If anyone feels I am being insulting, my apologies. It's just that "never, ever put a rabbit on its back, it's sooooo bad for it" is one of the things that I keep running into on rabbit threads, that as near as I can tell, have no science behind them. A common "reason" given for not doing it is because you'll frighten the rabbit to death, but the physiological response is not that of abject terror; quite the contrary. If, as one person on another thread said, they go through all kinds of contortions to trim their rabbit's claws so as to avoid putting their rabbit on its back, that's entirely their business, but telling people they are risking suffocating the animal, giving their rabbit a heart attack or at minimum traumatizing it to the point that it will never trust them is really going a bit far, don't you think? But this is the kind of thing I see, regularly. Some of what is being said are things that may be true for one species (horses, for example), but someone is saying it about rabbits, and it doesn't apply because the physiology is different. But still, it gets repeated, and repeated . . . in the case of one particular bit of misinformation, it's been going around for at least 10 years, and it's no more true today than it was when the first person made the mistake of applying a species-specific trait to a species that doesn't have it. But that hasn't stopped it - in fact, it has cropped up in discussions about several other species that don't have this trait, either.
So if I seem a bit cranky, it's because I feel like, "oh, no, not this again." Handle your animals in ways that make sense to you. I'm just saying that, having done this thousands of times over the decades with hundreds and hundreds of rabbits, and having seen countless people doing it with their rabbits at places like shows, I have never seen an animal injured or particularly traumatized by anyone correctly using this handling technique. It's commonly used because it works. I have often said, "if you hit me over the head with something often enough, eventually, I will notice it," but in all this time, I have never seen a rabbit exhibit anything that I could describe as either a physical or psychological injury from being turned on its back, nor have I seen anyone with genuine medical knowledge give a reason for avoiding it. Just because some blogger or forum member types it doesn't make it true, and I'm a bit tired of being accused of being cruel or at least unfeeling for doing this.
(Incidentally, I have bathed rabbits; a mature buck will spray, and it's impossible to keep the urine off him entirely, no matter what kind of housing you have. A rabbit with hutch staining won't score well at a show, so sometimes, needs must. Not a thing you want to do regularly, but it can be done safely. Spot cleaning is preferred, if you can)
So if I seem a bit cranky, it's because I feel like, "oh, no, not this again." Handle your animals in ways that make sense to you. I'm just saying that, having done this thousands of times over the decades with hundreds and hundreds of rabbits, and having seen countless people doing it with their rabbits at places like shows, I have never seen an animal injured or particularly traumatized by anyone correctly using this handling technique. It's commonly used because it works. I have often said, "if you hit me over the head with something often enough, eventually, I will notice it," but in all this time, I have never seen a rabbit exhibit anything that I could describe as either a physical or psychological injury from being turned on its back, nor have I seen anyone with genuine medical knowledge give a reason for avoiding it. Just because some blogger or forum member types it doesn't make it true, and I'm a bit tired of being accused of being cruel or at least unfeeling for doing this.
(Incidentally, I have bathed rabbits; a mature buck will spray, and it's impossible to keep the urine off him entirely, no matter what kind of housing you have. A rabbit with hutch staining won't score well at a show, so sometimes, needs must. Not a thing you want to do regularly, but it can be done safely. Spot cleaning is preferred, if you can)
