The Parker Report - January 3, 2016 - 15th Installment - Happy New Year!

This is "The Parker Report" for January 3, 2016

Happy New Year!Parker is now a permanent member of the Melton family!

Parker is now a year old (as of his "unofficial birthday" of December 1st) 
and we're happy to announce that Parker has been officially adopted by us and is
now a permanent member of our family.  (But I'm sure a lot of you saw this coming!)
We signed the papers with the Contra Costa Rabbit Rescue at the Pet Food Express store in Walnut Creek on Saturday, November 28, 2015, Thanksgiving weekend during their adoption event.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday season.  It's been a while since the last blog at Halloween.  We had a couple of health issues in the house, plus holidays and family stuff and a busy work schedule getting in the way of keeping up with my reports.

Because of my emergency room visit the weekend before Thanksgiving, it's made us curious about whether any research has been done on rabbits to see if they can sense illness in people (as dogs are trained to do with diabetics, people prone to seizures, etc.).  The reason I say this is because that morning I woke up and Parker was sitting at my side of the bed on the floor, where he stayed until I got up.  He usually chooses to go to Brad's side first.  After I got out of bed I felt worse and (without going into details) we decided it best to go to urgent care and they in turn sent me to the emergency room where I spent the rest of the day.  I'm glad to say I'm fine now, but it made me wonder whether Parker sensed something was not right with me and he wanted to stay with me.

Flash forward to last weekend; Brad ended up having a medical incident and Parker was very attentive to him this time.  We both decided after seeing this behavior in Parker that we would try to do some research to find out if Rabbits act the same as dogs when it comes to sensing illness in their guardians.  I'll let you know if I find out anything interesting.

Parker working on his art project 12-19-

Parker has also made great strides in being a free-range house rabbit.

We are now able to leave him un-caged and unsupervised during the day while we're away from the house and we've come home to no damage (so far).  It seems like the only time he gets into trouble is when he wants our attention  (i.e. chewing things he's not supposed to chew), or if we accidentally leave out a remote control or something rubbery to tempt him.  He especially loves the rubbery buttons on the remote controls.  

We still don't trust him 100% just yet so I didn't put up the Christmas tree this year.  

Parker being cute under the drapes 12-19-15

We have a 7-1/2 foot artificial pre-lit tree that we bought when we moved to this house since we have a tall ceiling in the living room.  When we had our other house rabbit (Harley) we put the exercise pen around the tree to keep him out and we didn't have any incident because Harley never tried to jump over the barrier.  Parker, however, is a jumper so I didn't want to test the waters this year, plus we were just too busy to put it out.  Maybe next year we'll try it because I really missed my tree.

Christmas eve day I cleaned up his pen area since we were having company on Christmas day and I decided to rearrange his "room".  Parker was always chewing the end of the pen facing our sofa, like he was trying to chew an opening on that side and I was always concerned he was going to hurt his teeth on the metal, so I gave him his Christmas wish by leaving that side of the pen open for him to run straight through from behind the love seat.  Now he has quick and easy access to his litterbox instead of having to go around to the opening on the other side of the pen. (Sometimes he goes through the cardboard box and then hops into the litter box.)  I folded back the sides of the pen so it's just "L" shaped now, but I can still close it if I need to pen him for any reason.  I think he loves the new spacious arrangement of his "room" now, plus the new freedom he has during the day.  So far no incidents ("knock on wood" as the saying goes).  I think he just sleeps most of the time.  Here's a picture of him in his new "open concept apartment".

Parker having breakfast in his new open living area on Christmas 2015

Christmas morning he got a woven wicker tunnel that he loves chewing from all angles (even inside), plus Santa Paws filled his stocking with new packages of chew sticks, "bunny biscuits" (compressed grass cubes) and a new slicker brush.

