Talk:Cleaning after your rabbit

Hey fellow rabbit companions/parents (or slaves depending on the day), I wanted to share my recent vacuum experience. After over 20 years of having bunnies in my life, I finally found a vacuum that 'does it all' for me and does it well. I had been using a hepa-filtered, bagged shop-vac design vacuum called the Big Vac available at thecleanteam.com. It had the power and benefits of a shop vac plus filtration and disposable bags so less dust. It still wasn't perfect as the carpet head was a typical design that pushes hay and poops around, and it wasn't motor driven which on the plus side made it easy to remove to pick up those missed poops. This was the solution that worked for many years and remained through both Dyson and Kirby trials. However, about a year ago my spouse and I added a regular hair bun breed to bond with our current rex who had lost her partner and discovered why pet fur is such a topic for vacuum sales. Rex bunnies shed but they can't shed as much as a regular breed or they would be bald. This new adorable and happy addition would leave hair smears on the carpet that the Big Vac wasn't getting up without extra effort driving me back to searching for a vacuum. I found it in the Shark Apex DuoClean Powered Lift-Away Model #AX952. The soft brush at the front pushes hay, poop and other large pieces right into the strong suction path. It picks up the hair smear off the rugs with a normal pass or two and comes with a cleverly designed motorized brush to get that hair off of pillows, upholstery and stairs. The design is such that this motorized brush becomes cylindrical and clips into place on the machine so it doesn't fall off easily and there's one more storage location for a tool - like the crevice tool. It's easy to click out the handle or full length wand and use it to get into corners. Plus when in this mode there's a LED light that shines down the wand so you can see in those dark corners. Speaking of maneuvering, the motor lifts off making the motorized head fit under my sofa and chairs as well as between the bar stool legs. The other feature this has that the other duoclean model doesn't is that the motor turns off when it's clicked into upright position to prevent motor strain and carpet burns. It has 3 power levels that switch on the handle by your thumb and the power switch that let you go from carpet to hard floors without changing configuration. It has worked well on our stone tile, low carpets and deeper plush wool rugs including transitioning onto and off of throw rugs. It doesn't permit you to control the suction level for delicate jobs but the drapery tool worked to get the hair smears off of the cotton twill curtains without issue. I've found that the allergen dusting tool required too much precision in placement to be useful. I've clogged it only once by sucking up the remnant of a pine cone chew. That took some time to get out of the handle bend. I've yet to clog it with hay....and my two little ones push a lot of hay out of their cement mixing tub litter box. The bin is easy to empty from both the bottom and top if the hay builds up there. I had to do this loads of times during the first use as it was making up for past failures. I have had to clean out the brush head (the cover removes easily) and the comb for the front fluffy roll as well but both are easily done. Overall I'm thrilled with it and felt like a salesman when I took it to help a cousin clean an empty apartment when they moved out and had lots of folks asking me about it.