Help – My rabbit wants to live on my bed!

[xm]

This might need a lengthy explanation!  I am new to rabbit owning and picked up Timmy, my eight month old netherland dwarf three weeks ago to live in my house.  I realise now i misunderstood what house rabbit means and how much space they need and that they dont just live in cages all the time (i had a hamster before, big difference!).  I have a rabbit hutch for him in my room but the problem is he just doesnt want to go in it and wants to be on my bed all the time.  Admittedly my room is quite small – the length of my double bed touches the walls on either side and the room left over equates to a little over a single bed.  I didn’t like the idea of keeping him cooped up in the cage so i started to leave the hatch open whenever i was at home.  he’d come out and never set foot in it again except to eat some pellets out of his bowl.  Instead he’d head straight for my bed and start racing around, doing his binkies, exploring, and then flopping over and relaxing for a few hours.  He doesnt like to be touched at all so i can never catch him to put him back in his hutch.  I leave the door open but now he just sleeps up on my bed in the same spot.  The trouble is that from the start, he chose the bottom corner of my bed next to the wall to use as a toilet.  He was using the corner in his hutch until i started to let him free roam.   I tried to block the corner off on my bed with my beanbag but then he just went next to the bean bag instead.  i tried sitting in the corner but he just went next to me!  it was getting really hard to keep washing my blankets all the time so i put a litter tray for a kitten there and he now uses that all the time.  he is not neutered but he he does use his litter tray really well and doesnt pee or poop anywhere else except when ive tried to block off the corner.   he has a favourite cardboard box with some holes cut out that he likes to sit in.  It’s also on my bed because anything i put on the floor like even his play tunnel, he just doesnt go down there!  he rarely goes onto my floor.  I tried to put the cardboard box over the litter tray to make my bed look less like an animal hutch!  but then instead of continuing to go on the tray, he started to just eat the hay on the tray and come out of the box to pee on another spot of the bed.  The other thing is that because he sits on my bed the entire day he doesnt go down to his hutch where his water bottle is.  i was worried about him dehydrating so i put a little dish of water out for him on the bottom and he drinks from that.  so he has hay on the litter tray that he eats and water next to it.  

The problem is that it’s just a little weird having all this on the bed, i feel like my bed has become a rabbit hutch!  I love timmy and watching him play, and i when he stretches out on the bed he looks like he’s in rabbit heaven!  so he looks happy enough but i just wish there was some way that he could lounge on the bed but poop and pee inside his cage and take the water there so that my bed could look and feel like a bed again!!   i’m feeling a little bit exasperated as i just dont know what to do!  Any ideas?  I cant help but feel that ive helped create this problem.  I’d appreciate any advice

[Stickerbunny]

The choosing your bed as a litter box is perfectly normal, especially for a male who is not altered. It smells like YOU so he wants it to smell like HIM. Is there room on the floor for him to do his zoomies and binkies? Or could you let him out of your room to have exercise in another room? If so, you could block off you bed with NIC cubes or something like that so he can’t jump up onto it. Once he establishes a litter spot on the the floor and is used to eating/drinking etc there, he may be able to come up and hang out on your bed (though neutering may help the marking). There may be some “tantrum” acting out if you block off the bed though, so be sure to have cleaner ready for the floor (natures miracle or vinegar) and all stuff that can be chewed well out of his reach.

And yes, house rabbits do kind of take over the place. They are much more like a cat than a hamster hehe my male sleeps on my bed, he thinks he owns it. But, bright side, they can be trained pretty well with effort. You could try clicker training as well, it might give him something to do and help you two with bonding.

[~M.]

  My rabbit tried something similar when I first got her. It was fun to watch her on the bed until she started pooping on it!! I can’t really pick my rabbit up either and it took me a little while to figure out how to keep her off the bed. Just trying to force your rabbit to move will probably cause some hostility, so I don’t suggest force of any kind. 

I got into the habit of raising my voice when she got on the bed so she’d be on alert and know I was unimpressed. Then when she was alert I’d go up onto the bed and just touch her back side a little. At first she’d run circles and shake her tail, but when she saw that I wasn’t going to relent she would run to the edge of the bed and jump off. Now I’ve got her trained so if I walk into the room and she’s on the bed I say “hey” loudly and she scoots right off. 

Another thing I did was simply bar her access to the bed. My floors are wooden so it’s hard for her to get traction. I just moved everything she could possibly get traction from and then put my blankets at the end of the bed (because she manages to get up that way anyhow). In the end, that helped a lot. 

Hope you figure everything out! :] 

[kinggoblin]

neutering might help the marking on the bed, mine use to leave territorial poops under the chair he liked to sleep under but now he has stopped, I have one litter box in my 2 bedroom apartment and whenever he needs to potty he runs straight to his x-pen wherever he is when he needs to go.

[xm]

thanks for the advice! it’s been really helpful. i think timmy and i made some progress today. I blocked off my bed by tying a sheet from one bedpost to the other. it was heartbreaking watching him make a few attempts to get up and he was one dejected looking bunny when he was forced to give up. He succeeded in finding another route onto the bed that i didnt think was possible! and boy was he excited to be up there, whizzing around and doing lots of binkies. I was about to think it could be possible to let him up occasionally but no sooner had i thought that and he was peeing on my duvet! It was hard to push him off but i felt i needed to be firm! the bed has been successfully cordoned off for the whole of today and he is eating and pooping in his hutch again. It looks like he has gotten over the shock of being forced off my bed as he’s found a spot under my bed that he seems to have decided is a new resting place so ive put lots of blankets down there and he seems to be happy enough. For now, im going to leave the sheet up and hopefully he’ll get the idea that the floor is his area. the idea of speaking loudly seems like a good one so maybe when i take the sheet down i can give it a try. after the peeing incident today, i have a feeling he might go back to peeing on my bed if i let him up so perhaps i either need to neuter him or just accept that he cant come up on the bed. Thanks again for the advice, im feeling much better about the situation already – even if my room looks a bit like a scout camp lol !

[Stickerbunny]

Be sure to check under the bed for pee too, unaltered buns sometimes will mark any area they want to be theirs.

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