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Rabbit Haven wants you to love bunny rabbits … but not necessarily get one as a pet

Posted on April 15th, 2025 By: Carolyn Bick

Sunday’s sun found more than 150 people flocking over the course of the day to Rabbit Haven for the local rabbit rescue and rehabilitation nonprofit’s annual Spring Thing. Attendees got to visit rabbits both inside and out, create interesting snacks for themselves and for rabbits, and listen to live music.

But underneath the colorful, seemingly light day was an important educational event centered on rabbits and how to properly care for them.

Rabbit Haven founder and owner Sue Brennan said she held the annual educational event a week before Easter on purpose.

Megan Carpenter lets two rabbits sniff her fingers, during Rabbit Haven’s Spring Thing educational event in Gig Harbor on April 13, 2025. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

“Most people don’t purchase their pets until the end of the week right before Easter, or hide them and bring them in on Easter morning,” Brennan explained a few days before the April 13 event. “This is our attempt to gain a little bit more public recognition and educate the general public about the true needs of a house rabbit.”

Delicate rabbits

Many families still treat rabbits and chicks like toys, she said — fun little playthings for their kids. But they are living creatures, and need to be treated with the same care and love one would show a dog or a cat.

Rabbits, in particular, are very, very delicate, Brennan said. They can get sick or even die from too much shock or surprise, and because they are prey animals (unlike dogs and cats), they are extremely easy to injure and kill.

Unfortunately, most kids who receive rabbits from their parents don’t realize this. While the parents and kids usually intend no ill will, rabbits can still experience consequences from rough treatment or neglect.

Ali Mueller, center, points to a rabbit in a hutch, as her sister Samantha, center left, reacts. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

“They grab them by the back leg and drag them out from under the bed and they just snap their back leg,” Brennan said. “They pull them by the fur. I had one little bunny come in who lived for 13 days in my sweatshirt pouch, because I had to hand-feed fluids because she didn’t have enough skin left to keep [subcutaneous] fluids in. A kid pulled her out from under a bed and peeled her from her waist all the way down to her butt. And she was only 5 weeks old.”

Families also don’t understand that rabbits are social creatures, Brennan said, so “a solitary bunny and a hatch in the backyard is one of the saddest things you’ll see.”

Russell Wilson, a giant Flemish rabbit, tries to figure out what a “camera” is. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

“They are prey animals so everything that would terrify them, they’re trapped in a box being terrified by whether it’s the wind, the weather, the noise, coyotes, raccoons, dogs barking,” Brennan said.

Rabbit health

In addition to all of this, rabbits require specific nutrition to stay healthy. Most online resources will miss the finer points. She also said that most vets aren’t properly trained to handle rabbit health. Many either treat them like cats or dogs or they refuse to treat them at all, because they are so different from cats and dogs.

And even if you do find a vet who can treat rabbits, Brennan said, it’ll cost you a pretty penny — precisely because they are not cats or dogs, and are therefore considered exotic.

A Rabbit Haven volunteer gives Russell Wilson pets. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

“They do have special needs and their medical needs are specific,” she said. “For instance, they can have no form of oral penicillin. It kills off all the good bacteria in their gut and they die. So unless your vet knows rabbits they can do more harm than good.”

There’s also the hemorrhagic virus RHV2, also known as RHDV2, loose in the U.S. for rabbit owners to contend with. There is a vaccine, which Rabbit Haven’s preferred vet provides — but it’s also expensive.

Still, while the vaccine is expensive, a rabbit getting the disease is worse.

“It is just a hideous virus. There’s nothing you can do once they get it,” Brennan said. “They’re done — 12-24 hours, they’re gone and it’s a very very awful death. They bleed out. It’s like rat poison.”

After Easter … you’ll still have a rabbit

And even if families get through all those hurdles, the kids who wanted them in the first place can lose interest or get sidetracked by other things.

“And then the rabbit’s being neglected. They want to get rid of it,” Brennan said. “They want to dump it back here. It’s losing its family. It’s losing its home.”

A nine-month-old bunny sits in his hutch. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

Prices to surrender rabbits at animal shelters have also increased, she said, which makes people even more liable than they already were to simply dump them by the side of the road.

“We end up with these populations of older unwanted rabbits,” Brennan said. “We have a feral enclosure for the ones that have managed to live out in the wild for a while. What ends up happening is all those shelters are full, and there’s only four rabbit shelters in western Washington.”

Spring Thing attendees Wheatley and Chell (not their real names — they opted to give names from the video game “Portal”) use frosting to stick together their ho-ho and-peep concoctions. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

The moral of the story: Rabbits require just as much (if not more) care as dogs and cats, and just reading articles online about caring for a rabbit probably won’t cut it. Learning about rabbits and how to properly handle and care for them — especially in families with young children — is paramount, and it’s worth families’ time to visit rabbit shelters and rescues to learn hands-on what rabbit care is all about.

Rabbit Haven also has fundraising events throughout the year, and relies heavily on donations to keep up operations. Check out the organization’s Facebook page for upcoming events.

More bunny pictures

From left to right, Wheatley, Chell, GLaDOS (all character names from the video game “Portal”), and Angela Fisher — not a character from “Portal” — make ho-ho and-peep creations. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

Lucy, left, hands Lisa all the pink and purple plastic eggs she can find, as Zoe, right, digs for more. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.

Zoe, center, does her best to get straw to make a bunny snack toy, as sister Lucy, left, holds the one she made. Photo by Carolyn Bick. © Carolyn Bick.