This is competitive rabbit hopping, where rabbits attached to leads jump barriers
in quick succession with the goal of hopping to the top of the podium.
We're here because we're doing a competition where we're getting the rabbits to jump over jumps.
It's pretty similar to horse jumping, show jumping, in that the rabbits need
to jump over rails. Not as high as the horses, of course.
I was involved in showing rabbits. I'm still am. And a couple of people went
'oh, look at this rabbit hopping' and we looked it up and sort of stuff in
Denmark and we went, 'that sounds interesting'. So we did some research and started doing it.
We have two types of courses. We have a straight course or you
can have, much like the horse jumping where it's all in a pattern, so crooked
course. We also do high jump and long jump.
Eight rabbits here today. Some were in mini, some where in easy and I've got Spunky
here in medium. I got some that are a bit slow to start. They might pick up
later and sometimes they just won't hop and you can't make them if they don't
wanna go. Most of them do. They fascinate me every day with their behavior and
their individual personality they've all got something special about them.
This is Spunky. He was actually from a pet shop in my early days of rabbits. He jumped
out of the cage and picked me in the pet shop. Leapt into my arms licked me and
fell asleep, when all the other bunnies ran away.
It's good bonding, good exercise, it's also a mental stimulation for the rabbit.
It makes them think and they seem to enjoy it. Because a lot of people say,
'well, how do you know the enjoy it?' If they don't hop and they just sit there
and won't move. They obviously don't want to do it. We don't make them do it.
It's purely, they hop if they want to.
I was originally looking up how to care
for a rabbit, because it was my very first one. And it was just something that
I randomly stumbled across and I saw that they were in Sydney and that's not
that far and I just went down and checked it out one day.
I went looking for a hopping rabbit and I happen to be on the RSPCA website and I came across a
couple of rabbits at Katoomba. So I was a little crazy and decided to take
some jumps up. I wanted to see which one would hop better and the first one I
tried didn't hop very well and the second one there like, 'are you sure? He's not
a very nice rabbit.' I'm like 'that's fine. I only want him for jumping.
He ' doesn't need to be super cuddly.' And I tried him and he did it really well
and so I took him and now after all this time he's pretty cuddly. We've just moved
from mini, which is beginner, and we've gone from easy, and now we're in medium .
So if we keep winning at that we'll move up to difficult.
So the weather up here is really perfect for rabbits. They don't do well in hot
weather. We can hop for a little bit longer up here and we can
extend our season if everyone's happy to do it.
It's fun and it's a little bit cute and I just really enjoy it. It's a really
great day out. Yeah, I think these people are great.
You have to do things for
yourself sometimes just to make yourself happy and have a bit of escape.
It's something that's mine and I can come outside of my work life or my family
life and just do it for me and I think it's really great.