Owner Shocked After Golden Retriever Keeps Carrying Live Baby Bunnies Indoors
A dog carrying baby bunnies indoors may charm social media, but wildlife biologists view these incidents as high-stress emergencies. Cottontails are prone to capture myopathy, a systemic metabolic collapse caused by acute fear and exertion.
If your dog discovers a nest or carries a kit indoors, follow these baseline steps:
- Examine for Punctures: Check the kits closely. Even tiny surface punctures from canine teeth introduce Pasteurella multocida, a bacterium present in canine saliva that is universally fatal to small wild mammals within 24, 48 hours if left untreated with specialized antibiotics.
- Do Not Bottle-Feed: Never attempt to feed baby bunnies cow's milk, commercial puppy formula, or water through an eyedropper. Their digestive tracts are delicate, and aspiration pneumonia from improper dropper technique kills far more rescued kits than starvation does.
- Locate the Original Scrape: If the kits are uninjured and warm, attempt to return them to the yard. Search for the shallow depression of fur and dried grass. Place the babies back inside, cover them loosely with the original nest material, and arrange two pieces of string in an "X" pattern directly over the top.
- Monitor for the Doe: Check the string cross twenty-four hours later. If the string is displaced and the kits have rounded, taut bellies, the mother has returned to feed them under cover of darkness. Keep your dog leashed or contained on the other side of the yard until the kits disperse, which usually takes just three to four weeks from birth.
- Contact a Licensed Rehabilitator: If any kit is bleeding, cold, or clearly abandoned after thirty-six hours, place the animals in a dark, ventilated cardboard box lined with an old fleece cloth (avoid terrycloth towels, as their claws snag in loops) and transfer them to a state-licensed wildlife rehabilitator.
