Here we go again!

[RosL]

Daily Mail, 25th May 2011. Sandra Parsons' column.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1390569/Penny-Johnson-No-woman-deserves-6m-botched-nip-tuck.html

Quote



The rabbits turned out to be scratch and not cuddly at all. The run needed mucking out every morning and you can guess who ended shovelling the rabbit poo before work. We managed to give them away in the end. So I find myself agreeing with John Humphreys who got himself into hot water for suggesting the best place for a rabbit is a casserole. Or a pie John. A lovely crusty pie

End quote

What can anybody say other than that she's typical of irresponsible people far too much in the public eye and trying to get a rise out of her stupid, irresponsible comments. No doubt she'd have said the same about a family dog, exept that perhaps she wouldn't have wanted to eat it.

Various organisations work so hard to raise the profile - and all too often the plight - of pet rabbits. These pets are the third most popular in the country, yet how many have treatment as good as cats or dogs?

We hear of people who choose where they will be going on holiday based on whether or not they can take their family dog, because they don't want to leave it behind, they feel kennels aren't good enough, they'll quite simply miss it. Yet if they do the same about their pet rabbit, far too many people will say they are bonkers. No, they are not. The are caring, responsible owners who don't take lightly their relationship with their pet - and they are mocked and goaded, not only in private, but in the media by people like Ms Parsons and earlier in the week, the BBC's John Humphreys, who I remember reading is a cat lover...perhaps he'd like some feline stew? No, of course he wouldn't, any more than pet rabbit owners would want, or more importantly would want to HEAR ABOUT eating rabbits.

These people are big on ego, big on mouthing off, but in consideration, in empathy....they lag way behind.

Rescue organisations, the Rabbit Welfare Association, the PDSA, the RSPCA, the Blue Cross and so many others all work so hard to improve things. We've seen videos released, results of surveys, campaigns, all aimed at making things better - rabbits really do deserve better - and then clowns like these do their utmost to undermine it all.

Funny? Not for one single minute.

 

[Nancy McClelland]

The only column that came up was one from the 27th about 6 million pounds for a botched face lift.

 

[Cheyrul]

I joke about beating my dogs and skinning my cat all the time. My family jokes constantly about rabbit stew or roasted bunny, but the things are still loved on, just as much as the 2 dogs and 6 cats which are far more cuddly and far less work.

Take a deep breath and relax. She is not advocating animal abuse or neglect but alerting people that they have real needs and require lots of work.

 

[RosL]

Cheyrul wrote:

I joke about beating my dogs and skinning my cat all the time. My family jokes constantly about rabbit stew or roasted bunny, but the things are still loved on, just as much as the 2 dogs and 6 cats which are far more cuddly and far less work.

Take a deep breath and relax. She is not advocating animal abuse or neglect but alerting people that they have real needs and require lots of work.

Yes, that's the one. The item about the rabbits is further down.

 

[Yurusumaji]

Interesting. The little jokes at the end I can handle.

However, it pisses me off that she's supposed to be writing a bit about how 75% of pet rabbits are abused or neglected, then goes into a tangent about how she had rabbits she never wanted, had to spend too much money on and eventually dumped on someone else. That's pretty much exactly what the survey was talking about. People like her.

Also, mucking out? For two rabbits? Maybe if you only cleaned it once a month, but not if you cleaned it every morning (and we all know you didn't).

Not to mention she's telling the masses that rabbits are evil and will scratch you. This tells us she never even attempted to socialize her rabbits. The bottom line is she had rabbits that she mistreated, but because she spent money on them she thinks it glorifies her somehow and makes it appear as if she sacrificed so much to be a great rabbit owner.

The full bit reads:
"According to a new survey, up to three-quarters of pet rabbits are badly treated, kept in cruelly cramped conditions and given the wrong food.

A few years ago, I made the mistake of giving in to a summer-long campaign waged by my children and bought two adorable dwarf rabbits, along with a caged run and a two-storey hutch — a veritable Rabbit Ritz — hay, dried food and two harnesses so they could be taken for walks (I’m not joking). The bill was £380 or thereabouts (still not joking).

But the rabbits turned out to be rather scratchy and not cuddly at all.

The run needed mucking out every morning — and you can guess who ended up shovelling rabbit poo before work. We managed to give them away in the end.

