Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Litter training

Today's weight: 1.42

We have been working hard to teach Poochie where to pee and poo.
I already have several kinds of litter boxes that we bought when we are training Buddy.

History of litter pans:
At first, We were using the regular Pet International Corner pan found at pet store.
Buddy is very good at litter training, but his butt is often stick out from the litter pan and we had to clean up his mistake all the time. It was just too shallow in front.
I bought the Marchioro 2c Nora Litter Pan online, since this has a plastic lid so that the rabbit can not stick his butt out.
The Nora litter pan has an attached roof enclosure, I thought he can not stick his butt out.
Unfortunately, the enclosure was too narrow and low that he could not even enter the litter pan.

But we did not want to give up. We cut out the plastic enclosure using Dremel to make the opening bigger. But it was still too small for Buddy and he did not want to go inside by himself, he was already 2lb 9oz.
So, we gave up and switched to a very large rectangular dish pan, which I found at Dollar Tree.
and, we created wire floor for litter pan using the green garden wire mesh.
It worked so well.

Now going back to Poochie,
When she come from the breeder, she pee and pooped everywhere. She liked corners, but it did not matter.
I found one corner she uses often and place a litter box.
We started with the the Marchioro 2c Nora Litter Pan without wire floor.
We put soiled newspaper in there and litter (Carefresh).
She likes to go inside and relax... and she peed the other corner.
We switched the corner couple of times, but she avoided the litter pan.
So, we put another small pan (found at dollar store) to the other corner, and finally she start using the small pan.


Two litter pans!



The bad news is, she uses both pans so we have two pans to clean up.
Also, the wall of the small pan is too low that it can not retain pee when Poochie goes against the wall
After a week, we replaced the small pan with a metal utensil holder which we used for putting frozen bottle.
Buddy used to lay by with this on hot days.

Now, Poochie does pee almost all time in the corner litter pan.
She is still leaving some poops outside but I think she can not help it.

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