Moved the topic for you 🙂

Stress bonding is contentious in nature, though arguably every bonding process people recommend as “THE” method is going to have people say it’s not ideal for XYZ reason…. ultimately, bonding isn’t an exact science and if a pair of rabbits are compatible, they’ll likely bond regardless of what method you choose among the informed, safe methods of bonding paired with owner-savvy on being attentive to body language during sessions.

I believe it comes down to how each individual rabbit reacts to the stressful environment throughout its presentation. For example, in the case of my Wick and Fable, Fable becomes very narrow-minded and a type of “freezing” stressed, therefore, stress bonding tactics are not helpful for her as she is not paying attention to anything in the environment outside focusing on making herself the tightest ball as possible, regardless if there’s another rabbit in the carrier or not. Additionally, my Wick responds to stress by… exploring? So in car rides or stress scenarios, while Fable is an anxious ball, Wick is trying to get out of the carrier or trying to roam around and figure out what’s going — you can imagine that, anecdotally, these two types of responses to stress together are not creating any sort of relationship foundation between them. They aren’t doing what we would like to see in stress bonding, which is being afraid and turning to each other for comfort.

To get data, you would likely need to contact rescues and bonding services to see who uses stress bonding and their success rates. That being said, it’s not like those are experiments as some will always use stress bonding and some never do, so whether the success of the bond and/or it breaking is contingent on using stress bonding is hard to distinguish.

At the end of the day, I think it’s most wise to consider every bond open-mindedly and that it could be different, so it’s good to have a general process that is safe and viewed as reliable (e.g., both spayed/neutered at least 1mo, start with pre-bonding, move into neutral, expand, graduate to semi-neutral…) and if things are not going smoothly, then try employing techniques like stress bonding as necessary to see if it helps.

So, I personally think that stressing can be a useful tool, and have personally used car rides etc. to get past rough patches. But I think it should be used judiciously and based on the buns you are working with. In a case where the buns are very aggressive towards each other, I think stressing can be really helpful.

I think the times where it can lead to a “fake” bond is when 24/7 stressing is used, and the buns are just so stressed they don’t behave normally at all, and then the human deems them “bonded” because they stopped fighting. I personally had 1 bond break where I was using a small space method and 24/7 bonding from the start. One of the buns was very timid and basically just shut down. They basically got to a tolerance phase that lasted 5 months, and then a bad fight broke out. So in that case, I think a false or only temporary truce had formed, rather than a real bond.

In my other pairs, I have often used car rides, interspersed with normal sessions in larger areas. I’ve found these help the buns realize “hey this other rabbit isn’t so bad” and get past a cycle of immediate aggression. But then they have to have lots of other sessions that are not stressful, to make sure they are not only behaving that way in times of stress.

Some forms of stressing (namely small space bonding for long periods of time with an added stressor) can be considered “flooding”, which used to be a more widely used technique in animal training and socialization, but that is now considered inhumane in most cases. I think part of the push back on stressing is that the rabbit community is catching up to the dog community and realizing that some bonding techniques are inhumane.

The type of stressing you used sounds very in line with what I’ve used and had good success with. I think the conversations about fake bonds and inhumane treatment are more related to extreme cases of prolonged stressing during bonding. I like to stick to types of stress that are within the normal range of what a rabbit could encounter. For example, a car ride or a walk-about in a carrier is something that rabbits have to do sometimes, such as for a vet visit, so I don’t consider that to be in humane.