You should wait till the first hard frost before harvesting rabbits as the sick ones tend to die off during the freeze. And as with field dressing or handling any uncooked game animal meat, use latex gloves.
you could employ the same principles in dressing out a rabbit or squirrel as you do a deer.
the main difference in processing them will be the fact that you don't have to hang them from the rafters and they take less time.
the following has a little info that may not be pertinent to your geographic area, but is interesting anyway.
http://www.dfw.state.or.us/resources...huntrabbit.pdf