Scared/Shy Bun

[DK]

Lately I’ve been feeling that Louie doesn’t like to interact with me at all unless its for food or water. He loves to be a lone rabbit and I’m scared that it might affect him if he gets too lonely or depressed. I am around him all day but he never seems like he wants to come up to me first. Whenever I try to go near him, he hops away like he’s scared of me. I rescued Louie around the end of October and I always think that maybe because he was rescued he still isn’t used to human interaction without being scared. 

He has free range of my apartment living room and makes his own little nest under one of my dining chairs where I can see him. It’s impossible to get him into the cage so I just let the whole living room be his “castle”. Is this a bad thing to do? 

How to I help him become more used to me and petting him without running away? 

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Rupert was ridiculously sketchy, spooky and opposed to human contact when I adopted him. If anyone came over, he was gone-didn’t even know where he was hiding.

In terms of tips
*patience
*be the bearer of all things good (food, out time etc)
*don’t force it, or handle him too much
*salad plates on the ground right by you-if he wants the food, he has to be near you (this will make him associate you with food, being full, awesome smells, crunchy veggies-all good things)
*sit on the floor and do your thing, restrict him only to one room with you if you can-i.e. go in a room with him, sit and read or whatever, and he can’t leave so he’ll become bored, and check you out.

Good luck! I’m sure he’ll come around-Rupert did

[manic_muncher]

I’ll add, divide up his daily portion of pellets, take half of those and hand feed them. Really reinforces that, I used to do that with my Bumpy and steal a few pets in them too. He sometimes still comes up to me looking for pellets, even though I stopped doing that ages ago. I will add though, none of my buns are super excited about pets, if food is involved we move to tolerating them.

[ChesnutKC]

Is he all alone? My friend’s bunny was the same way, she huddled up in terror whenever we went over to pet her and never came hear us. So I got a bunny of my own named March. March was a very excitable, curious, loving bunny and we bonded them. Now, because her friend is very outgoing and friendly she’s slowly adapting to being more friendly as well. It’s slow process but no we can hold her without her freaking out and kicking. Maybe your bunny just needs a fellow bunny friend.

[Author]

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