Exercise run for obese Dwarf Hotot rabbit

Your vet has put your Dwarf Hotot on an exercise programme — that's actually one of the best things you can do for an overweight rabbit, and Dwarf Hotots in particular tend to pile on weight if they're confined to a small hutch. Before I point you toward the right run, a couple of quick questions: is your rabbit kept indoors or outdoors, and roughly how much floor space do you have to work with? Even a ballpark — 'small garden', 'living room corner', that kind of thing — helps a lot.

Perfect — 2m x 1.5m is a solid footprint for one rabbit, and indoors is ideal because you can control her exercise sessions without weather getting in the way. For a vet-directed weight loss plan, you want a run she can genuinely move in: enough room to do three or four full hops, change direction, and pick up a bit of speed. What's her current setup like — is she in a hutch right now, or free-roaming with a pen?

Your vet is right, and that's a common problem — rabbits given open space with no structure often just pick a spot and stay there. What you need is a defined run that encourages movement, ideally one you can reconfigure to keep things interesting. I'd recommend the Runaround rabbit run system. It's a modular, interlocking panel run designed specifically for indoor use, with smooth edges so there's no snagging, and you can change the layout — a straight tunnel one day, a wider open square the next — which nudges rabbits to actually explore rather than park themselves. For a Dwarf Hotot doing supervised exercise sessions, the starter set gives you roughly 2m of usable run space, and you can add extension packs as she gets fitter. It sits flat on hard floors without needing pegging, so it's genuinely living-room friendly.

Start with two 20-minute sessions a day and build up over two to three weeks — your vet may have given you specific targets, so follow those over anything I say. To get her moving inside the run, scatter a small amount of her daily hay ration at different points so she has to hop between piles to eat it — that alone makes a big difference. A tunnel or cardboard tube at one end gives her somewhere to aim for. Avoid treat-based motivation if she's on a weight loss plan; the hay scatter is much better because it's part of her normal diet, not extra calories.

Search for 'Runaround rabbit run starter set' on Amazon UK — it's sold by Runaround Ltd and the starter pack is usually listed as the 'base unit'. It comes in a few colour options but the structure is the same across all of them. Given your 2m x 1.5m space, the starter set fits comfortably and leaves room for you to add one extension pack later when she's ready for more distance. Check the listing for the indoor floor mat add-on too — it gives better grip on laminate or wood floors, which matters for a rabbit who isn't very active yet and may be a bit unsteady building up fitness.