So I find myself agreeing with John Humphrys, who’s got himself in hot water for suggesting the best place for a rabbit is in a casserole.

Or a pie, John. A lovely, crusty pie . . ."

 

[Cheyrul]

You are really a lot into her comments, my goodness. She spent lots of money on their pet rabbits, making sure they were properly housed and fed. She also made sure the cages were clean. I agree with her about mucking the cage, we first had just 2 rabbits in two separate cages that I cleaned daily, it was a lot of poop and a lot of work. I had no idea their would be so much work and expense in having bunnies. With the 4 small or average, no idea, bunnies we have, I am spending at least $20 per week on fresh greens and veggies and that is not including what we are growing for them to try to save money. After spending about $100 on potted herbs to re-pot and grow, I finally got smart and asked a few landscape men who we go to church with if they had plants to help with our rabbit garden.

 

[Yurusumaji]

It's this particular statement that bothers me so much:

"We managed to give them away in the end."

Cleaning up after Michiko is no picnic, but it's certainly not anything close to cleaning up after a horse. So the "mucking" thing is still an exaggeration if you ask me. If you keep up on the work then it's really not that bad.

In my eyes though, if she was such a great home and could afford to take care of the rabbits properly, she should not have just given them away. Who did they go to? Were they properly taken care of after that? If she was such a glorified rabbit owner, she wouldn't have dumped them in the first place.

Not to mention I shouldn't have to dig through comments to get to the whole story. If she wanted to glorify herself she could have done it in the article, instead she over-exaggerated and wallowed in the victory of her rabbit dumping skills. How many ignorant people will read that and then just decide rabbits are evil scratchy pets who poop a lot and are expensive? It's hard to educate the masses when reporters who are supposed to be unbiased and factual are spouting garbage like that.

Just my 2¢.

 

[golfdiva]

You know, especially in Florida, there is no need to buy or even grow your veggies for your rabbit. Do you think cotton tails grow gardens? :wink

Just find an open field and pick weeds for your bunny. Start with idenifying one or two common weeds, like dandelion and wild carrot, and expand from there!

 

[Cheyrul]

I have no idea what wild carrot looks like lol, if you are willing to help me identify weeds, I would do this. However I am not sure I am allowed to just wander on the closest field, I think it is part of a reserve and I would have to get thru some nasty stickery weeds and sandspurs. We are also very very allergic to stuff, 2 of my kids are covered in a poison ivy-like weepy rash because of airborne spores due to area fires.
I think getting plants, like some creeping jasmine stuff and lavender for free is way more my style hahaha.

 

[Cheyrul]

oh, we have mosquitoes.

Back to the article, big deal she found a better home from her bunnies. Recently, I found a good home for 3 of our baby bunnies. Just today, the guy who took them needs me to take or find a home for one of them because of the change in his circumstances.

 

[Yurusumaji]

There's no proof that the home she gave them to was better. Also, there was no indication that her circumstances changed or that she could no longer care for the rabbits. The statement she makes concerning the dumping of her rabbits makes it sound more like she was just looking to be rid of them because she didn't want them anymore.

It's irresponsible for her to talk like she was so great when all she did was care for a couple of small rabbits for maybe 2-3 months before dumping them on someone else. If she didn't want them, she could have told her kids 'no'. Simple as that. Instead, she's writing an article trying to glorify what a great owner she was when the bottom line is that she didn't socialize them, never tried to understand them and within a few months she dumped them on someone else.

Sorry if I'm not pining over her "amazing" rabbit care, but it sounds more to me like one of the idiots that gets their kid a rabbit for Easter and then dumps it off at a shelter or in a field somewhere when the kids bores of it. Yay, you took care of it for a month. BUT THEN YOU DUMPED IT.

 

[Cheyrul]

Would you have rather she keep them?

 

[Anaira]

She made it sound like people have an excuse for badly-treating rabbits, etc. 'Managed' to give them away gives the impression on dumping them on the first person they could find. Who could very easily be another 'her'.

It's not hard to research about rabbits before getting them. Finding out if rabbits are cuddly pets, and if they're suitable for children. She makes it sound as though she gave in one day, packed kids into the car, headed to the pet store, brought a bunny starter kit, plus the rabbits, and came home.

