What do you mean by “punished”? Buns don’t exactly understand punishments and it can make them fearful. A “no” is fine, pulling him away from the spot he’s chewing/digging is fine, but anything beyond that I wouldn’t do with a prey animal if you want his trust.

For cords – all bunnies chew cords (mostly, a few exceptions) if they can get to them. There are PVC tubes you can buy at home depot for cords, buy those and a utility knife, slice open one side of the tube and put your cords into those. Your bun can no longer chew cords and you don’t have to replace them and he won’t be at risk.

A lot of rabbits don’t like being picked up, they are prey animals so the instinct is “picked up = bad!”.

Has he been neutered? If not, that will curb a lot of the bad behaviors. My female rabbit destroyed the carpet, chewed things, etc etc and getting her spayed has taken her down to merely a few nibbles here and there and a “no” or “EH!” makes her stop. Also can cause some aggression/territorial/anti social behaviors when their hormones go wild.

If you want to get some treats, go for it. Oxbow makes a good treat and veggies are a great treat – I give apple (occasionally, high in sugar), carrots (again, occasionally) etc as treats to my buns.

be punished about because it is after the fact and would have no clue as to why he was being punished

You’re exactly right. There would be no association with the behaviour and the reprimand. You only have a split second. I usually give a verbal “Ah Ah!” and they do react…but then often return to what they were doing.   So then I have to remove them from the troublesome area and provide some distraction.
With your computer, it’s probably best to completely shut off that area to him. A myriad of cords is too tempting to rabbits and it’s their intinct to chew. He probably sees it as a bit of a project. You could try provide him with an activity that will hopefully keep him busy. Since he likes to chew, what about fixing some hay or willow mats up on a pen or cage side so he can work away on those?
My rabbits all like chewing the bark off willow. So some lengths of unpeeled willow might have the same appeal as the cords.

Was he a young rabbit when you first brought him home? Often when they become adults they get all independant. lol If you’re constantly having to removing him from something inappropriate, that could have affected the relationship a bit.

I feel this way with my 2 older rabbits. So I’m trying to make an effort of spending more time with them and improving the social side of things. They’re a bit snobby with their affections. I do find going back to the ignoring techniques work. Just being in the room but not actively seeking them out. They then come and approach me, jump up, investigate, jump on my back or whatever.

Getting him to approach and reward with treats is not a bad idea. Also clicker training might be a good activity for him.

http://www.clickerbunny.com/clickercritterarticles.htm

http://www.rabbit.org/journal/1/rejection.html

http://www.rabbit.org/journal/1/aloof.html

There are multiple styles – they sell hard plastic tubes which are clear, for computers you can get plastic organizers that slip over the wires, there are the ones that look like vacuum cords as well and some that look like actual PVC pipes. Cord organizers and cord protectors are what you can search for online to see the different styles.

http://www.petsmart.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2753521 they sell that for pets specifically, but I don’t know if a citrus scented tube would be less attractive to a bunny or not lol but you can get unscented ones as well.

Can also make a NIC cube to block off certain areas with a lot of cords.

I have two unbonded – neither have a cage, Stickers lives in the laundry room / kitchen with a baby gate blocking off the rest of the house and Powder lives in the rest of the place. Powder sleeps under my bed, or on my side of the bed on the floor so he knows exactly when I move and chases me. Stickers has a chair in her room she likes to sleep in.

Stickers when she was new was horrible about carpet as well – I posted a picture in the lounge of her idea of redecorating my carpet, it isn’t pretty lol you can get carpet pieces and cut out the old carpet and repair with the new pieces, or you could cover it up with a rug… a lot of people with bunnies use the foam/rubber bottomed mats they sell for kids play areas to cover up their carpet. Just make sure whatever you use doesn’t have edges that stick up so he can’t chew them, or make it something safe to chew.

For penning him in when you can’t supervise, since he has bad habits (and dangerous ones at that) you could get an X-pen and if you want flooring a large piece of linoleum or a mat or anything he won’t chew to pieces under it for him. That way he has room to run around, he can stretch and you can be sure he’s not destroying things. Just make sure you get a tall one (over 3ft) so he can’t jump over it.

What I ended up doing in Stickers room is lining the walls with wood slabs over the carpet since she only digs where the carpet connects to the wall.

Rabbit.org shouldn’t give off malware – there might be an advertisement on there though that is causing your program to go off, I use firefox with adblock plus so I don’t see the ads. :s

I notice mine get stuck into things when I’m busy with something or not feeling great energy wise. It’s like they’re wanting attention and know destroying something will get out attention!

With the carpet you can replace segments and sort of knit the edges in but if it’s old, it’d be hard to match up a piece for repair. Are the areas along the wall or in the middle of the carpet?

I’m not sure why you’ve had trouble opening the rabbit.org articles. I’ve copied them and will paste them below. 

Rejection

Jersey, thanks for reprinting that article here. I was particularly interested in the description of the aloof bunny and what to do about it. Since Samantha is aloof in her own way, I can get very frustrated too.