The Adventures of Puck and Harry

[Kyrkogrimr]

So, recently we adopted Harry with the hope of bonding him with Puck. Obviously, this is our first time bonding, so I’ll probably have lots of inane questions, but I’ll try to find as much by myself as possible

 

Puck is a black mini lop, a year old, and Harry is… well, we don’t really know. All we know is that he’s a boy and he’s old enough to have been neutered a couple of weeks ago. He’d only just started spraying when we adopted him, so we think maybe he’d just reached maturity, but that can vary in age from one bunny to the next. (If anyone can guess at Harry’s breed, I’d be delighted to hear it)

So, with a view to easing them into the idea of that other guy maybe not being the devil, we’ve started doing dinner dates twice a day (one with pellets and one with salad) which is generally both boys with their faces stuffed in their bowls attempting to inhale their food, and in most cases, no growling or thumping. There has been one occasion where both of them refused to eat at their bowls and took their salad out of the bowl and moved to the middle of their respective pens to eat it a piece at a time, and one where Harry was fine, but Puck was doing the moving his salad one piece at a time so he didn’t have to sit next to the stinky new guy (who incidentally doesn’t stink )

We’ve also started switching them between cages each morning and I’ve noticed that although Puck doesn’t really care, Harry thumps and growls when he’s put into “Puck’s” crate, but is fine with being put back in “his”. After he’s been their for a bit he settles down, flops happily enough, though he seems more agitated when he’s allowed out into the pen than when they have to be shut into the crates – however briefly that might be. We can’t leave Harry unsupervised in his pen because – although he hasn’t done it since he first arrived – we did have an oopsie moment where I walked in after making a cup of tea and found Harry had climbed out of his pen and was sniffing noses with Puck. Obviously we know that we were very lucky nothing bad happened there, so we watch them like hawks now.

So, a couple of questions:

1) Should we be swapping crates every day? Or every few days?

2) Is there any other pre-bonding we could be doing while we wait for hormones to die down?

3) Harry is a very thumpy rabbit. Is it possible that we’re mistaking some other things for thumps? Like he often thumps immediately before he does zoomies around the pen, or thumps and binkies. I think sometimes he’s just a bit heavy-footed too, like when he jumps on/off/over something.

4) How long should we wait before we try to put them face-to-face? He’s not spraying anymore, which was pretty much the only hormonal behaviour he was displaying. Obviously I know he’s probably not “over it” already, but honestly, I don’t think he’s even had a hormonal surge at all. Puck spent a few days thinking that every square millimeter of the carpet needed soaking in pee, and Theo went from being amorous to trying to kill us Do some bunnies just not have a hormonal surge? Or has it just not happened yet?

5) Harry is most prone to thumping and/or growling when we first let him out into his pen – does that mean that when we want to put them face to face we should let him (or them) out to play for a bit first? I don’t want to put him in a confined space with Puck if he’s in a foul mood x_x

6) If/when we have to use stress-bonding, is it pointless to use things that only really bother one of the rabbits? Harry runs and hides from the hoover and won’t come out for anything less than raisins for at least ten minutes afterwards, where as Puck doesn’t really seem to care. Puck’s not overly fond of car rides, but he’s not as bothered by them as Harry is. Would those things not work for either of them then? Or would it only work if Harry is the one causing trouble?

 

I think that’s everything…

[Kyrkogrimr]

So, we introduced the boys yesterday, and it seemed to go well. There were several times where they were huddled together (the bath is a scary place, apparently) and a lot of “Groom me!” “No, you groom me!” “You first!” “No, you!” etc, and a lot of mounting from Harry, which Puck seemed to accept well enough, though eventually he seemed to get a bit fed up with it, so we tried to distract Harry, and did the smoosh with them a few times.
I read that we shouldn’t let Harry mount Puck indefinitely and should interrupt after a few seconds so that Puck doesn’t get fed up, but when we did that, it seemed to irritate Harry, who then becomes insistent about mounting Puck again, and would struggle if we tried to move him away. While Puck has accepted Harry mounting him this far, the last few times he tried to run off before Harry to mount him properly and we were worried he might retaliate if Harry kept it up.
Are we doing something wrong here? We tried making a noise to startle him off, but it didn’t work :/
So far we’ve had quite a lot of huddling together, some voluntary smooshing and lots of requests for grooming on both sides, repeated instances of self grooming, some ignoring of each other, and on one occasion, I think Puck groomed Harry’s face! ^_^ There have also been several occasions where they’ve been lying down nose-to-nose. Is this good stuff? I have no idea if I’m just missing everything that’s going horribly wrong.

