Hi!
Jerseygirl said I should come give my opinion, for what it’s worth! I live in Long Beach, and have dealt with several of the shelters in the area.
Definitely wait 3 weeks (if not 4). Even if Thumper seems all healed, you want to make sure her hormone levels have stabilized.
I have not PERSONALLy dealt with RabbitRescue, although I hear good things about them from several other people. What these people have done is dropped off their rabbits, and Rabbit Rescue charges a daily rate for trying to bond the bunnies for them. This was successful in the one case I know of, and in the other, after having the rabbits for 6 weeks, ultimately unsuccessful. But one can’t really blame RabbitRescue…in this case, the owners adopted a girlfriend for their boybun without any dating, and sometimes rabbits just don’t get along.
Another organization you might want to check out is the BunnyBunch in Montclair. http://www.bunnybunch.org. Caroline is the founder and does all the bonding. Again, you can go in for bunny-dates, and you leave the bunnies, and Caroline keeps them with her 24 hours a day for…10 days I think?…for $300. She told me the only time she was REALLY unsuccessful was when someone wanted 13 rabbits bonded together. Apparently, the first 12 were ok, but the 13th was just an unlucky lagomorph who didn’t want to get along!
Of course, both these options mean dropping off your buns and having someone else do the bonding for you. I’ve never been into that, and have kept that in the back of my mind only as a last-last resort, because I wanted to be there and know what was going on, and use the process to bond MYSELF with the rabbits, even as they were bonding to each other.
Any of these places, if you pick on them and nag them, will probably help you with the first couple of dates, if that’s all you want, to get you started. They’re all volunteer-based organizations, so they might not volunteer their time, but if you ask for help, I’m sure they’d be happy to do whatever they can.
I volunteer at Zooh Corner Rabbit Rescue http://www.mybunny.org. We currently don’t do any bunny-bonding, but definitely accomodate dates at the shelter, and have lots of knowledgeable people to help answer questions! Probably someone could help you out with a couple bonding sessions, but the shelter is at a Humane Society with barking dogs and whatnot–not the best environment for such things. Feel free to check out the website, and go over to Petfinder (I just took over the updating of photos and descriptions, and I’ve only made the smallest dent…if anybunny looks interesting to you, please let me know and I can tell you more about them! We have a BEAUTIFUL English Spot named Bobby with blue-eyes who’s the sweetest attention-whore you’ll ever meet…and then there’s Sneakers the Californian who literally does cartwheels off the side of his hutch–he’s a little hyper. Still needs to be neutered!…anyway, I could go on and on. Feel free to email me directly with any Zooh Rabbit questions!)
Hope that helps!