I got Nyx when she was a baby. I think she was born sometime in February-March of 2011, and I got her in late April of that same year. I played with her and gave her all the attention I could, and for awhile it seemed like she was going to warm up to me. Unfortunately, there came a stretch of weeks in late May after I got her that took me away from her. My boyfriend’s brother was in a car accident, and I spent a week with him being his moral support. His brother died shortly afterward, and I spent another week being moral support. Nyx had to be taken care of by my busy mother. She didn’t get as much attention during that time as she had been getting, and when I was finally able to come back home and stay, she was wary of me again.
It’s been almost two years, and not much has improved. :c Granted, I think she must like me at least a little, because I am the only human being that she will allow to pet her, pick her up, or feed her. I say “allow” because she does not enjoy any of those activities in the slightest, but she lets me do them without biting my fingers off. She doesn’t like to be held at all, but she’ll let me pick her up and put her in her “play pen” every day, and she’ll sometimes let me pet her between the ears or on the nose. Otherwise, she fights me. She’ll struggle if I try to put her on her back to check her teeth or claws or ears, and her breed is supposed to be fairly docile about that (according to Wikipedia anyway; the picture on the right looks almost exactly like her). She’s bitten me hard enough to draw blood most of the times I’ve had to do that, and she WILL NOT allow herself to be brushed under any circumstances. That last one is rough, because she’s fluffy and sheds quite a bit, and her fluff can get matted around her belly and bottom. I am constantly vacuuming up loose bunny fluff.
I know that getting her fixed will solve some of her attitude problems, but I’m almost afraid to take her to the vet now, because she hates everyone who isn’t me. She attacks anyone else who tries to feed her or give her treats, biting and clawing at their hands. I like to joke that she’s my guard rabbit, but in all honesty, I’m afraid that if I take her to the vet and give her over to a stranger, she’ll be so freaked out that she’ll have a heart attack or something. (That, or she’ll bite the vet’s face off.) I am quite literally the only human being that she will tolerate. I’m also in kind of dire financial straits right now, and have been since a few months after I got her (she was too little to get fixed then, and my parents both lost their jobs and needed help with bills and stuff afterward).
If anyone had any advice on how to bond with her, I’d really appreciate it. I feel awful that I’ve not been able to get her fixed, and I still feel awful that she was so alone during her “formative weeks,” but that part was nothing that I could help. She was my best friend while I lived away from home, and she still is. I’ve tried every way I know how to make friends with her and give her a nonthreatening environment now that I’ve had to move back (the dog is confined to the front part of the house, and both my parents know to come into my room as quietly as possible) but she still seems to regard me as a potentially dangerous provider of foodstuffs. I’m not rough with her, I don’t move quickly around her, and whenever I can be I am down on her level. I try to keep sudden, loud noises to a minimum. I talk to her quietly and I rarely snap at her unless she’s being bad. I just feel like I’m doing SOMETHING wrong, but I can’t figure out what it is. :c