Bunny Behaving Badly Around Husband

[Lettuce]

We have a 16 month old, neutered, fully litter trained free-range house rabbit who has been as good as gold since the day we rescued him over a year ago however recently his behaviour has been very unusual and we just don’t know what’s going on with him!

My husband has had to work away from home 6 days a week since May and has to live-in at his current job until he finishes in November, he comes home once a week every week to see us, stays the night and goes back to work the next morning. He has always had a great relationship with all of our pets especially our rabbit, MJ.

I also have a great relationship with our rabbit and as I work from home (and he is unable to live with other rabbits) we make great company for each other, he’s very quiet and doesn’t like to play much but he does like to be given attention and fussed over.

Anyway, the problems stated a couple of weeks ago. The day my husband comes home and the day he goes back to work MJ acts perfectly normally except for one thing – he wees everywhere! On the floor, on the furniture, on our bed, absolutely everywhere except his tray. Its not a little bit of wee either its full puddles of it. The wee looks normal and healthy and the day after my husband is back at work the behaviour stops and life goes on.

This is of course a big problem as for two days a week we are chasing around after MJ to clean up after him and having to constantly change the bedsheets. There is no possible way to keep him away from the bed and he doesn’t normally go on it unless he’s having one of these odd days.

So now I’m starting to wonder if its something to do with jealously or territorial issues, is that even something rabbits feel towards people? I would have thought it would just be towards other small animals. MJ gets just as much attention if not more when my husband is home but of course my husband gets a lot of attention too since its his only day at home and MJ has been known to get jealous over our cat in the past. I just don’t understand why this has started, my husband had been working this job for a couple of months before MJ decided to start being odd.

I don’t think its anything medical otherwise I would of course go straight to a vet, I just wish I could have some idea as to why this is happening. We’ve never had any experience with rabbits before MJ so stuff like this is all new to us.

So basically what I want to know is does anyone have any idea what could be causing this and is there anything we could try to make it stop or is it just a case of waiting until my husband finished this job in November and hoping that everything goes back to normal?

[Sarita]

It is possible that’s it’s just due to a change in routine since those days your husband is there I imagine it’s a bit of a change for him. It can be impossible to know exactly what he is thinking – I wish we could read their minds.

Is it possible that in the interim the days your husband comes back to confine him so that you don’t have to clean up everywhere?

I think too once your husband comes back full time – confine him again and slowly allow him more free range once he realizes that the new change in routine will be the new routine since he (your husband) is back.

[Author]

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