Sunday, October 4, 2015

The Parker Report - October 4, 2015 - 12th Installment

This is the Parker Report for October 4, 2015

I know it's been a month since my last report on Parker so I apologize to those of you who may have been anxiously waiting for the next installment.  Unfortunately, because of the amount of time that has lapsed sine the last report, this one is quite long-winded so I apologize for that too.  We've been pretty busy with work and things around the house, so I've been slacking a bit on the blog.  I still have to get the pictures uploaded too so please be patient with me.

I'm starting off this report with the night of Saturday, September 5, 2015.
Parker woke us up again at 2:00 am.  This time I got Brad up after checking on him and Brad slept in the hallway with him.  This was the last time though, because Parker's not having his late night parties anymore.  For now anyway.

The next day (Sunday 9/6), I got Parker to get onto my lap by using food as in incentive.
I watched a YouTube video a while back with a lady showing how to get a rabbit to come to you and eventually pick it up.  The video is kind of long (about 20 minutes, but the outtakes at the end are amusing), but I decided to try some of her techniques with Parker, and surprisingly they worked!  (Here's a link to the video I'm referring to:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFUXxXSD7Mc)

I put a soft microfiber bath mat on my lap and sat on the downstairs bathroom floor.  He came onto my lap and actually sat there and let me comb him for about 10 minutes.  This was the first time for him to sit in my lap.  Of course, there was kibble involved so that kept his interest.  He's like a little crack attic with that stuff so getting him to eat it out of my hand was no problem.  Hiding it when he figured out that I had the cup behind my back became a bit tricky though.  I had to put the cup up on the toilet lid.
Unfortunately, Brad was upstairs taking a nap the entire time I was working with Parker, so he missed the whole thing.  I decided that the next time I'll make sure he gets pictures and maybe even a video of us in action.
That night we put the A/C on a little cooler as we watched a movie with him on the floor.  
He actually let us sleep all night until 6:00 am Monday morning.

That Monday (9/7) We tried it again on the kitchen floor and he let me comb and brush him with kibble treats and then he had his dinner of the rest of the training kibble plus his mixed green salad.  This time Brad took pictures and a video on my Nook so now I have photographic proof. 



(Update - It took me awhile, but I now have everything online in the albums as of 10/7/15.)


Here's the video of me using the technique with Parker:


Saturday, September 19th was Parker's day to return to the Brentwood Petco for his social duty on rabbit adoption day from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm.  He was a good boy all day and didn't get too restless and was nice when kids came by to see him.  A couple of them asked why he had pink eyes. DeAnna from Contra Costa Rabbit Rescue gave me an official T-shirt for their organization when we last saw her in Pittsburg so I wore it that day.  She didn't have any XL black ones for Brad so he has to wait since hot pink isn't his color.  About mid-way through the event, DeAnna gave Parker a plastic baby key ring toy to play with and he had the ladies laughing when he was showing off by holding it in his mouth and tossing his head back like he was going to fling it.  It's like he wanted to throw it but didn't figure out he has to actually let go of it.  A little while later, DeAnna came by Parker's pen again while I was sitting in there with him.  This time she had a white female (spayed) rabbit so we wondered what her intentions were this time.  It's always risky putting unknown rabbits together (usually even more so with two of the same sex) so we weren't sure what was going to happen when she decided to put the girl rabbit in the pen with us.  I just sat prepared to separate them if need be.  Luckily, they were both very nice together and sniffed each other.  (Maybe they were related but we didn't know it and this was just a reunion!)  She looked a lot like him with the pink eyes, but she was all white.  She hopped into Parker's litter box a couple of times, then explored the inside of his soft carrier before they huddled in the corner while Parker checked her out some more and then eventually ignored her.  No major incidents on this speed date.  Thank goodness!  DeAnna took her bunny back to her own pen. 

