SaveABunny Blog

Ken and Jen were the generous foster parents of two great bunnies who they finally decided to adopt from SaveABunny. They wanted to share their story:

Hello All!

I have been wanting to write this for a while. We have officially adopted Spike and Marley (in July)! We were given the chance to foster these two very smart and sweet brothers last year and we realized that we had fallen in love with them and could never let them go. When Marcy asked us to foster them, she told us that they were not too people friendly, as they were pretty much ignored where they came from. Well, she was right. Spike and Marley were tough to get to touch and stay calm, but they were so cute and very playful. Marley, kind of mellow compared to Spike, was a little easier to give quick little head rubs and strokes, but both really had a hard time with all the attention that we were giving them! Jen really worked on them, sitting in the room with them and just letting them come over to her. But try to pet them and, ZOOM, gone!

Little by little, we both would sit in the room and also let them watch us with Babs and Homer. They saw us snuggling the other buns and I think a bell went off….they started to sit and let us pet them, and slowly, but surely, actually started to like it when we petted them. We started to “nose” them and even did the nose stroke (oh, my neck!) on their faces. Wow! They really enjoyed that. I realized that Marley is a talkative kind of guy. He will grunt in a way that is like a dog when he plays. At first, I would pull my hand away, but Jen said that they are play nips, so I got brave and she was right! Marley really likes to growl when he plays and loves to chew and toss the paper towel roll around and then I stroke him and then he gives me a little, totally harmless nip and runs away waiting for me to chase him. Cool! A Dog-Bunny!! Spike, meanwhile, is just a doll and loves me to give him pretty intense strokes on his head and ears and loves when I shake his butt a little - really. Both are now soooooo cool and even though it took me longer than Jen, I am totally in love with these wonderful guys. Jen told me that they would come around, but I did have my doubts at first. Well, now, they go nuts when we feed them their greens, standing on their hind legs and dancing for us, and really love a stroke-chase- play-chase- stroke game. Wonderful! We are so happy that Marcy let us foster them and adopt them. They will be with us forever!

As for Homer The Great, you may have known him as Winter (ugh). The shy big New Zealand White that was rescued from UCSF Med School. He is a dream. A big, lazy bunny who loves to eat and sleep and have his ears stroked (or any part of his gigantic body!). He goes out on our deck and visits our neighbors regularly, who have fallen in love with him, too. It’s funny to see service workers come in to do work and see Homer and back away. I tell the workers that Homer is not the killer rabbit from Monty Python, and when they pet him, think he is just the coolest! Homer is so harmless, when Babs gets through to bother him, he runs away. Babs is relentless, not letting up, but Homer, ever the kind gentleman, will just kind of push her and run away. Thank goodness for that, because he is a BIG bunny!

Kudos to Marcy and all of the volunteers who save the bunnies! There still is a lot of educating to do, to let the public know what amazing companions these funny and wonderful and feeling creatures they are. Marcy, I don’t envy you, it’s tough. But you are doing a great service for bunnies everywhere. Spike and Marley and Homer know that and they send their love!

Ken and Jen Shaw

Vicki, one of our lovely volunteers at SaveABunny, wanted to share this video of her bunnies running around and having a fun time. Just a reminder of the many rewards of sharing your home with rabbits!

Here’s what Vicki had to say:

“I’m new to bunny foster care - Chocolate Chip and Fudge are my very first bunnies. I didn’t know much about bunnies and thought they just sat around all day, but nooooo. They are very active. They just crack me up sometimes. I decided to put them on the couch to see if they would ‘do something’. What a performance they put on. And I even had the camera ready. All three of us had a great time.” – Vicki Pelton

Seeing as how this blog was only started about a month ago, I don’t expect anyone other than core SaveABunny members to know what I’m about to tell you. However, I think it’s important for the integrity of the blog, and interestingness of future blog entries, for me to share this:

I don’t actually have a pet bunny. …And I’ve never had one. In fact, I’d never even met anyone who had one until I met Marcy, founder of SaveABunny, a few months ago.

I feel a little bit like this makes me a huge phony, a fraud, and/or an impostor - but in fact, when I look at the big picture, it kind of makes me the perfect person to write this blog. This is because, like many of the people who I hope read this, I intend on becoming a bunny fosterer very soon.

