That’s great I hope Tuna likes her! What kind is she? (if you don’t mind me asking) (:

awesome! thanks so much for adopting! i hope we’ll get pics… ;o)

Cool Pudge is a mini lop! ^_^
can’t wait to see pics of her.

Yay! The bonding may take a while longer since you were not able to see how they interact, but I’m sure they will work things out Good luck!

Pictures??? Cant wait -congrats!!

Posted By tunabunny on 01/13/2009 2:45 AM
actually…forget EVERYTHING I SAID in the last post!!!!! I think i may be needing serious bunny help. my boyfriend and i just got home from l.a. to the worse possible scenario. we walked into my/tuna/maebes room to find that maebe escaped her pen and pooped and peed all over the entire room…..and it gets much MUCH worse. i would have been okay with the fact that she soiled my whole room, tunas done that plenty. i opened tunas cage to see where he was and maebe rushed out instantly and the more i inspected, the more i noticed that tuna attacked maebe by all of her hairballs that were lying aroung his pen!!!…..i feel so horrible. i adopted her so that she could have a better life and a life companion and shes traumatized. please someone help me, i really feel so bad for maebe

Noo noo! it’s okay! Maebe will come down, I’d just give her some time. Accidents happen, and it wasn’t even your fault so it was out of your hands.

I’m SURE she’s having a much better life with you than she was having at the shelter, a pen and not a tiny cage, more attention, being with a fellow binkybunnyer  *etc.*, so don’t even doubt it for a second.

So maybe things got off to a rough start, but it doesn’t mean it won’t get better! Who knows, maybe in the future you will be the owner of two happily bonded buns who love eachother.

I’m no a bun expert… so I’m bad at bonding advice…so I’ll leave that up to someone else..  

Good luck!

bonding is a lengthy process. it needs to be taken slowly, one step at a time. going too fast will result in more fights…

your first step is to read some info on bunny bonding. i’d recommend you print it out, or bookmark it to your computer, and read and re-read often.

this is my fav article on bonding… it’s very thorough.  http://www.rabbitnetwork.org/articles/bond.shtml

this is the BB page on bonding.  https://www.binkybunny.com/BUNNYINFO/BondingInfo/tabid/63/Default.aspx

you said above that you think she might be a baby.  is she a baby or is she just young (under a year)?  has she been spayed yet and allowed to heal for at least one month?

how are they housed?  in side by side xpens?  if they can see each other, this is good.  what you can do to preent territorial behavior is switch them betw/ pens each night.  leave the food, litterbox, toys and only move the bunny.

the pooping and peeing is territorial marking…  first off, Maebe is in a new home which can trigger marking.  second, there is a strange bunny there that she doesn’t know, and the whole house smells strongly of “that guy”.  she is trying to get an area for herself.

do you know what happened, how she got loose?  you may need to take special precautions like a sheet clipped to the top of her pen or a makeshift “NIC grid top” that you can attach.

did you do bunny dating with Tuna and everything was okay at the shelter?  this can happen sometimes, he is in a strange environment, he sees all these bunnies, they can get mixed signals.  chances are good they will be able to bond, you will just need to work everyday in neutral territory for awhile (the bathtub is great for this!)

things like this definitely happen, my little girl has stitches right now from a fellow bun-bite. it happens, its no ones fault. just supervise as much as you can and keep them seperated otherwise until you see a change in their behavior.

If Maebe has no wounds (no blood nor cuts), then don’t worry about the fur being from mostly ‘attacks’ as they were more likely Tuna mounting her to establish dominance (that is assuming that they are both altered). They often grab the back of the neck area and wind up pulling out a tuft or two during it.  If Tuna wanted to hurt Maebe, it sounds like he could have easily done so.

Realize too that Tuna was defending his home turf as Maebe was inside his cage. This is a completely normal reaction and Maebe will learn not to do that anymore – hopefully. Continue with your bonding efforts. You might be surprised when they are both in the tub again. Sometimes buns that get into unsupervised fights over a length of time work out the dominance issue quickly, albeit sometimes painfully. 

Also realize that this is an ‘arranged marriage’ where Tuna has had no say in his new wife.  There could simply be something about her that ticks him off.  The good news is that just about every bunny can be bonded.  It just takes a lot of work.  Took me over 4 months worth in order to get Maryann and Dono bonded.

Although it is possible of any rabbit, I have noticed at the rescue that unspayed females will fear male rabbits a bit more than altered females. I assume it is because of some bunny society thing that the female wants to have a little romance first.

LOL ^^

sounds like it’s going pretty well!
hope to hear about more bunny dates.

Pictures are a definite must! Sounds like everything is going well. Keep us posted

I went through all this just about a month ago. Dont be surprised if dominance switches at some point like it did for Buttercup and Bandit, my buns. You are doing everything I did, hope you have the same good results.

humping can be their desire to be dominant. however in Maebe’s case, since she’s not spayed yet, it is likely the hormones which is causing her to do this. if she continues to hump and bite on Tuna, you may be causing more harm than good by continuing with the bonding right now. if he becomes afraid of her (it sounds like he’s scared due to the whimpering), this can make it harder to bond them further down the road. my suggestion is to stop the dates until after she is spayed and healed up for about a month. in the meantime, you can have them in cages near each other and continue to switch them betw/ the cages each night.

Hi Tunabunny,

I would have to second what Beka has said. I got a girlfriend for my dwarf bunny Henry two months ago. Like yours she was unaltered. They had a couple of dates but i decided i was bettr off waiting until i got her spayed before i proceeded with anymore dates. I am quite an impatient person so this was a tough decision so i tried to make a positive out of it and told myself i would take this time to properly get to know Poppy one on one. This did work, she got used to me and we developed a bit of a bond before she got spayed.

Two weeks after her operation i started off the bunny dates again and things seemed alot calmer between them ( she was quite hormonal before the procedure) I now have two buns who are completely bonded and spend every second of the day together. Henry is besotted with his new wife (this was also an “arranged marriage”)and i havent got much of a look in over the last week. I dont mind though as they are still confined to the kitchen and im glad to see their bond is being re-inforced more and more every day.  I am glad i waited until after her spay as i do feel she was a different bunny back then and i think they could possibly have ended up having a fall out which could have jeopardised their long term bonding potential.

Goodluck whatever you decide to do. It great that you made the decision to get Tuna a girlfriend and it will all work out for you in the end

i know. it’s hard to be patient sometimes, but i do think you’ll have a better outcome and a lot less headache in the process. ;o)