Eve (2 yo, spayed for almost 2 yrs) lost her lifelong partner. She was always the dominant one. We adopted Oliver (3 yo, been neutered a few months) to bond with her. Oliver had come into the shelter with a friend while he was unneutered (they got separated shortly after arriving to the shelter), so the shelter worker and I thought it’d probably be a good bet that he would bond to Eve eventually. We’ve had him for about a month, so not too long at all. Their pens are right next to each other, and we’d been doing bathtub sessions until they were fine with each other in neutral territory. Last week we decided to let them out at the same time in the rabbit room, and now their behavior is boiled down to this: Eve has accepted her place as submissive, and Oliver will hop right up to her in order for her to groom him. He’s clearly not scared of her, he acts like he owns the place. But he still will randomly run up to her, bite her or chase her, and then groom himself like nothing happened. Eve does not react back, she just runs away.

I’ve bonded many rabbits and have never experienced this. She’s accepted that she’s submissive, it was her original territory, they’re always side-by-side, she poses no threat and doesn’t fight back, he acts very comfortable around her when he’s not randomly going after her by flopping over or grooming himself, he lets her groom him… where do I go from here? I feel awful for Eve. She’s just trying to be friends, and he’s not scared of her, he’s just seemingly being a jerk for fun (I know he’s just being territorial, but when you see it in action it REALLY comes off across like he’s just doing it to be a jerk for laughs, haha.)

I’ve never resorted to stress bonding, but should this be my next step? I’m out of ideas besides having them in a carrier together while I drive around.