I will briefly (relatively speaking) and honestly summarize the story of why I chose to foster a rabbit. I’m also asking for any of our other current, previous, or future SaveABunny fosterers to share your stories in the comments section, for the benefit of our readers who are considering fostering, or who just like reading stories with bunnies in them.

Here’s mine:
As a young, apartment-dwelling, San Franciscan college student, I have had many challenges in finding an animal to share my home with. I’m sure some of them will be familiar to you, no matter where you live. I like lists, so here they are in list form:

1. College is really expensive, and most pets do not enjoy eating ramen noodles. In fact, there was a time when I seriously, but very briefly, considered eating pet food myself when I found some unopened cans of Friskies in the basement.

2. Building owners are jerks. Many apartments don’t allow pets at all. My plans to find a cute pet, or any pet at all, went on hold for years at a time.

3. Roommates, boyfriends, and the rare but serious condition that happens when they intersect. Living with other people can be cool, and it can suck. When it’s cool, they were allergic to everything, and when it sucked, I didn’t want to subject a helpless animal to their mess/odor/clumsiness (I’m clumsy enough by myself - with two of us stumbling around, small animals are bound to get tripped over.)

4. The litterbox dilemma. “Do I want a dog that I have to walk outside to let poop, or do I want a pet that poops in my home?” Oooooh, that’s a tough one. Luckily I have a really terrible sense of smell, so I decided the litterbox was completely tolerable if the pet was cute enough.

5. I practically lived in a litterbox myself. Seriously. Every apartment in San Francisco that a college student can afford is just barely big enough for 1 animal: yourself. And I had roommates/boyfriends.

Luckily, challenges 1, 2, 3, and 5 are now being solved without the failure of a sensory organ! I have a great job at an ad agency and no longer have to eat ramen noodles. (Although I’ll admit I kind of like them now.) My next door neighbor has a big, fluffy cat that scratches the hell out of her door all night long (I can hear it, it’s kind of scary), so I can only assume the building management doesn’t care what kind of animal I have in my apartment. I’m going to be living alone for the first time starting this summer, leaving space in my home and schedule for a pet, while simultaneously reducing the chances of any tragic accidents caused by clumsiness, or antihistamine overdose. And last but not least, I finally have a normal apartment with a bedroom AND a living room! It’s so unbelievably amazing I can’t even begin to describe it. Oh, and I graduated college last week. (Now I have time to write more blogs! Everyone wins!)

So now that the major obstacles are gone, what kind of pet do I get? I’ve had a long time to think about this. I’ve nixed dog, because my mom comes to visit sometimes and she’s allergic to them. I’ve nixed cat, because my boyfriend was allergic to them. I’ve nixed fish because they’re boring. I’ve nixed muntjac deer because they’re illegal to keep as pets in the state of California, as well as about 25 other awesome pets that I considered. Finally I researched bunnies after learning that some people keep them in their homes. I found the SaveABunny website and began to visualize myself as a bunny owner.

I’d been slowly falling in love with the idea of having a bunny for a roommate instead of a person when two important things happened: 1) I made a drunken New Year’s Resolution to do some volunteering, and 2) the universe guffawed at my pathetic attempt to graduate college and put me in Professor Erdman’s astronomy class. Extremely necessary extra credit assignment: volunteer. I called up SaveABunny.

As everything fell into place and I learned all about bunnies and saving them, I knew I would have to, at some point, adopt one. How could I not? Marcy suggested I foster first. It made a lot of sense.

So that’s the plan. I am now in the process of slowly bunny-proofing my home, and learning as much as I can about bunnies - not just for myself, but for this blog, so that I can write about them without giving away the fact that I’ve never lived with one. My current resource: The Language of Lagomorphs.

I’m going post updates on my little adventure of trying to foster a bunny, for the benefit of those readers who are considering it themselves, and the entertainment of those who have already been there and now actually know what they’re doing. I’ll share resources that I find and do the best I can to explain the pitfalls so that you can avoid them. If you have any advice, recommendations, or stories of your own, please share them with us in the comments section!

Oh, and wish me luck!