If you have been in the rabbit world long enough, you might have come across many terms, statements, comments, idioms and quotes used in all sorts of situations. Some of these statements hold more meanings than they literally do. In this post, I hope to help explain and decipher what all these terms mean. A word of caution, I am no urban dictionary and what I write in this post is for entertainment sake so please do not take it too seriously.
Cute
This is the word most widely used by breeders to comment on pictures of rabbits owned by another breeder. It is a very polite way of saying, “I am so not into this one”. In other words, it could mean that the bunny in question is not good enough. On a better note, if it is a very young rabbit, this word means exactly what it means. Every 4 weeks old bunny is cute right?
Potential/Promising
Please take this ugly thing out of my barn! These two words are related to “I will not sell what I don’t intend to keep”. There are two sides to these two words. Some inexperienced breeders are unable to evaluate younger stock and have no patience to grow out the juniors that they have at a particular point of time. I am sure most of us have heard or read about the story of Ugly Duckling. Some young rabbits will bloom into very beautiful adults if given the time and good care. Not all breeders use these terms loosely, some really mean what they say and those that they are offering for sale are in fact very beautiful promising and potential show stoppers. I believe it matters who you are dealing with.
I will not sell what I don’t intend keep
I find this statement rather interesting. I believe the question that should follow when this statement is used plainly should be, “Then why aren’t you keeping it?”. I would rather complete the sentence by saying, “I do not sell anything that I do not intend to keep, but the fact is that I have too many beautiful rabbits with limited cages so I have decided to part with this one to make more space”. The crude me would rather say, “I do not sell anything I do not intend to keep, but the fact is, I won’t keep it and I hope you will make something good out of it”. Oh give me a break!
If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything
When I have nothing good to say, I say it ANYWAY! I don’t give a sh*t how your delicate mushy little heart feels! I am brutally honest and every word that comes from my mouth draws blood. That’s how cruel I am. ROFL! It is true that it is a small world and in the bunny world, there are many taboos and discussion of one’s rabbit is liken to discussing religion in certain countries (everything is sensitive). So in order not to offend anyone’s feelings, it is best to keep words like “your rabbit is fugly” to yourself! Even if your “most honest” opinion is being sought after, please refrain from saying anything bad because rabbit people can be very brutal!
We have a very good representation of the breed but…
This is something we might have heard during shows and it simply means that the rabbits are still not good enough in the opinion of the judge. You do not have to agree and clear out your entire herd because another judge may come along and say the same thing about your new herd of rabbits.
So as you can see, there are many representations or interpretations as to the vast amount of words in the rabbit world. We humans are far more complicated than rabbits. When a rabbit performs a binky, it literally means it is happy. But when someone smile at you, there might be thousands of curse words going through his or her mind at that exact moment. It really depends on how you carefully craft your sentence and ask the right questions.
How I would like to say it differently? Being the honest (broke) bloke I am, I usually tell people my most honest opinion of my rabbits and that they (buyers) should understand that nice rabbits are very difficult to come by. If they are breeders, they should know that there are substantial work to be done to obtain a “show stopper”. No “regular” breeder should expect to have a perfect rabbit handed over to them on a silver platter (unless you have a lot of cash to burn). But in actual fact, I have been given very beautiful rabbits to begin with by extremely generous people and I try my best to do the same with breeders with good intentions.
If only dealing with people is as easy and innocent as dealing with rabbits, the world will be a better place…
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