Parker checking out his new willow tunnel on Christmas 2015

Parker checking out the inside of his new willow tunnel on Christmas 2015

Usually Parker sleeps at his guard post at the top of the stairs just outside our bedroom door, but the latest thing he's been doing is jumping onto our bed in the middle of the night around 1:30 to 2:30 am.  We wouldn't mind it so much if he'd just lay there and sleep between us or at the foot of the bed since it's been a little chillier lately, but he bounces around a lot and only sits still for a few minutes before jumping off again.  A few nights ago he jumped up onto Brad's side and miscalculated his landing and hit the side of Brad's face. (Luckily, he didn't scratch him since his nails needed to be cut still.)  After Brad touched him, I guess he was startled because he jumped straight up about a foot or so into the air and landed onto the other side of Brad, where he proceeded to bounce around some more.

Parker's "hay day" in the pantry storage basket 11-02-15

Parker's also been eating more this past month, I guess putting on his "winter weight" or expending more energy to grow his winter coat.  Usually his large bag of Timothy Hay (they call it a "flake" at the feed store) lasts at least a month in the summer, but we've had to buy two bags in the past month because he's gone through it so fast.  Granted, we use it to top his two litter boxes where he eats most of it and he also has a small box in the pantry where he likes to munch, but still that's pretty fast.

Yesterday we took him to the Antioch PetSmart to visit the rabbit rescue ladies so he can have his overdue pedicure done.  For some reason he'll let them hold him without any squirming to get away, but when we try to hold him he fights us the entire time so we just take him to them to avoid the stress.  A whole pen just opened up right after we got there because the bunny in that pen went home with her new guardians after meeting the rabbit they already had.  After they left, we put him in the pen so Brooke could clip his nails.  Then we just stayed around until the end of their day and Parker was the adoption ambassador bunny while we educated curious people that stopped by the pen to talk.  It's amazing how many people there are that had pet rabbits in the past but actually had no clue as to how to properly feed and care for them.  I was shocked when I spoke to a woman yesterday and she said she had to clip her rabbits teeth because he didn't chew on stuff.  Then she mentioned that the rabbit only ate "people food" like bananas and bread and he only lived about three years.  It just saddens me so much to hear those stories.  I told her that with proper feeding and indoor care rabbits generally live to be 8-12 years old.  One guy came by the pen and said he had a rabbit that lived to the ripe old age of 17!  WOW!!!  I told him he must have been doing something right.  It like to hear that kind of story.

It's time for our yearly trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which we do every year for our business, but that means Parker has to have a sitter again.
Those of you who are keeping up on reading this blog know about what happened the last couple of times we left Parker.  Hopefully, now that he's a few months older and a "bit" more well behaved, things will go better this time since we're having the same sitter as last time.
As long as you pay attention to him when he's in the room he's fine.  It's when you ignore him - that's when he gets into mischief to get your attention, like a little kid.  We just make sure to close doors to rooms he's not supposed to enter and push in chairs at tables & desks so he doesn't jump up.  (I accidentally left my chair pushed out from the kitchen table a week ago and he hopped up there for the first time to our surprise.)
We'll hope for the best this time around.

Parker showing off his dark winter markings 12-19-15

A while back I showed "before & after" pictures of Parker with his dark ears & feet when we first got him, and then his white ears & feet in the summer. 

Now that it's winter and the temperature has dropped quite a bit his ears are very black and his feet and nose are darker.  (Last month he had the "urban camouflage" design on his ears.)  We generally keep the thermostat in the house set at 67-69 degrees in the winter.

Silly Parker standing in his kibble bowl 1-03-16

One last note before I go today...
According to Google, they made some changes to the way people can subscribe to the blog feed subscriptions.  Now, if you want to continue getting the automatic subscription to my blog you'll have to get a Google account and re-subscribe.  Here's a link to Google's post:
http://buzz.blogger.com/2015/12/an-update-on-google-friend-connect.html



Here's a video of Parker finding his bunny biscuit in the grass bag and taking his food "to go".  (He's also sporting the "urban camouflage" design on his ears before they turned totally dark.) 

I wish you all a happy, healthy, safe and prosperous new year!