#GivingTuesdayNow – Tuesday, May 5

House Rabbit Resource Network is participating in the first ever #GivingTuesdayNow day. Tuesday, May 5, is a day of generosity to help all those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the safety of our volunteers, adopters, and Bunny Boutique Store shoppers, we closed our store and shelter adoptions in an attempt to avoid exposure to the virus as much as possible. We’ve been operating on a very basic and essential level.

Thanks to our wonderful volunteers and Bunny Boutique shoppers, HRRN is doing better than a lot of other nonprofits out there, but we’ve still taken a big hit financially. We are participating in #GivingTuesdayNow to prepare ourselves for another impending virus coming our way: the RHDV2 virus. This highly contagious virus only affects wild and domestic rabbits, but it does so with devastating consequences. With housing anywhere from 150+ rabbits at any given time at our shelter, we are currently planning and implementing new shelter protocols to keep our shelter bunnies as safe as possible.

We are asking for donations this #GivingTuesdayNow to help us obtain two new quarantine/isolation cages for the shelter. These isolation cages will allow us to isolate incoming rabbits (especially strays) as we don’t know what they might have come into contact with. The rabbits would likely stay in these cages for up to a month, depending on their history. We are even considering building a separate intake area or building at the shelter as this is a highly transmissible disease and it’s essential to separate intakes physically from the shelter buns, store traffic, adoptions, etc – although once they are vaccinated they will be “safer”.

For those interested, these are two of the potential cages we are looking at – we would likely need something to completely contain the rabbit and their pee and poop (full front glass). These cages are not cheap -a 2 stack starts at $2500.
ISO-Care™ Quarantine Cages
Northgate Veterinary Supply – ISOCAGE – Portable Multi-Use Isolation Cage

Along with need donations for isolation cages, we are also creating a donation pool to help us cover the costs of getting all the shelter bunnies the RHDV2 vaccine once it becomes available in the U.S. Our friends over at White Rock Animal Hospital are actively working on getting the vaccine imported to the U.S. now. They’re working on getting multi-dose vials to vaccinate all the shelter buns, so stay tuned on that front!

GiveGab (hosts of Amplify Austin and GivingTuesday) are the ones hosting this #GivingTuesdayNow movement, so you can donate through our GiveGab page and help us win possible prizes during the giving day! Click the Donate Button below.