption, they were not yet fixed. We took them to the vet within their first couple of weeks and set a date for their surgery. (Also found out they had coccidia. Got us familiar with syringe medicating quickly!) Anyway, we got lucky and both got fixed in the same day! We had a very good rabbit vet who was able to neuter Doc relatively early in order for them to go through surgery together.
Leading up to their surgeries and directly after, the fur started flying. D&D were not bonded when we brought them home, though I was not expecting to have to do it myself since the lady seemed very confident when she stuck both rabbits together in my lap. Looking back, I am a little upset that she seemed more concerned with adopting rabbits out than making sure they were good matches for each other. They were very young and hadn't been fixed so it would've been hard to tell, but she did not warn me about trying to bond before fixing, how things are rough just after fixing, etc. She did not even advise that I start by keeping them apart. (I knew they were too young to be sexually mature though, having made sure at the first vet visit that there would be no risk of a rabbit explosion in our apartment!) Their bonding process wasn't incredibly difficult, which was good for my first time. The most difficult part was I only had one cage and had to also use an ex-pen as the second enclosure, and we soon found that both Doc and Dora can't spend the night in an ex-pen with no roof, they would frequently jump over the side! Without a box or anything to give them a boost! One time, Luke even came home to Doc sitting on the outside of the pen next to a bag of hay with a giant hole ripped in the side. Anyway, as I remember it, they were pretty good during shared play time, most of their fighting occurred during prolonged amounts of time in the same enclosure. About a month of supervised bathroom play time and one lonnng car ride to Tahoe got them to love each other.
Young love!
First birthday!
Our first year with D&D was great. They really had different personalities, and it was so funny to watch them interact. Doc is kind of a bumbley character - clumsy, not the brightest, but a big cuddler. Dora had a big sassy personality and was definitely the brains of the operation! Our vet joked that Dora was on her list as a little nibbler. She had a strict no-holding policy, but was a huge sucker for pets. I couldn't believe I got so lucky with my first buns!
Shortly after D&D celebrated their first birthday, Dora developed a little bit of a sniffle. I was so worried, especially since I had just moved to a new place with them after Luke moved to San Diego for school. It started as a little sneezing, then gradually she began showing a bit more mucus, and one night she did nothing but cuddle with Doc for comfort. Took her to the vet the next day and got some meds. It took a few weeks and two different types of medications to clear her up! I was a happy mom; the medications came in pill form, so I was crushing pills into apple sauce every day and trying to make sure she didn't separate medication from delicious treat.
D&D continued to entertain me and help me through my master's degree and being apart from Luke. (Luckily I have a roommate who can watch them for the weekend if I'm away visiting!) Everyone who came to the apartment would be amazed at their cuteness, and also their size. (I think everyone assumes "baby" when thinking "bunny," while Doc is a bigger guy at 8 pounds, Dora was tiny at 3.5!) My parents, too, grew to love them, and are designated bunny sitters if I go out of town.
Second birthday!
Mid-November of last year, Dora ran into trouble again. I started noticing a slightly gurgley tummy at first, and she was doing a lot of odd stretching across the floor. Pooping was still happening, as was eating and drinking and playing, so I took her off pellets and kept an eye on her. After a few days I didn't see any improvement and saw less frequency with pooping, so we visited the vet on our way home for Thanksgiving. The vet didn't seem very concerned as besides a few mild symptoms, Dora was acting like her normal spunky self, but she was glad I had my eye out as soon as I did and gave us some meds to help move food through her system. Thanksgiving weekend on the meds definitely seemed to get things moving, but after the ten days were up, all I had seen was mild improvement. With Dora still eating, drinking, pooping, and playing, I was more confused than concerned, but called the vet and was advised to try the meds for ten more days. The ten days came and went while we were visiting Luke, and I noticed that she uncharacteristically had been pooping all over instead of in the box. We decided that was a good thing, since it was a lot more pooping than she had been doing in awhile. After a day or so of that, she seemed a little listless, but was still enjoying her greens and pets. I was worried, but didn't know what else to do.
The morning of December 10, after waking up, I asked Luke to go check the rabbits while I took a shower. I asked him how Dora was, and he said she was sitting in their litter box and he had given her pets in exchange for teeth chatters. He left to get something for breakfast, and I soon went out to the living room to take care of bunny chores. I knew something was wrong when I got to their cage - Dora was lying underneath their little wooden house, and all I could see were her hind legs, but I could tell she wasn't lying normally. Sometimes one of the buns is just lying down in a strange manner and it makes my heart jump until they startle at my voice, and I hoped this was one of those times, but she didn't get up when I opened the door or lifted the house to see her. She was lying on her side, she must have had a seizure, and I feared she wasn't breathing. I immediately got shaky and out of breath and began crying, but I checked closely, and she was breathing in a very shallow way. I made very quick phone calls to a rabbit friend in the area and our regular vet for a recommendation there, and found one five minutes away. In between all this commotion of also calling Luke to come right back and blow drying a sweater to cover her with to keep her warm and trying to keep Doc from disturbing her, we had a brief quiet moment where, looking back, I know she passed. Her whole body stretched out, and my hopefulness convinced me she was trying to get up, so I began petting her and telling her it was okay and she would be okay. She then let a breath out of her mouth, which my hopefulness mistook for an expression of pain, not her lungs letting out their last breath. I believed we still had time, and Luke got home and moved her into the carrier. He stayed with Doc, and I drove to the vet telling Dora she would be okay while mentally rearranging my savings account in the hopes that every penny I had could fix my baby. The vet tech immediately rushed the carrier away from me, but I had barely signed the consent to pay for emergency procedures when the doctor came to tell me she had gone. Actually, he said "he" instead of "she," and started talking to me about all of these things and using "he." I was bawling, and even after interrupting him to tell him "she" and that her name is Dora, he kept on making the same mistake. Luckily the vet tech was very nice, and she showed me to an exam room and brought Dora in for me to say goodbye. I remembered as a kid having hamsters, and when they would pass away, I wouldn't want to touch them because it creeped me out. But with Dora, she was so pretty even then, and I petted her little head and told her how pretty she was and how much I loved her, and I thanked her for being my first bun.
Losing Dora came as a huge shock to me. She had been battling gas and stasis symptoms for several weeks despite my efforts, but she was still only just over 2 years old. Her passing was a lot harder on me than it was on Doc - I had always heard of bunnies getting depressed after losing their mate, but our vet assured me he probably knew it was coming and understood her death long before I did. I still think of Dora every day, and she has a little memorial in my room with her ashes in a tiny cedar box, some of her toys, and some pictures.
Parsley noms!
Dora gets into the holiday spirit.
Pretty Little Boo.
This has been a long and emotional first post, so I promise the next one will be lighter and tell of our new addition, Aurora!
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