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.

The Parker Report - October 30, 2015 - 14th Installment - Happy Halloween!

This is "The Parker Report" for October 30, 2015

Happy Halloween!

This was Parker's first official photo shoot, taken of him in costume with orange and black striped cape during the monthly adoption event at the Brentwood Petco.
He got to be the first "victim" to get his picture taken before all the rest of the bunnies.

The funniest part was when they were trying to get a picture of a bunch of fluffy baby bunnies in one group.
The three white ones sat huddled together (probably scared stiff!) while the four black ones jumped around in every direction while the photographer kept re-grouping them back in line.

Parker also had another blind date, courtesy of DeAnna again.  This time it was "an older woman"; a 5-year-old lionhead named Princess.  

The Parker Report - October 7, 2015 - 13th Installment - - SPECIAL REPORT - "BAD BUNNY"

This is the Parker Report for October 7, 2015

I decided to do an early edition of "The Parker Report" today because I think this warranted special attention since Parker was being an especially naughty bunny early this morning (and possibly last night).

"I was framed I tell ya! 

It was some other bunny that looked just like me!"

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 Parker Report - September 5, 2015 - 11th Installment

This is the Parker Report for the week ending September 5, 2015

We just returned from taking Parker on an outing to Petsmart in Pittsburg to visit with the ladies and bunnies from the Contra Costa Rabbit Rescue.  The first Saturday of each month they go there for adoption day and public education about house rabbits from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm.  Parker was in desperate need of a pedicure and they were just the people to do it for us since Parker is very squirmy with us and we can't seem to hold him for very long before he slips loose from our grasp.  Luckily, Amber was successful in neatening up his sharp little claws.  He also got to meet a female Himalayan mix rabbit that had different markings.  Instead of a dark nose like Parker's, she had a white nose and grey markings on the front of her face around the bottom of her eyes.  Since it's been very warm lately and Himalayans dark markings turn lighter in the heat and then dark in the cold weather, both of them have white ears now.  Parker usually has grey markings across the base of his ears, but we just noticed this week that even they're almost faded out.  The girl bunny sat outside the X-pen while Parker sniffed her from inside the pen.  They were both nice to each other. 

The Parker Report - August 30, 2015 - 10th Installment

This is the Parker Report for the week ending August 30, 2015

Parker woke me up again twice this week by jumping on the bed...

once before 5:00 am as I was dreaming again.  He's also still having nocturnal activity.  He was doing speed runs downstairs in the living room at 1:30 am the other night.  I don't know what that was all about, but I wish he would act like a "normal" rabbit that sleeps at night.  He's just a party animal I guess.

He's still jumping up on fireplace hearth, but at least he comes down now when we tell him to.  We have a problem with peeling paint on the hearth.  It's from a bad paint job from the people who sold us the house.  The paint didn't bond well to the surface and they also used cheap paint that sticks to everything you place on top of it.  You can actually peel it it off in large pieces.  It's awful and we're planning on encasing it in decorative wood panels and put cushions on top for seating.  Parker jumped on the hearth Friday night and started chewing on the peeling paint on the center of the top so we had to get him off so he wouldn't get sick on the paint chips.  We were in the middle of watching a TV program about 9:00 pm and we ended up peeling off all the loose paint from most of the top surface (not a project we had planned on doing that day - especially that late) and then we covered the entire length with packing blankets.  I guess we'll be building our decorative encasement sooner than expected.

The Parker Report - August 23, 2015 - 9th Installment

This is the Parker Report for the week ending August 23, 2015

No word yet on the outcome of last week's free adoption event at the Martinez shelter.
Hopefully things went well for the bunnies.

This week has been interesting.  As I mentioned last time, Parker learned to jump up on the beds since we went on vacation.  This Thursday, just after I woke up around 6:00 am, all of a sudden there was a white bunny bounding up onto my chest!  I couldn't believe he did that!  We got him to sit nice (for a couple of minutes) until he got antsy and Brad ended up going downstairs to feed him.

Forward to 5:42 am Saturday morning...

The Parker Report - August 16, 2015 - 8th Installment

Here's the 8th Installment of "The Parker Report" – August 16, 2015:

This is what's been going on the past couple of weeks with Parker:

He now has a thing about bathrooms. He goes behind the sink in the downstairs half-bath and lays there sometimes. (Probably because it's dark and the cold tile feels good on a hot day.) I walked in and caught him with the toilet paper unrolled a few feet onto the floor one day so now I make sure there isn't a “tail” hanging down that he can grab. I also try to make sure the toilet lids are down. We don't need a curious bunny hopping up and falling into the toilet.

