Dog vs. Rabbit

       Our dog's name is Abby. My husband and I got her when we got our very first apartment together nine years ago. She's 50lbs of strange. We're not really sure what breeds she is a mix of, except we know that her mother was half lab. She's always been kind of skittish, and scared of pretty much everything. We're not really sure why. We picked her up as a puppy from her mother's house. They seemed like a nice enough family, and all the puppies looked happy and healthy. I don't think there was any abuse. When we first moved into our house, every time we put her outside she would wiggle her way under the back porch which only sits about a foot off the ground. On several occasions we had to dig her out when she got herself stuck. Now, she is pretty comfortable in the back yard, as long as she's on our side of the fence. We never have to worry about her running away. Once we left the gate open, and she went out to the front yard and then to the front porch where she sat and whined until we let her in. She hates car rides and is so terrified of the park, she gets diarrhea. Yea, she's a weird dog.

      Then there is Lulu the poop machine. No one told be how much rabbits poop. Hop hop poop, hop hop poop. All day long. The story behind her adoption is that I love to knit, and recently I learned how to spin my own yarn. I was looking on-line at raw fibers and The Big Kid saw how much angora sells for. His dad has rabbits, and they don't cost a whole lot to take care of. I could literally see the light bulb go off above his head and thus came Lulu. Of course I'm the one cleaning up after this poop machine. But hey, after two kids and the dog, what's a little more poop in my life? Also, she has to be brushed almost daily. I had to convince my husband to just get ONE rabbit. He wanted to get a male and female and start having little pooping babies right away.

     So Abby didn't respond well to the arrival of either of my kids. She was already an old dog when they came along. Don't know what made us think she's welcome another attention hog to the family, especially since we've been training her to chase the wild ones out of the back yard (we have a garden). She's been trying to eat THIS rabbit since we brought her home. The thing is, I don't think she'd actually eat her. She caught a cat once and once she grabbed it, she dropped it and didn't know what to do. (The cat was fine and lived to poop in my garden another day). At night we keep Lulu in her cage in Miss B's room, but during the day we move her into a play pen in the living room. I wouldn't keep any pet locked up by themselves in a cage all day. Well, now bunny is comfortable, and no longer afraid of the dog, and is quite the little escape artist. She has figured out how to escape the play pen. I'm not sure what to do about this. Right now I keep Abby locked in the kitchen, in case the bunny gets out, but I'm not sure what I'm going to do for a long term solution. Any suggestions?