This is still a hormonal surge. Males can take up to two months, in some rare cases three months for their hormones to drain after surgery I dont mean to be rude with this sentence, but the more you try to push him, the more he will fight back with lunging and nipping you. The spraying should die down with time, but so long as you continue to fight him, he will continue to fight back. Thats not hormonal, but rather a rabbit defending themselves.

Rabbits dont see dominance with humans. They only see dominance with other rabbits. To him, youre a human. He will never try to hold a dominance over you, likewise he will never see you dominant over him. Rabbits dont see dominance at all with humans. When you try to push dominance onto him, all he sees is a human being mean and possibly hurting him. See him as a fluffy friend, and he will see you as a friend as well. There is no pecking order. Youll need to erase your thought process on dominance around him or he will continue to fear you.

Holding him down and pinning him is only going to make him made; its not going to show any form of dominance. Likely, he only sees you being mean to him. I recommend you stop pinning him as its really mean and he will never understand why youre doing that to him. The more you do this, the more your bond with him will break. He will learn youre someone mean to him instead of seeing you as a friend. You note that you think hes becoming scared of you, this is why.

Flopping is how rabbits relax. You call him over to you, but hes tired and trying to relax, so he flops. If you want his attention, go pet him if he allows it. If he doesnt allow pets, assume hes trying to sleep.

To brush him, consider bunny burritoing him and brushing him a bit at a time. You can also try to get in some brushing when hes eating his greens or hay. If hes comfortable with you petting him while hes bunny flopped, try to brush him then, too.

I haven’t dealt with a hormonal male before, so I can’t offer direct advice on that but I agree with Mikey that 1) He’s still in his hormonal phase and needs more time to settle down and 2) Rabbits and humans don’t have dominance hierarchies.

It was really hard for my husband to get used to the dominance thing with rabbits after having dogs. Unlike dogs, rabbits definitely know we are not fellow rabbits and that they are not humans! They can be the best of friends, and even love us but establishing dominance is never going to work. When we got Thor, we had a terrible problem with her nipping us (not hormonal, just a learned behavior). We tried the holding down trick which we read online and it just made her more and more crazy! In retrospect, it was only when we stopped doing that and just ignored her when she nipped that her behavior improved.

Patience and love will win a bunny heart over

Good I used to do the pin thing as well because a different online forum said its acceptable to do, but I noticed my bunny started to get upset everytime I did it. I asked the vet about it, and she said it was an old way of thinking and doesnt work at all with bunnies so I stopped. Blue is my best friend now that we’ve learned to communicate better. If hes nervous around you, just change the way you are around him and stop the dominance thinking. You can definitely rebuild the friendship if he is nervous

I’m glad I was set straight myself, as I gave that advice about trying to establish a dominant position (which I’d read on several major house-rabbit sites) only to be corrected. From what I understand, a better way to do it when nipped too painfully is to utter a short, high-pitched squeal or squeak and then say “No!” clearly and firmly (but not yelling). Repeat it consistently and the bun will get the idea.

LOL My BB access is temperamental, so when I saw this post I was going to just copy and paste my comment from a very similar dominance-related post I replied to recently, but the whole thread seems to have vanished so I gave up. Glad everyone else gave such good collective advice… I feel less annoyed now about my lazy server.

The ‘pinning’ you mention and which others bring up may be a misunderstanding. It’s not a technique used for any prolonged period of time, or for restraining purposes (like grooming by hoomins), or for establishing yourself as top bun (because as others have said, that’s strictly speaking impossible). The brief and gentle pressure on top of a bun’s shoulder blades and/or top of head can be used to correct certain types of undesirable behaviour, especially when used in conjunction with subsequent whole-body petting – it often results in the bun ‘melting’ into a bunny puddle and therefore being distracted from digging at a rug, for instance. The degree of effectiveness varies from bun to bun, but it’s got something to do with the ‘sensation’ of being groomed by mom or schooled by a warren superior.

Hope that helps a bit.

Interestingly enough, I observed Panda exhibiting “dominance” behavior toward Fernando at a couple of points last evening. I don’t know whether it had anything to do with my having scolded her for being greedy about banana treats , but I saw her mounting Fernando a couple of times, and after the first occasion she shook/flipped her head at about fifteen-second intervals for several minutes, then stopped. I get the distinct impression my little diva was miffed about something, but she got back to normal pretty quickly; I woke up around 1 am this morning, and could see the pair bunloafing snuggled up to each other on the upper deck – I can see their cage easily from my bed.