Dante’s Story

For my first blog post, I decided it would be best to give everyone a proper introduction to the man who will be helping me with this blog; my rabbit, Dante!  Dante is about six years old and I believe he is a black Havana.  The reason I am unsure about these very basic facts is because I found him scared and alone in a goat pen.

It seemed one of the first questions asked when someone wanted to get to know you during those first few days of college was, “Can you tell me something interesting about yourself?”  To most people, the fact that I showed rabbits was interesting (if not downright weird).  When I brought it up, I always got a lot of follow up questions.  My closest friends continued to ask questions after the initial “get-to-know-you” time, so I thought it would be a good idea to take them to a nearby show to let them see what it was all about.

We took off on Saturday morning, driving about 3 hours to get to the show that was being held at the county’s fairgrounds.  We walked around the rabbit show for some time and then decided to walk around the rest of the fairgrounds.  While walking through the empty goat pens, something caught my attention and I turned to find a small rabbit, shaking and covered in dry clumps of mud.  Obviously a domestic rabbit, I decided to approach him and scoop him up.  Since the show was going on in the next building over, I figured he had gotten loose from his cage.  I picked him up and went back to the show building to try to find his owner.

I told the show superintendents what had happened and they made a series of announcements that went unanswered.  Finally, the superintendent told me, “Well, I guess you have yourself a rabbit!”  I was not prepared for this, especially since I wasn’t allowed to have a rabbit in the dorms.  We drove home, acquired a cage and kept Dante a secret until Fall Break, when I was able to take him home to a hutch in my parent’s backyard.  Now, after year of dorm and apartment living, I finally have a space in a backyard to put a hutch for Dante.  After all these years, I’m excited that the rabbit I rescued will finally be coming to live with me.