 

[Yurusumaji]

If she was such a fine owner, then yes, she should have acted like a responsible adult and kept them. Now her kids have been taught that it's okay to "test drive" a pet. Get it before doing proper research on it, take care of it for a couple months, if you don't like it put it up on Craigslist and sell it to the first person who responds. IT'S OKAY IF THEY TAKE PRETTY GOOD CARE OF IT FOR THE COUPLE MONTHS THEY HAVE IT. That's really something we need kids being exposed to, especially concerning rabbits who are constantly dumped by stupid parents like the author of that article, who get them for their kids and rid themselves of them once they realize the kids aren't going to be caring for them. It's not rocket science. Be prepared to care for the animal so long as you are able or don't get it.

I'm not okay with someone publicly advocating the dumping of animals and "down-talking" them. There's too much ignorance concerning rabbits already, we don't need people whose opinion gets to the public eye easily to be spreading more false knowledge to the masses who are already too stupid to decide for themselves.

1. This woman obviously has no idea how to be frugal. If she was so worried about the cost for a cage she could have done online research and found cheaper options or discovered that she could build her own cage like most of us do to save money.

2. Not all rabbits scratch and nearly all of them can be socialized to be fairly calm and snuggly. Michiko isn't exactly a nuzzler, but she never scratches or bites and she is a very mild-mannered rabbit. If she had kept the rabbits they would have matured and they would likely be less fidgety and she would have gotten scratched less or maybe not at all. This is very simple and you can learn about this from the most basic research about pet rabbits.

3. Litter training is also explained in the most basic of rabbit care articles and if she had done research she would have known this as well. This would have cut down her cleaning significantly! Very common and basic knowledge if you bother to look for it. It's pretty clear she didn't.

4. Dumping an animal is nothing to be proud of. Period.

 

[RosL]

Cheyrul wrote:

You are really a lot into her comments, my goodness. She spent lots of money on their pet rabbits, making sure they were properly housed and fed. She also made sure the cages were clean. I agree with her about mucking the cage, we first had just 2 rabbits in two separate cages that I cleaned daily, it was a lot of poop and a lot of work. I had no idea their would be so much work and expense in having bunnies. With the 4 small or average, no idea, bunnies we have, I am spending at least $20 per week on fresh greens and veggies and that is not including what we are growing for them to try to save money. After spending about $100 on potted herbs to re-pot and grow, I finally got smart and asked a few landscape men who we go to church with if they had plants to help with our rabbit garden.

That's the whole point, isn't it, people expect rabbits to be cheap, easy care pets, and they're not. Nor are they suitable for children yet those who sell them try to aim at precisely that market and at impulse buyers, especially around Easter.

Given the reality of the situation - and I am assuming the journalist's rabbits were living outside - she didn't spend an excessive amount, in my view. These were dwarf rabbits from what she said. If we go with the recommendation (as I believe we should) that a rabbit's home should allow it three full hops, then the hutch ought to have been 6ft long. Again going with the recommendation that it should be able to stretch up fully, the hutch should have been 2ft high and ideally 2ft deep too. The fact of it being two storey reduced the floor space for the ramp, but leaving that bit aside for the present. Again, the run should have been 8ft x 6ft x at least 2ft heigh, though I'd have wanted higher so that the bun could binky freely without bashing its head on the roof.

Looking at prices for those things in the UK online sources, £380 would be about right. So, she bought adequate housing - but clearly resented it. Yes they were scratchy..they were babies and not used to her nor her negative attitude. Yes, they needed cleaning out, as any pet would. That comes with the territory. What did she expect?

Mine are houserabbits, (with daily access to the garden for exercise) so I can't really comment on hutch cleaning, though I don't suppose it would be so much different from the 10 minutes it takes me each morning to clean up any stray poos, clean the litter tray and put their toys a little bit further to the edges of my living room, rather than plonked in the middle of the floor. Do I resent it? No. Do I like it? No, but it comes with having pets. THEY DON'T DO THEIR OWN HOUSEWORK. I wonder whether she resents cleaning up around her kids too?

And then she dumped them. She doesn't tell us where...I hope they went to a rescue but more likely they'll have been passed on to some other ignorant impulse owner who also knows nothing. Which I am not knocking btw - we ALL started out knowing nothing, but those of us here had the compassion and the commitment to learn, to take things such as nibbling and being untidy in our stride, to have consideration for the small beings for whom we had become responsible and to not just dump them on somebody else once the novelty had worn off.

