Hey, all!

Me and my 8 week old lop have gotten a lot closer over the last week or so, but with every passing day I find it harder and harder to keep him happy. 

First, I find it really hard to indentify what he likes. For example, I always assumed his teeth chittering has been a good thing–often when I pet him, his teeth click quite a bit and he relaxes. When I scratch his cheeks, his teeth go wild and he relaxes a ton. However, the last few days, when I try it, the teeth click, but he jerks his head backwards as if to escape it. Furthermore, he licks me a ton now, especially when he is stressed. It isn’t a languid, relaxed grooming, but rather licking me like his life depends on it. It doesn’t feel like an act of love!

Furthermore, I got him a ton of toys, and he loved them for about a day. Now, he completely ignores them and chews on his bars. This is incredibly frustrating since I worry about him hurting his teeth/ingesting the paint on the bars of the pen. I try making stuff for him to play with, and he doesn’t really care. I am pretty broke right now and can’t afford to get him new toys–I have already emptied my bank account on supplies for him 

I recently started a new job where I am gone about 9 hours a day. As such, I have made his pen A LOT bigger, easily enough to run around in. Whenever I get back, I let him roam the apartment freely. When I get home, I sit on the ground with him for a little bit. He likes to sniff me a lot and climb over my legs, but whenever I try to pet him, he sometimes scampers away or seems anxious when I do so. Unlike he used to upon arrival, he doesn’t really play all that much. He navigates the room for a bit, but rarely runs around. The very most I see him do in terms of play is try to squeeze into the places I don’t want him to go! He used to binky and skip a lot, now it is only very occasionally I see him play, and it is only in 2 second long bursts of energy before he sits still again. I only have one room in my apartment, so I can’t really clear out the furniture for him. I really miss seeing him play and exercise! It hurts me to see him so lethargic 

I dunno, it just really upsets me to not be able to make him happy, or identify when he is. I feel like I am doing all that is in my power to make him as comfortable as possible, but it still rarely feels like enough. Any advice? Sorry for the rambling.