[Little Lion Head]

Hello! I’ll try to answer what I can. Both bunnies are beautiful, but I have no idea what Puck is!! Your recent post was about breaking up the humping. We used a metal pot and metal spoon to bang around and spook Pumpkin off when she would hump Rocky’s face. That quit working after away but what did work great was this little dust buster. I would flip it on and she would stop and huddle against him, scared. Based on the fact that they are tolerating some meals and laying nose to nose I think it’s going well and you’re on the right track. You might want to try some other stress bonding; like car rides or putting them into a box together and gently shaking it.

1) Should we be swapping crates every day? Or every few days?

We switched living spaces every few days. It can’t hurt to let the bunnies spend a few days in the other’s space–it might give them time to get comfortable in that new space and might make transitioning back and forth easier.

2) Is there any other pre-bonding we could be doing while we wait for hormones to die down?

I think you’re on the right track with the dinner dates, etc. We did a lot of dinner dates with a pen in between

3) Harry is a very thumpy rabbit. Is it possible that we’re mistaking some other things for thumps? Like he often thumps immediately before he does zoomies around the pen, or thumps and binkies. I think sometimes he’s just a bit heavy-footed too, like when he jumps on/off/over something.

I’m not sure!

4) How long should we wait before we try to put them face-to-face? He’s not spraying anymore, which was pretty much the only hormonal behaviour he was displaying. Obviously I know he’s probably not “over it” already, but honestly, I don’t think he’s even had a hormonal surge at all. Puck spent a few days thinking that every square millimeter of the carpet needed soaking in pee, and Theo went from being amorous to trying to kill us Do some bunnies just not have a hormonal surge? Or has it just not happened yet?

You might want to wait a couple more weeks. I think 6 weeks is usually adequate.

5) Harry is most prone to thumping and/or growling when we first let him out into his pen – does that mean that when we want to put them face to face we should let him (or them) out to play for a bit first? I don’t want to put him in a confined space with Puck if he’s in a foul mood x_x

That’s actually probably a great idea!

6) If/when we have to use stress-bonding, is it pointless to use things that only really bother one of the rabbits? Harry runs and hides from the hoover and won’t come out for anything less than raisins for at least ten minutes afterwards, where as Puck doesn’t really seem to care. Puck’s not overly fond of car rides, but he’s not as bothered by them as Harry is. Would those things not work for either of them then? Or would it only work if Harry is the one causing trouble?

I think you should try a combination. Bunnies associate the calming affects of the other bunny during stress bonding. For example if you run the vacuum while Harry is in a box with Puck, Harry will likely snuggle up to Puck for comfort. Even though Puck isn’t afraid, Harry will associate calming feelings with Puck. Does that make sense?

I’m no expert; I’ve only ever bonded Shamrock and Pumpkin and it was a decently easy bond. So this is based off my experiences but I really think you are on the right track! Just keep it up!

[Kyrkogrimr]

Just thought I’d put in a quick update

Things are going well so far, there’s lots of self-grooming and we’ve had a little grooming of the other bunny from each of them – Puck seems to be obsessed with Harry’s ears as he won’t stop chinning them every chance he gets! lol
There’s been less humping and more snuggling, both bunnies have flopped near – or even next to – the other bunny, so we’re thinking of moving them out of the bath and seeing how things progress. So far sessions are stopping at roughly the two hour mark – I think they could comfortably go longer, but we’re bonding them in the bathroom at the minute and we share our flat, so we can’t monopolize the bathroom all day! We’re hoping to be able to move them into a small space in the living room this week so that when I have my week’s holiday next week, I can start marathoning them, as I think they could certainly go much longer than they have been; most grumpy behaviour seems to happen at the beginning of sessions, and from what I’ve seen on other threads, that might indicate that they might respond well to the marathon bonding approach.
Part of me is a little concerned by how well things seem to be going – I was steeling myself for the world’s most arduous, time-consuming bonding ordeal, and what I seem to have is a relatively low-fuss consistent progress… I mean, it’s not bunny love at first sight, but it seems like I’ve got the next best thing here…

[Kyrkogrimr]

Almost forgot pictures! Puck’s hard to get pictures of, being a black bunny, he seems to turn into a silhouette of himself…

 

 

[Little Lion Head]

You are so on track for some marathon bonding!! Awesome!! And I hear ya on the black bunnies…Rocky is just a ninja waiting in the shadows!

[Kyrkogrimr]

Well, that’s why I booked a week of holiday; so I could set up a pen, keep an eye on them and let them sort themselves out It does seem like they’re only having issues when we first put them together, so hopefully longer sessions and a week of being together more or less 24/7 will help move things along.

