is this... pizza hut??

here she comes

Tiny mice! Tiny mice! Tiny sleepy mice!

people stepping into dog sports for the first time and immediately deciding they need a border collie or malinois next, preferably asap

people treating malinois like they have unmatched energy and drive (spoiler alert: just like every single breed of dog, there are ranges and the drive/energy ranges of mals overlap with plenty of other breeds)

people prioritizing "training" or "sport" experience over breed experience when considering malinois (or similar bred-to-bite breeds)

01/27/2023

I recently just got rabbits again as part of a project for college. Ordinarily, I would keep rabbits in standard cages, but the specific breed I'm working with actually benefits from extra space outside of a wire cage (unlike most breeds), so as part of the project the rabbits have their own cages and also have access to indoor pens. They all have tons of room. Originally, the plan was that the does would live together, and that they'd each have their cages as their own separate spaces but the pen would be their shared space. After all, people raise rabbits in colonies sometimes, so surely this should work.

This was a horrible, shitty plan. No matter what I tried in introducing them, they immediately got into some of the most violent fights I've witnessed from any species in my life. We're talking one doe almost snapped the other one's neck by latching onto her ear and yanking/twisting her head as far as she could. When rabbits fight, they fight. This is not the same as figuring out hierarchies, which in rabbits typically consists of mounting, chasing, chinning, etc. Rabbits that fight have very little if any chance of ever becoming in any way bonded.

Even after I made the decision to divide their pen, the worst wasn't even over yet. One doe jumped on top of her cage and jumped over the divider just to go fight the other doe. They were fighting all day before I found them. Even after I extended the height of the divider long enough to cover most of where their cages were, the same doe still made the extra effort to launch herself diagonally from the literal two inches of cage that extended beyond the addition and the two had been fighting most of the day again. Both of them are covered head to toe in some of the nastiest scars I've ever seen. And now, even after fully extending the divider so no jumping over can happen, they're fighting through the divider wire, and now one of the does has a puncture on her face and a major gash in her lip, so I'll be adding a smaller holed wire to the bottom portion of the divider as soon as I'm able to get some.

Guys, trying to keep rabbits together like this isn't worth it. It's just not. Keep them separate, or honestly even better yet for most breeds, keep them in cages. I promise you they will be so much better off, I promise they will be perfectly happy and healthy - if not happier and healthier.

So rabbits totally are social animals, but they're not social with each other in a way we would expect or accept. Rabbits regulate the amount of fighting in their warrens via breeding. When a rabbit is bred, its typically raging hormones generally calm down, and the most a doe will be worried about is keeping her kits safe and well cared for. Does in a warren are constantly bred. Bucks constantly do the breeding. It may sound messed up to us but in some ways, in a normal warren, breeding literally helps keep the adults alive. Even then, though, rabbit hierarchies are complex and ever changing. In part due to hormones and in part due to just the complexities of being a rabbit, dominance-based chasing, mounting, biting, etc. happens on a pretty much constant basis.

Thing is, when you're keeping domestic rabbits, unless you're keeping them in a self-producing colony, you probably don't want them to be breeding all the time - hell, if you're just keeping pet rabbits you don't want them to be breeding at all. That means their usual main way of self regulation becomes impossible. And that means they're going to fight. There is a chance that if you introduce rabbits to each other in a very specific way (i.e. taking them to a completely new space neither has ever been in before and releasing them into that space all at the exact same time with no more than maybe a second or two between releases) they may not kill each other, but if they're intact you can generally still expect that they will mount, chase, and nip each other *a lot* throughout their time together - which most humans would see as a bad, stressful thing.

HRS says "rabbits naturally want to be together," but rabbits really only naturally want to be together if they can breed. HRS knows this. Why do you think they say rabbits must be neutered before attempting bonding? Of course, they want all rabbits to be neutered anyways, but even they will tell you - trying to bond two intact rabbits of the same sex is extremely dangerous. And this is where I wish people would use common sense. If it's so natural and good for rabbits to be kept in pairs or groups, why is it that they need to be unnaturally altered before they can do so safely?

Also here is the girl. The best girl. The most incredible child. This photo was hard to get because she kept climbing my chest to cuddle into my neck.