I’ve had my little Vincent for about a month or so now, he’s an adorable broken chestnut holland lop, almost 5 months old and is scheduled for neutering in a couple weeks. The breeder I got him from was an ex-good friend of a friend, and she told me how this bunny absolutely loved attention and would sit and watch TV with me, let me pet him and how he is by far the most social and cuddly rabbit they’ve ever raised in their 2 years of breeding etc etc. Of course, moving to a new home would be stressful so I didn’t have my hopes too high for the first couple weeks. I did take him out a lot to get used to me and I’d hold him against my chest but most of the time he would just be terrified. It wasn’t until last week that he started showing interest in actually coming out to see me and sniffing my face and hopping on my shoulder if I let him out. He also just recently started purring if I tried to pet him, but only if he’s in his cage. This is because recently when I’ve started to let him out (he’s mostly free range but I keep him in his cage when I’m not home) he will absolutely not let me even come close to touching him and when I let him out he cowards away under my bed (a completely new place to him, meaning he never realized he could go under there until very recently). Usually he does binkies and all the happy signs when I let him out but for the last 3 days he’s been hiding and I’m not sure why. I give him lots of attention and I try not to pick him up unless he comes to me, so I can’t think of any other reasons why he’s suddenly terrified to even be pet by me while he’s out. Yesterday, I tried letting him hop around on my bed (he usually loves this) but he looked straight at me as soon as I put him down and he peed (he’s litter trained fairly well)! That’s when I decided this might be a sudden yearn for dominance on his end but even still, I’m just looking for answers as to why he’s all of a sudden seemingly scared of me :c I wish he could start to be close with me again because it seems all the progress we made went down the drain DX any suggestions as to what I can do to re-bond with him or why he’s suddenly hiding away?
Oh and PS, a couple nights ago my brother called me to say the bunny got out of his play pen while I went out to run errands and I told him to please put him back in his cage as gently as possible. He did it, but I was thinking maybe the way my brother handled my baby could have spooked him? My brother isn’t used to handling bunnies. Maybe it had to do with this?