About pets: Take precautions before giving rabbits the freedom to roam

If you are a rabbit owner or a potential owner who wants to allow your pet to have some freedom to roam, there are two issues you need to address - litter-box training and ensuring your apartment is a safe enough haven for the animal to explore.

"Urine training involves little more than putting a litter box where the rabbit chooses to go. Stool training requires only that you give them a place they know will not be invaded by others," he says.

All rabbits drop some stool around their cages to mark the territory as their own, he adds. So, it is important for the rabbit to identify the cage as its property, so that when it leaves to explore the wider world, it will be able to distinguish human areas from its own and will have no need to mark its space.

"To encourage this, make a rabbit the king of its cage by not forcing it to go out, and only do things [there] that you know it enjoys - do not do anything that is going to distress it," Essey says.

This feeling of ownership is key to getting the rabbit to keep its droppings inside the cage and, as an owner, you need to show the pet that you respect the fact that the cage is its domain.