Does this woman know whether the buns are still in their new home, whether they're happy, whether they are even still alive? I doubt it. Does she care? Well, I think the tone of the article illustrates the answer to that.

 

[RosL]

Yurusumaji wrote:

Cleaning up after Michiko is no picnic, but it's certainly not anything close to cleaning up after a horse. So the "mucking" thing is still an exaggeration if you ask me. If you keep up on the work then it's really not that bad.

Well said.

I hope her kids don't want ponies when they're older!

 

[Cheyrul]

some of you are nuts and seriously need a life outside of your rabbits.

You have absolutely no way of knowing for sure that the cage was too small or inadequate, the exact breed of bunny or if she did any research. From the article it was a 3 month campaign from her kids, since she purchased all necessary supplies a bunny needs, she did some type of research.

Any seriously? you say she was horrible to get them but you want her to KEEP them when she, according to you, had the wrong cage and it was outside which apparently is abusive(?)and the rabbits were with children (which mine own are- actually the rabbits are children's!)and NEGLECTED. Again, you say if she was responsible she should have keep them, I say she was responsible by giving them a probably better life.

Here is a little back story on our rabbits and how we got them, I was accused of have munchausen's by proxy, so my 7 kids were placed in foster care to supposedly heal while they terminated my parental rights. Long story short, the kids were placed in a very neglectful and emotionally abusive home for 9 mo, then separate into sets of two and placed in 4 different homes. One set of set went with some loving (actually all the new foster homes were good) people who had a farm and used to raise African greys (which my sister and parents did also, so I know about their needs). At this home, each of the foster kids (3) were given a bunny when they went to an animal auction. One rabbit died, the other two were a male and female, which were housed outside in a cage that was probably 2'x 3'and had a wire bottom which set directly on the ground. When it rained, the cage was covered in a tarp and they were fed pellets, apples and carrots every day. They had an African Grey house in a similar cage hanging in pine tree (which here offer little to no shade) and in the same cage was a guinea pig... according to you, the foster parents would have been RESPONSIBLE pet owners had they KEPT the animals. The bunnies were the only positive thing that happened to my kids in 14 months, while I proved the state wrong. Since my kids loved their bunnies, I did research on what we would need keep them. Everything I found on the web gave glowing reports and made it and potty training so very easy, it is not. So know, we have 4 bunnies I would prefer not to and a chewed up house. Yet, I am positive you would consider me a bad person because I have one cage which houses 4 and I have kids who carry the rabbits every and play with them constantly and sometimes the kids are too rough, sometimes the bunnies are too rough, sometimes it is the dog ... whatever, the bunnies are better off than being in a stew or casserole which could have happened at an auction or as snake food.

 

[Cheyrul]

I have ADHD and probably some degree of dyslexia, so if chunks of thought are missing or hard to follow, sorry.

 

[RosL]

Is that the excuse for your rudeness too?

 

[Yurusumaji]

I never said she bought the wrong cage, I never said she kept them outside and I never said they were abused. Make sure you know what you're arguing before you get into an argument.

I'm saying that it was wrong of her to get pets for her kids if she wasn't willing to take care of them for the long haul. I'm also saying it's wrong for her to spout off about how rabbits are messy, mean and expensive when that in and of itself is not completely true.

I know, how dare I expect someone to shell out the money for the pet they wanted? Pets cost money, it's a fact of life. Pets poop and pee just like humans because they are living creatures and we have to clean up after them. It's a fact of life, get over it. Pets don't trust us automatically, which may mean some rough times in the beginning. It's a fact of life.

This is common sense and yet she acts like this all took her by surprise!

Apollo cost me a pretty penny since I got him from a breeder. However, 2 weeks after we picked him up he fell desperately ill. I suppose I could have whined about how much in vet bills it cost me to save him (somewhere in the thousands, we were at the vet twice a week) or how he couldn't walk or stand so he had to potty on himself and I had to wash him constantly and change and wash his bedding several times a day. I could complain and go on about how he doesn't like strangers and he barks too much and throws up on the carpet when he eats too fast. I could dump him since he chews on our walls and we rent and I don't like it.

Alas, Apollo is still a cared for and loved member of the family because when I decided that I was going to bring him home I decided that I was going to do everything in my power to give him the best life I possibly could. That's what it means to be a responsible pet owner and that's why the author of that article is nothing more than an ignorant person who is making it sound like she did such a great job when, really, she didn't.