[Kyrkogrimr]

So, half an hour in we had this

 

Followed about an hour in by:

 

And a little later by:

 

Sadly, I didn’t manage to get a picture of Harry doing a dead bunny flop almost lying on Puck’s face lol So we have lots of the boys flopping around or right next to each other (those are just the photos I could get, they flopped or bunloafed next to each other a lot today, I just wasn’t fast enough with the camera). We also had lots of self-grooming a little grooming from Harry (albeit with the aid of apple juice to motivate him) and lots of grooming from Puck without us having to resort to sneaky tricks

On a slightly less positive note, we noticed that while Puck is happy to share food, happy to take turns in the litter tray etc, he won’t share the tray itself and any attempt by us or Harry to have them in at the same time resulted in scuffles and one or other of them going off in a bit of a huff. Also, Harry kept spraying today, a few times he clearly seemed to be spraying Puck on purpose (like spraying as he jumped over him). There was some mounting, most of which Puck got snitty about, although he let Harry do it a couple of times. We’ve noticed that since Puck has become increasingly unwilling to be mounted, Harry tries to face-mount or side-mount more often, as if he wants to get on with it before Puck can escape, rather than taking the extra time to go around him

 

So those are the only issues we’re having really. Is there anything we can do to help with the litter tray thing? It’s not like Puck won’t let Harry in the tray, and he’s happy to sit outside the tray and share a pile of hay while Harry sits inside and vice versa, so he doesn’t seem to be defending the tray or the food…. does that make sense? Do we need to worry about it? Or should it be ok if there are enough litter trays that they don’t need to share? Also, is there any reason why Harry would be back to spraying constantly?

[Little Lion Head]

Not sure about the spraying. I know Pumpkin constantly chins Rocky; like she needs to make sure he’s constantly marked by her. Oh and we tried the banana on the face thing to get Pumpkin to groom Rocky. Poor Rocky just ended up with dried banana on his nose! haha

I think it’s ok if you have to end up with two litter boxes in the long run. I know JackRabbit has two for hers (even though they usually end up sharing).

They look very comfortable in your pictures. I’m confident you’ll be done bonding by the end of your vacation!

[Kyrkogrimr]

Harry seems to take ages to get that the apple juice is on Puck’s head x_x He follows your hand instead.

I’m really hoping we can have them bonded by the end of my week off, otherwise I don’t know when I’ll have multiple days off together to marathon them again and cement the bond :/

[Kyrkogrimr]

So, we’ve run into a bit of a wall; the boys can spend hours on end in the bath without incident, but when we move them to a pen in the living room, they start nose-to-tail circling and fighting :/ Harry tries to mount Puck, who turns and tries to nip Harry, which results in circling etc. We’ve moved them back to the bath, but they go back to flopping, eating, grooming etc, so I’m not sure what to do next.

[Little Lion Head]

Do you have another room to use? We set up a pen in the dining room. It was helpful to restrict space for circling and chasing.

[Kyrkogrimr]

We don’t really have space anywhere else, which is why we moved from bath to living room (unless we turf out the tenants ) But we made a smaller pen out of NIC grids, cut right back to really short sessions over the course of the evening, and we’re seeing a little progress.

Admittedly, the pen isn’t that much smaller (2×2 NIC grids instead of 1mx1m panels from the play pens)but we put it in a different spot in the living room (yay, rearranging the room for the bunnies again! ) and smooshed them, then started feeding them a pellet at a time as long as they were sitting quietly next to each other. Once they’d had their quota of pellets we put them back in their respective spaces and left them to play for a bit, and later in the evening did another short session in the pen with a pile of hay to munch on. There was a bit of scuffling at the start (which is normal for them) but we also saw some grooming and quite a lot of one or other of them flopping. we ended the session with the boys flopped in a corner of the pen, with their faces smooshed together, so that we could end on a good note… and we didn’t even have to put them together that time – Harry just decided he wanted snuggles with Puck, so he shoved his face in there and flopped lol

In short, we changed things up a bit and treated it like they’d never met before and started them with short dates, and we seem to be clawing back some of our progress, so I’m feeling a bit better. We had a couple of scuffles, and we’ve had to intervene a couple of times, but the last few dates were generally positive, especially compared with yesterday’s attempt at introducing them in here, and this morning’s attempt x_x Happily, we seemed to be back on track towards marathoning later in the week, albeit from having taken a step back from how they were doing in the bath… not that that was entirely unexpected.

We still haven’t resolved the litter tray issue, but I think part of the problem we had was changing too much at once when we moved from bathroom to living room, so we’ll wait before we introduce that again However, when we put the litter tray in the bath with them again earlier, (after things went a bit skew-whiff in the living room) they actually managed to share the tray on several occasions!

[Kyrkogrimr]

Picture from today’s bonding:

  

Sadly, Puck isn’t as enthusiastic about snuggles as Harry seems to be: Harry will often flop next to Puck if he can get away with it, but Puck seems to prefer to flop by himself sometimes, and gets up, very huffily I might add, and takes himself off to a quiet corner where that bothersome rabbit isn’t trying to force affection on him. Unfortunately, sometimes Harry tries to follow him, Puck gets grouchy and chasing ensues

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