Rabbits have a completely different mindset than the animals you have experience training. While they can make the same basic connections with positive association, they do not have the structure to learn and modify as readily, especially if any high emotion, such as fear or excitement is interrupting their train of thought. It’s working against you to think of the rabbit like the other species you’ve worked with. Behavioral modification and both conditionings work to some extent, but rabbits are not going to settle as readily to making such associations if it doesn’t make sense internally as a prey animal or if a high-state emotion is present during the process, like fear or excitement.

So what you’re missing is she’s a prey animal, while you’ve worked mainly with predators. Prey animal does not only insinuate a fearful mindset– it also means the animal will almost always give into it’s gut reactions and behavioral instincts. Inhibiting its actions, like a dog not jumping up or a tiger not slowing down it’s approach, means the rabbit would die in the wild. Rabbits will not give into behavior modification. Rabbits will become “better pets” when their environment suits them or they learn through means they understand (lack of scary things, sense of security against invaders).

Don’t be as structured and regimented. You adjust to your rabbit’s cues, not the other way around.

Sounds like a typical territorial female bun to me. I love the euphamism “spicy”, that is such a good description!

I can’t speak to the changes as your bun has been growing up, since I adopted my girl as an adult (1.5yrs old, now 2.5), but I have dealt with many of the same behaviors you describe! Thor was maybe worse since she came to us with bad habits of nipping/biting. She used to nip and bite whenever she was annoyed or thought we were in her way. She also is still quite territorial of “her” area in the kitchen. She is free roam, so no area is fenced off but she has a feeding and litterbox space that she considers hers.

I agree with Wick that with rabbits you have to take them as the come, spice and all Here are a few things that helped me with Thor:
– I only clean her area when she is not in it, so we minimize aggressive problems. This might seem like “giving in” but I actually think it helps overall in the interest of peaceful relations. She doesn’t feel like she is constantly having to defend her territory, and the behavior isn’t reinforced.
– I never approach her directly from the front. This has been SUPER helpful. They can’t see right in front of their faces, so they can see any movement coming from there as a threat.
– When she does nip (rare now) I will pick up her front legs and turn her 180˚ away from me. I tried a few other “punishment” methods and this one has worked the best. It just confuses her and stops her train of thought, but there is no physical punishment and I am still there so she hasn’t been rewarded in chasing me off if that was what she was intending to do.
– Most importantly I just give her a safe loving place to live. This has perhaps helped the most, after 10 months of owning her she is much more calm and accepting of me in her space and doing things around her. She has gotten so much better about nipping and now only grunts if she is unhappy with a particular situation. She’s always loved pets so we can have happy bonding time doing that.

One more thing that comes to mind, Thor also does the charge at your ankles thing, like a fluffy head-but. I honestly find it super cute If there is no nipping, grunting or biting then I think it is excitement! If you have been giving her a treat EVERY time you come in her area, she is probably doing it because she expects treats! If you want to lessen the charging, you could try teaching her a particular trick to get a treat that doesn’t involve your ankles. For instance, I’ve trained Thor to go onto the top level of her tower (kindof like a cat tree) on command to get a piece of banana. Bunnies are very amenable to clicker training if they are food driven.

Edit: Just a note that Thor is spayed and has been since 1yr old

Certainly RoxMad. I understand where you’re coming from and your mindset because behavior modification is within my field of study, and when you run into scenarios that are atypical, it’s very surprising, while being confusing.

A few things first because I re-read your post again and had some thoughts: There is a hormonal spike which occurs and can last a few months after a spay. During this time, for both male and females, personalities and behaviors can change or be reset. I think the concurrent hormonal spike she was experiencing while you were changing her environment may have tampered with her overall sense of security. Although both are see-through, rabbits do realize that a dog crate gives more structure and coverage than an x-pen, which is much more open = open to more dangers. Considering the sense of security has been decreased, the continual change in her daily routine isn’t going to help her feel secure. I agree with your thought of being more consistent for a period of time so she feels safe and within her own territory/realm once again.

Once her sense of security and trust is back, you can begin reflecting on your training regimen with her and some of her “unfavorable” behaviors or desired behaviors. Body language is tough, but if you become more consistent, it will be easier to read her and see what her body language means. From this, you can start adjusting how you’ve trained her.

Overall in terms of structured/regimented, I lean more towards how you interpret her “learning” a new behavior. For example, the approach to your foot is a learned behavior, but this may explain her charging towards people feet. She demonstrates some state-dependent learning from the ball cue, but potentially she does not have the capacity to distinguish between the appropriate times to approach feet. It also could be she made an incorrect association and sees any object presented in front of her as potentially “the ball”, therefore if she boops it, something good will happen. Rabbits are kind of dumb, but we have to balance that we cannot punish them, so positive association will work selectively. If she boops something and nothing happens, it’s not the typical “it wasn’t positively reinforced, so that behavior frequency will lessen”, like it is with training other animals. There are many factors that make training rabbits “correctly” difficult. Although they have a wide visual scope, their focused field and attention span to stimuli is very small, so there are times when you praise a rabbit or scold a rabbit and it literally has no idea why. That’s why repetition is important, BUT rabbits pick up routine very quickly, so if a rabbit becomes used to getting multiple treats within a training session, this will affect their diet and increase selective eating, even if you enact a variable reinforcement schedule.
— In short, if something isn’t making sense as you’re teaching her new “tricks”, re-evaluate and see if her “learning” may actually be something else entirely.

In terms of the vision and potential blindness, I wouldn’t be too worried. Rabbits are hyper focused due to survival, and at the same time are masters at napping and daydreaming for effective energy saving, so if you startle your rabbit, even by a side approach, it may just be her acuity was not on you and it didn’t shift until you were really close to her. To test this, before approach, get your face down to her level and start waving or making movement so she shifts her focus from nothing/that thing that she’s focusing on onto you.