Our love for our pet and dealing with grief over his death.

This month, our beloved rabbit of almost ten years JR passed away. It was sudden and we miss him so much. We found him in the street of our old house, about 9 years ago. When he and my daughter met, JR was just a baby of about 6 months old and Ashley was barely 3 years old. We were pretty sure that he was someone's pet and they dumped him because they did not want to take care of him. It was instant love at first sight and we kept him as our bun bun and family member and we have loved him dearly for 10 years. The day of his passing, he was eating good and was happy to get his kisses and love from Ashley. She fed him in the morning and later that day he was gone. Even though he was old and it was expected, his death was rather sudden and came out of nowhere. :( It has been a difficult road for both of my kids because they both have been grieving and the mood has been really somber around the house. My heart has ached and has been broken from him passing "The Rainbow Bridge." When he passed away both of our kids were hysterical and it was all that I could do to keep my strength together. Ryan, my husband was out doing some Christmas shopping so I was in charge of what needed to be done until Ryan could meet us at the clinic. I wrapped JR in Roman's, (our 6 year old son's) old robot blanket and me and the kids drove his little body to The Pet Care clinic down the street from our home. Ashley was so brave and held him in her lap on the way to the clinic. This passing away of one of our pet's was new to our kid's so we followed Ashley's lead in what she wanted to do with losing our JR. Ash spent lots of time with JR in the room before giving him over to the Pet Care Clinic for him to get cremated. We picked a pretty box for him and they made an impression of his paw prints for our kids to cherish. It has been a difficult road for both of our kids and their grief over the loss of our sweet JR. Our son Roman has had a lot of days crying and Ashley was sleeping religiously with JR's blanket. This was the first pet that they both lost and we were dreading the day that this would happen. We have been trying to find ways to help their grief by memorials and talking about JR and the funny bunny things he used to do. We have also encouraged the kids to talk about him, cry about him, and snuggle his blanket when needed. It has really seemed to help a lot with both of the kids.

JR, RIP our sweet boy.


JR as a baby.

JR balancing a tiny book on his head.


JR with me while on the computer on our bed.


JR hanging on our bed. One of his favorite things to do was hang out on the bed and snuggle with me or Ashley. I love this picture of JR.



To help with our daughter's grief (she is our eldest and fed him/took care of him daily), we also decided to call The Humane Society to see if we could donate JR's new bag of treats and bag of hay to them. It was a new bag of treats that we had purchased for JR for Christmas. Sadly he passed before Christmas which made Ashley really sad. JR loved dried Banana Chips. They were his favorite. :) When we called The Humane Society to donate his treats, they said that they had one lonely bunny there. I asked a few questions about the rabbit and they told me that she was a Lop. I kind of knew that we were not going to just donate treats and had a feeling that we would be bringing home a bunny to add to our family. When we got there, we saw her and fell in love. She was under a year of age and surrendered because the previous couple was getting divorced and they had "Lily" and her brother. The bunny's brother was just adopted the week before and it was just her left all by her lonesome. She seemed so sad being there and was there for 20 days and had spent the last week all by her lonesome. Long story short, we all fell in love and now our new addition. Her name is Lily, and she is living in our home, being extremely loved and spoiled. She is not quite sure what to make of her new situation though. She has 4 people snuggling her, feeding her goodies and a crazy dog that likes to give her love and kisses. Please meet our Lily. She will never replace JR, but we welcome her into our family with open arms. We have lots of love to give her and look forward to many new memories with her! Oh and she loves that bag of Banana Chips...:) Not only the bag of chips came home. It is funny that we went to donate food and instead we get this awesome bunny that we named Lily and were able to rescue her and give her a new home. I would say that is a very good thing.


One more of Lily. My daughter named her Lily Ann. Isn't she the prettiest little thing? She is less than a year old. She is not so sure what to make of all the love we have all been giving her. We told her to get used to it though!



We will always miss JR, but we are slowly becoming happy again as a family from the loss of our beloved JR. JR is always in our hearts and our memories. He gave us almost 10 wonderful loving years with him! I think he would be happy to know that we are loving another bunny and gave Lily a wonderful new home. She is no longer stuck in at The Humane Society, waiting to get adopted. She is now with us! We are very lucky to have silly Lily around. :)


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