The Parker Report - August 1, 2015 - 7th Installment

Here's the 7th installment of "The Parker Report" – August 1, 2015:

We're back from our 4-day Las Vegas vacation for Brad's birthday the end of July.

We had a great time and got to see three shows.  We had our long-time friend Denise from Concord (one of our two bunny sitters we used with Harley) watch Parker for us while we were gone.  Things didn't go as smoothly as we had hoped though.

The Parker Report - July 23, 2015 - 6th Installment

The Parker Report – July 23, 2015 - 6^th Installment

This report covers about two weeks of Parker's activity up to July 23, 2015:

July 14, 2015 – We had to do a job for a client in Napa and she offered to let us bring Parker, so he spent the day with us at her house. We set up his X-pen on a packing blanket in her family room. He had all his comforts of home: His litter box filled with grass, water bowl, grass bag “piňata”, sleeping box and toilet paper tube to chew on. Our client has a small dog so we were a bit concerned about how they would react with each other, but Parker pretty much ignored the dog as the dog stared at him from the outside of his pen. The dog was very good and didn't bark at Parker – he was just curious. Parker was a very good boy too and didn't try to get out of his pen. As long as he knew we were close by he was OK because we would check on him as we walked past to other parts of the house. It's a good thing we had such a nice client that let us bring him because we didn't get home until about 8:00 pm that night, which would have been much too long to leave him by himself at home. We just fed him his dinner before we left the client's house.

The next couple of days Parker was full of mischief:

The Parker Report - July 5, 2015 - 5th Installment

Here's the 5th installment of The Parker Report – July 5, 2015:

I hope everyone had a safe 4th.  Parker took a couple of days to get back in the swing of things after we got back from vacation. He forgot all about doing "kisses & nuzzles" with Brad for about two days.  Brad was a little concerned, but then Parker bounced back.

DeAnna from Contra Costa Rabbit Rescut watched Parker at her house for us so we could get away.  We really needed that and had a lot of fun at Sea World on our anniversary, although the long drive was tiring; especially the two hours just to get through L.A.

In the past week he's started sleeping in our bedroom at night.  He usually starts out downstairs when we first go to bed and later in the night he comes up and usually sleeps in the corner on my side, either under my chair or next to the wall so he can see me.  Then he gets us up between 5 & 5:30 am when he starts zipping around the room.

It's a good thing that he started sleeping upstairs because last night was pretty bad with the idiots shooting off their illegal fireworks until after 12:30 am.

The Parker Report - June 17, 2015 - 4th Installment

June 17, 2015 - 4^th Installment of The Parker Report

Here's the latest on Parker.  I would have written sooner, but it's been a busy week and I needed to sit down and get the photos off my Nook and Brad's phone and upload them to my Google Photo page.  I just uploaded 8 new pictures with Parker.  Brad finally got one of me in the picture.  I'm always the one taking them and I told Brad that I was disappointed that I didn't have any pictures of me with Harley when we had him, so Brad said the next time he would try to take more pictures of me with the next rabbit we had.

OK, this is what he's been up to lately...

The Parker Report - June 5, 2015 - 3rd Installment

June 5, 2015 - Here's the 3rd Installment of The Parker Report and what Parker's been up to this week...

He's been a busy boy.  Earlier in the week I gave him a small empty oatmeal container to play with. He had fun chewing it and tossing it around.  The funniest thing to watch was when he tried to hop and carry it in his mouth at the same time.  It was a little too long and he kept tripping on it.  He finally gave up trying to carry it across the room.

The Parker Report – May 28, 2015 - 2nd Installment

Here's the 2nd Installment of the Parker Report - May 28, 2015:

Parker is doing very well with his litter box use (no droppings on the carpet).

He's eating his grass and greens well, along with about 1/4 cup of kibble per day and likes to get the grass out of the toilet paper tube (bunny Kong toy).

I also made him a grass bag and cut holes in it. I got it started for him by tearing it a bit more and he finally got the hang of what to do with it today. 

The Parker Report - May 24, 2015 - First Installment

Here's the first Installment of "The Parker Report" - May 24, 2015:

Parker has been doing well since Friday night. (His first night with us – he was brought to us a day after his neuter operation and delivered by DeAnna from Contra Costa Rabbit Rescue. 

He's had no trouble adapting to his X-pen (AKA "The Parker Pad") and didn't complain when we put him to bed Friday night after his fun evening of exploring and binkying all over the place.  (For those that don't know what a "binky" is, its when a rabbit is so happy that he's doing silly hops and mid-air twists as he runs, kind of like a person kicking their heels together in the air.)