The Addition to Our Family

One of the most difficult things about moving to a new place is finding and making good friends. Being people that grew up with animals we always had the luxury of having man's best friend always there and not feeling a dire need to gain friends quickly. We about six weeks without gaining close friends in Kansas and decided that we should probably turn to the guaranteed friend that comes with a pet. The big debate was what kind of furry friend we should get. We both love labs but our apartment has a 45 lb weight limit on animals (if you use Jon and Karen's dogs as a gauge, labs weigh 90 lbs) which eliminated the possibility of our favourite dog. We thought about a little dog but $800 for a dog that couldn't go running with you seemed like about $700 too much. The thought of a bird came and went as quick as possible. Neither one of us had a desire to own a cat. Fish aren't really pets. We pretty much found ourselves in a bit of a conundrum.

We were sitting in the living room one day and Lacie saw a rabbit hop by our patio and said "I want a rabbit." We kind of laughed initially but after doing some research (a few of Derek's friends in Seattle probably aren't surprised about the dinner research) we found that dwarf rabbits can make good pets.

One week ago today Derek took us both to a pet store to "look around" which ended up being a surprise for one of us because they actually had 2 baby dwarf bunnies there (we had called around the previous day and couldn't find them anywhere). Derek said to pick one and we both settled on the same rabbit.

After getting home we couldn't decide what to name him so we started with the letter "A" and started listing names. After about 5 names Derek blurted out "Gunther" (he is a bit special and sometimes forgets that the prescribed process...Gunther doesn't start with "A") and we both agreed that he was definitely a Gunther (Derek liked it because it was really just a random name and Lacie liked it because of the guy named Gunther on the TV show Friends).

Initially Gunther just pooped everywhere and we were a bit leery about trying to house train him but he quickly chose two spots to "take care of business" and so we put litter boxes in each place (one in his cage and one in the corner of the dining room). Since then he has only peed on the carpet one time and that was because he peed in the right spot but Lacie had the litter box in the bathroom to clean it out...this is when we learned that rabbits are creatures of habit.

Let us back up briefly... Although Gunther liked to cuddle, you had to first chase and catch him before he would be cuddling. We both expressed the desire to have him get used to us. As it turns out he was probably skittish for two reasons: he was probably handled by tons of people at the pet store and he didn't really know/trust us. Now when we reach down to touch him he doesn't feel the need to run off. He cuddles with us every morning (Derek gets him out of the cage right after getting up) for about 15 minutes. He has gotten used to Derek feeding him and so now when Derek puts his hand down he always runs over to check for food and sometimes runs right into his hand. Despite these good things he has learned about bed time which means that he will be put into his cage and so he starts to hide around those hours...this could get fun when he gets better at hide and seek.

What we've learned:

1. Rabbits poo a lot


2. Pet stores are freaky for animals


3. Animals hate being locked up for bed time (Our pet is FAR better than Matt and Kori's dang cat considering it won't attack you when trying to put him to bed and he doesn't make any sound at all)


4. Rabbits eat ALL the time!


5. Rabbits are great about "trimming" the dead branches on plants as they fall...and they even help the live branches to fall by chewing them down


6. Those of you that think that a rabbit is a weird pet are definitely wrong!


7. From now on we will write the blog in first person and just note who is speaking