Hello all,

I posted awhile ago about the bonding of our older, and recently widowed, rabbit, Evee, with a new partner, Rolo.  The bonding finally completed after a couple marathon sessions on the big living room rug.  But, after they were settled together and living free range, we started noticing Rolo being less active. After a couple days, I made the “hands on” discovery of thick sludgy piddles (some dry, but unfortunately not all – ewww) on the “big” carpet and their sheepskin pillow.  We realized at that point that Rolo had not been traveling back and forth over the carpeted path to get to the litter box and feeding stations on the other side of the room and as a result was getting dehydrated and losing his litter habits.  We had been sometimes picking him up and moved him over, assuming he was just a little confused about where Evee had gone, at which point he would drink and eat with gusto, but we hadn’t seen him go on his own. So we set out a second litterbox, water and food dish, in the living room area, which they both made regular use of, and eventually Evee was able to get him to follow her across, but not always.  This was all a couple weeks ago.  They stopped using the second litterbox when it was cleaned a few days ago, so we assumed he was getting in the habbit of going to the main litterbox.  Since the bonding there has been A LOT of poops infront of the litterbox, and just yesterday we noticed sludgy white piddle stains, leading us to believe he is not using the litterbox and getting dehydrated again.

Question: How can we help him learn to cross the room at will to eat/drink/poo? He will sometimes follow Evee, we have shooed him across, but he will never go on his own.  

We noticed he wasn’t the “sharpest knife in the drawer” during the bonding, so we are wondering if he is just slow or what? Could there be a dominance battle taking place over the litterbox?

Thoughts, please, we are at a loss for ways to help him.

Thanks!