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During my career, I had two rules.  First rule - nothing that slithers or crawls vertically or has scales , is totally hairless or lives in a terrarium.  Second rule - No dogs under one year of age. I figured if veterinarians could limit their practices, so could I. There's always someone who has more experience with exotics, livestock and the under trained or untrainable.  I had to maintain a pack leader mentality if dealing with dogs and a casual curiosity when caring for cats.  Rats, gerbils, hamsters and other rodents were fairly self contained-just toss in a few pellets and refill the water tube.  When the owners returned, they could put their diminutive critter in its exercise ball and let it roll.  Fish, especially if tropical, required daily water temp check and a few flakes of their relatives.

My appointment was with a dog owner. Just one dog?  Easy.  But she forgot to tell me that the rabbit hutch was inside the laundry room and two nasty tempered bunnies would also require care. It's
not uncommon for pet owners to entice the care giver with a deliberate omission of their reality.
Some are embarrassed, others just don't think to include the other pets in the hopes that the price
remained the same.  I always charged per day; never per animal.  But on a couple of jobs, I seriously
reconsidered my strategy!

I didn't know about rabbits.  I didn't know they could be wicked.  Being unfamiliar, put me at a disadvantage and I relied on the owner to fill me in on the details.  Bad decision.

Of course, each responded to their names when SHE called them.  Of course,THEY knew the schedule. It went something like this.  Open pen door, place bath towel over one, pick up the other and move to outside pen. Swaddle the first one and place her in secondary pen. Clean pen-remove hay and clean surfaces. Put soiled hay into debris dumpster in garage.  Change water. Go to kitchen, open sandwich baggies with pre cut veggies, put in clean cereal bowl. Take filled bowl to inside pen and get the bunnies back into the pen. These two were not the ones in the story books or in the pet store just before the Easter holiday. They were user unfriendly.  

On the second day, I developed red, watery eyes.  I developed labored breathing.  I called the owner.
She said, "oh you're probably ALLERGIC!  I should have asked you about allergies.  My daughter is also allergic to them." The conversation continued, "There are rubber gloves in the drawer there and you will need a warm air mask."

I don't remember what I said because I was busy rubbing my eyes and pulling kleenex from my purse.  On the way home, I stopped in the drug store and bought a carton of masks and a bottle
of over the counter NON drowsy allergy tabs.

The last few days, I finally thought I had the hang of it and felt some compassion for the blasted bunnies. The one dog didn't seem to mind sharing his home with them. Thankfully he wasn't a sporting breed.  That would have made me nervous.  As it was, I was already out of my comfort zone. Their dog got extra TLC from me and the owner got a bill with receipt from the drug store.

I am thankful for that job because my learning curve grew and added nasty tempered rabbits to my rather short list of acceptable animal companions. I had recent experience, valuable insight and could expand my service to include ONE specie of farm animal.

I was always learning something new. Pet sitting was nothing if not unpredictable.  My lesson this time was expect surprises and be sure to pack gloves, masks and NON drowsy allergy tabs.