My bunny poops on my couch

[joei0005]

My bunny likes to poop on my couch. I have a faux leather couch so it's easy to clean but I'd like to stop this behavior.

We put one or two wee-wee pad trays on the couch. He usually uses them to do his business.

But if I go to the bathroom for 10 minutes and forget to put the pads up, I come back to find pee and poop on the couch.

I would like to continue to grant him access to the couch, since he loves it so much and I love interacting with him on the couch, but the constant cleaning is getting to me.

He's not caged and has full access to the apartment.

Does anyone have any suggestions??

 

[Aki]

Well, you completely encouraged this behavior. You put the trays on the couch which might have seemed like a good idea at the time but taught him it was a place where it was OK to do his business. A rabbit doesn't associate his toilet with the tray, but with the place - I have a litterbox in the rabbits' cage (which stays open), if one of my rabbits feels like going to the toilet during the time I took it away to wash it, they are just going to pee and poop where the litter box normally is.
You have to teach your rabbit that none of this toilet business is acceptable anywhere on the couch. Is your rabbit neutered? Because it could be a way to mark the couch (is the urine kinda orange - red?) - a lot of rabbits like to claim ownership on places with a high point of view (couch, bed...) because it gives them an overview of the 'warren'. Neutering often really helps with unsavory toilet habits (none of mine ever peed outside of their litterbox after the surgery).
If the rabbit is neutered, then clean the couch thoroughly being careful to remove the smell (I would say vinegar, but I don't know if that's possible for a faux-leather thing), then a firm "NO" everytime the rabbit does something he shouldn't and it warrants immediate expulsion from the couch. Rabbits can be stubborn, but they understand what's forbidden as well as any other animal (one of mine used to play deaf but his ears twitched everytime I said "no" which was kind of funny, and Aki used to drop everything and lay down pretending to sleep like 'I have NO IDEA where all those little book confettis come from, they just suddenly rained on me!' - she's an old lady now, no more funny business XD)

 

[Akzholedent]

And honestly, they tend to poop just about anywhere. I swear with my buns, the poop just pops right out as they're hopping. But really, poop is such a non-issue to clean up. Frankly, I'd be happy if all I dealt with were stray poops... but Ellie tends to pee on the carpet every so often.