Hello,

I am the owner of two male rabbits, Oreo and Ben, who have both been fixed for at least 7 weeks. I have been doing daily bonding sessions with them for 3 to 4 weeks now and they are at the point where they will tolerate each other without showing any serious signs of aggression, but don’t completely trust each other yet. Even though I haven’t seen any fights between them for quite a while, Ben will get defensive when Oreo approaches him too fast(raised tail, flat ears and pointing towards Oreo). Grooming is also pretty one-sided in their relationship, as when Oreo is close to Ben, Ben will start continually nipping Oreo until he starts grooming Ben. Luckily, Oreo is the submissive rabbit of the two and decides to comply with Ben’s annoying nipping and demands to be groomed. However, I feel that Ben should show at least a little mutual affection towards Oreo, which he refuses to do. I’m not sure how to get Ben to groom Oreo, advice would be greatly appreciated.

When they are not nose-to-nose trying to get grooms, they are perfectly fine playing by themselves as they will do binkies, flops, zooms, and generally any other happy rabbit behavior. Except that there is another issue, and this time its with Oreo. When Oreo approaches Ben in hopes of a groom, of course that of which he will not receive, Oreo will be greeted with a nip to the nose and be forced to subside to Ben’s dominance and give Ben a groom instead. When this happens, Oreo won’t always give Ben a groom, instead he will get into position and attempt to spray Ben; Oreo will decide to let out a spray several times in a session which definitely proves to be annoying to clean and disgusting for Ben’s urine-soaked fur. I have even tried switching back to neutral areas, which had no effect. Its the same thing for any other type of area, big or small, neutral or not, outside or inside, etc. It seems that Oreo does not give any acknowledgement to the area hes in when he decides to spray Ben.

With Oreo’s annoying spray tendencies and Ben’s defensiveness and lack of willingness to groom Oreo, it has been the same for several days now. What kinds of things should I be trying to push them to the next “stage” of bonding? Anyway, that’s my situation do far and I’m pretty clueless at this point. Thanks for your time!