A couple of weeks ago I took Parker's Timothy Hay out of the plastic covered bin and moved it into a laundry basket in the pantry so it could "breathe" more and avoid the risk of getting "funky".  Unfortunately, now whenever I open the pantry door to get something Parker rushes to the door and sneaks inside to jump into the grass basket..  He loved doing it so much I thought there would be no harm in letting him do that once a day as a special fun treat.  That was all well and good until I noticed that his natural instinct confused him into doing the same thing he does when he eats grass in his litter box, and I found some bunny pellets in the grass.  Luckily, this batch of grass was almost gone at this point, because I was concerned about the food supply getting contaminated.  When I bought a new bag that week I also purchased a tall laundry basket, thinking he wouldn't jump in.  I was wrong.  He jumps pretty high with almost no effort on his part.  It's almost like he just "floats" up and into the basket "boop!" and his in.  At least I'm able to get him out easily enough, or have him jump out onto my lap as I kneel next to the basket.   I don't want him to jump out onto the tile  floor from that height because he can hurt himself since rabbits have hollow bones like birds.  Now I just clip a towel across the top of it, but he still jumps up and in.  It gets to be a bit of a problem if he jumps inside when the level of the grass is low because all of a sudden he's in the middle of the basket and it's harder to jump back out again.  Now when I go into the pantry, I just watch for him more so I can keep him out of the basket, but he's pretty quick and can make it across the room in less than two seconds flat.  I'm always afraid I'm going to accidentally hurt him when he's rushing the door as I'm closing it behind me.



Jumping ahead again to last week...
Parker is getting used to being combed and brushed and I actually did it once without a kibble bribe.  I also bought him a couple of baby toys (ring types he can toss) at Babies R Us when I went to buy a bottle brush.  I guess he only likes showing off for the rabbit rescue ladies because he hasn't played with his new toys much.  He likes the free stuff like the corrugated cardboard that he shreds, and the grass-stuffed toilet paper roll tubes.

We had a theory that he was jumping up on the fireplace hearth in the middle of the night and playing around up there so we tried an experiment.  We still had the packing blankets covering the hearth so he doesn't chew the flaking paint and the dark blue shows his fur since he's shedding.   I vacuumed the fur off the blankets (plus the speaker cloth of the subwoofer) with the upholstery attachment, then we put a couple of his toys up there to see what happened that night.  Sure enough, the next day we saw new fur on the blankets and his toys flung onto the floor.  Ahah!

Thursday night (10/1/15) - Unknown to us he followed us upstairs when we went up to get ready for bed.  I guess he went behind my back quietly while I was brushing my teeth and sneaked into our master bedroom closet.  I turned off the light in there and closed the door when I was finished, still having no idea he was in there.  All was quiet until about 5:30 am the next morning when we heard scratching.  This was his usual time for coming up to greet us, so I thought he was in the bathroom messing around with the towel on the floor by the shower (because he does that a lot).  We looked for him and didn't see him in his usual hideouts.  Then we heard a noise coming from the closet, I opened the door and there he was!  I guess the sound we heard was him scratching at the carpet by the door since he can't yell at us.  Poor little guy.  Luckily he was OK (and no potty surprises either).  He had just nibbled on a couple of my shoes.  One of them was an old sandal so I didn't mind as much, but he also left a small autograph on the top edge of one of my newer clogs.  He didn't have much light in there to work by, except for the slight glow of the light on the internet router on the shelf.  At least he didn't chew the power and ethernet cables hanging out of the wall panel in there.  That would have been bad.

This morning (Sunday, 10/2/15) he hopped onto our bed.  Brad's side this time.  He softly "levitated" up there again, then hopped over Brad's legs and sat between us on the middle of the bed for a while before hopping over me and off the other side to sit by the drapes.
Last night we had a pretty bright and noisy thunder and lightening show in the middle of the night for just a few minutes so I thought he would have come up earlier.  The lightening actually lit up the room because it was happening on that side of the house.  It sounded pretty close so maybe it was right over the Delta.  When it was all happening I had to get up to use the bathroom anyway so I looked over into the living room, but he wasn't in his usual place near the front door, nor at the top of the stairway so I don't know where he was sleeping.  Maybe he was under the futon or in his box in his "apartment".  I think this might have been Parker's first thunder storm so I didn't know how he would react.  Harley, our lop, would have kept thumping his hind foot from the kitchen until we went down there to calm him down.  This morning I mentioned the storm to Brad and he said he slept right through it and was totally unaware it even happened.  It must be nice to be able to sleep like that.

Last thing to mention is that since fall is here and the weather's starting to cool (a bit) we noticed that Parker's darker markings are slowly coming back.  We can just barely see a faint ghost of his ear stripes now and the edges of his ears are darkening up, along with his "booties".  We try to open the windows for a while at night to let some of the heat out of the house and not use the AC so much, so I think that's helping things along with the color change.
This is Parker when we first got him on May 25, 2015.  
Notice how dark his ears and nose are compared to the photo shown below,
which was taken on September 26, 2015.



Ta Ta until next time!
Happy October!


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