ShadowProve13
New Member
Hi there everyone. As the title suggests, I'm going to be introducing a dog to my rabbit at the end of this month.
My mother's friend is going on a cruise and asked if we could look after her dog for a week. We have an indoor rabbit who didn't quite have the best introduction to dogs as a young bunny. I've been researching lately on how rabbits could be affected by this, and many say they can get along as long as the dog isn't too hyper. That's where my problem starts.
The dog we have to look after is a Maltese Shih Tzu, and he's very hyper and loves to cling to people. They have already met once and they were separated in different rooms but there was a glass door so they could see one another, and all the dog would do was bark at my rabbit and wanted to play with him. My rabbit ran away and hid himself and I stayed out there with him, he was very unwilling to go down to where the dog was despite there being a door.
I have tried to explain to my mother about this but she only sees it from the dog's perspective and says since his owner also has a cat, he won't hurt my rabbit. Just before I told her about how rabbits can go into shock in some cases with meeting hyper dogs but she didn't want to hear about it since we already agreed to look after the dog, and just thinks I'm making up excuses so I don't have to look after the dog.
It's very frustrating that no matter I cannot get my mother to listen to me.
I know the simple answer is "Put him in his cage", but he actually freaks out when we put him in the cage due to before we got him off our neighbour at the time he was in a cage and constantly harassed by her dogs.
At this point the only thing I can think of is keeping the dog downstairs (we have a double-story house). I would put him outside but we have a Muscovy duck that the dog loves to chase. I'm really at a stump, so I was wondering if anyone has suggestions of what I can do?
My mother's friend is going on a cruise and asked if we could look after her dog for a week. We have an indoor rabbit who didn't quite have the best introduction to dogs as a young bunny. I've been researching lately on how rabbits could be affected by this, and many say they can get along as long as the dog isn't too hyper. That's where my problem starts.
The dog we have to look after is a Maltese Shih Tzu, and he's very hyper and loves to cling to people. They have already met once and they were separated in different rooms but there was a glass door so they could see one another, and all the dog would do was bark at my rabbit and wanted to play with him. My rabbit ran away and hid himself and I stayed out there with him, he was very unwilling to go down to where the dog was despite there being a door.
I have tried to explain to my mother about this but she only sees it from the dog's perspective and says since his owner also has a cat, he won't hurt my rabbit. Just before I told her about how rabbits can go into shock in some cases with meeting hyper dogs but she didn't want to hear about it since we already agreed to look after the dog, and just thinks I'm making up excuses so I don't have to look after the dog.
It's very frustrating that no matter I cannot get my mother to listen to me.
I know the simple answer is "Put him in his cage", but he actually freaks out when we put him in the cage due to before we got him off our neighbour at the time he was in a cage and constantly harassed by her dogs.
At this point the only thing I can think of is keeping the dog downstairs (we have a double-story house). I would put him outside but we have a Muscovy duck that the dog loves to chase. I'm really at a stump, so I was wondering if anyone has suggestions of what I can do?
