peeing on couch

Question
Male minilop 7 months old.

Had him since 8 weeks old.

At 6 months he began spraying and pissing and pooping on couch.
at 6 1/2 weeks he got neutered.

After three weeks neutered, he is still messing the couch and he is impossible to monitor.

How can I stop his peeing on the couch so I do not have to put him in a cage.

I want a free range rabbit.

LOL
Carol

Answer
His hormones are just starting to calm down now. But the main problem is probably just his habit. Lots of rabbits like to pee on something soft.

Time for intensive litter training, now that he's neutered. I would suggest getting a cage or crate so that he has an area that is his "house." Rabbits naturally establish a home base so it's fine to build on that instinct with a cage. You'll have a litterbox in the cage and start with several outside the cage.

Ideally, the cage would be on the floor somewhere so that you could have the door open much of the time and he could come and go freely. But it would also give you a place to give him "time out" if he's being incorrigible or you need to leave the house and he's not "trustable" yet.

Litter training the average rabbit is like paper training a dog more than it is like litter training a cat. Using a litterbox is highly instinctual for a cat; for a rabbit, they have some instinct to confine their excretions to a particular area, but that instinct is more pronounced in some than others.

There's a huge FAQ at http://rabbit.org/faq/sections/litter.html that discusses most all aspects of the training process.

One thing I don't think it mentions is a technique for training a rabbit to stay off a particular piece of furniture they've decided to make a toilet. It's a pain in the butt for a while but many people find that it works. Get plastic sheeting (not thin like garbage bags, but thicker stuff like a dropcloth) or an old vinyl shower curtain and drape over the couch. When he jumps up on it, he will probably not care for the crackly plastic feel of it rather than the soft fabric he likes. And if he does pee it protects the couch. The idea is you leave this on the couch whenever he is out for a few weeks and he gradually loses interest in the couch, and you can take it off. Some people add aluminum foil for that extra touch of crackly uncomfortableness. This is not guaranteed to work but it's worth a shot.

Good luck. I'm glad your goal is to have a free ranger. He may achieve that goal, but even if he ends up a 75% free ranger he'll have a great life!

Gina