Blind bunny bonding?

[Zoetmuis]

Hello all, I haven’t made any posts on here in a while! Long story short, both of our sweet boys Charlie and Cece have since passed. Just when we had finally decided it was time to get Cece a new friend, he passed away suddenly, leaving us heartbroken. A few days later I discovered our local shelter had just received a rabbit, which is rare for them. We decided to donate any item we could to the shelter for her, but when we came in and met her it was love at first sight. Well, sort of anyway. She had visible trauma to her right eye, obviously completely blind in it. We adopted her (named her Juniper) and took her to our own vet to discover she is actually blind in both eyes! She has a cataract in her left eye, that we had thought was at least semi functioning. She is the sweetest most loving rabbit we have ever met, and is content with just being held and pet while she licks you. She is instantly this loving with new people as well. This is why it was so surprising when a couple of weeks later we rescued a hamster, who terrified Juni! To be fair, we weren’t expecting her to be so upset, so we brought her cage into our bedroom where Juni’s pen is. We assumed she wouldn’t even notice much anyway, since the hamster would be on top of our dresser, she would only be able to smell/hear her, she wouldnt see her or come in contact with her. But the moment Juni smelled her in the room she was terrified and thumping! My boyfriend instantly took the hamster out of the room and into another bedroom. Eventually, we introduced them again, but in neutral territory and while holding Juni (since this is where she feels safest). She was perfectly okay with the hamster! Let her crawl all on her and everything, wasn’t bothered at all. So now after all that backstory, my question is about bonding her with another rabbit. A couple months ago we adopted another rabbit named Benji, a male Netherland dwarf. He is incredibly sweet, but as far as we know has never really been around other rabbits. His previous owner had all dogs, and he even acts like a dog sometimes. We have waited so long to introduce them because Benji is a big ball of energy sometimes and we were afraid he would scare her even more than the hamster. We had to wait a while to get him fixed as well, hoping that would calm him down as well. It’s been two weeks since his surgery and has been given the okay to bond, but I’m still worried about Juni. She is such a timid and loving bunny that I’m worried she’ll be overwhelmed by Benji and get scared, especially since she’s blind and startles easily. Does anyone have any experience with bonding blind bunnies, or even just timid bunnies in general? I don’t want to terrify her and have her scarred for life! But I do want them to get along, this would give them more roaming space. We have thought about still having them sleep/spend the night separately since Juni likes her pen clean and Benji’s a mess, but I would still like them to be able to hang out together during the day. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[CocoaPuff]

Let me preface this by saying I do not have experience bonding bunnies.

I do have experience with blind bunnies.

Blind bunnies are so functional you’d hardly notice they’re blind. Whiskers help a lot with this; however they arent known for their zoomies or extravagant binkies and I understand this. Blind bunnies move around at a pretty easy going pace. It sounds like you have a typical blind bunny and I’m glad she’s so sweet!

However, I definitely would’ve let a blind bunny speed date if I was trying to bond it because some rabbits are more empathetic (I guess you’d say) than others. But this sounds impossible due to your local shelter not having bunnies often.

I strongly encourage two things. The first is that you give it a shot. You can start now with pre bonding, or setting their cages close and swapping them. Blind bunnies usually love having a seeing eye rabbit and the blind bonded rabbits in our shelter do better than non bonded blind rabbits.
The second piece of advice is don’t start bonding dates where they are in physical contact with each other for 3-4 weeks. This is so the hormones in your male can die down. He’s been given the physical okay to bond, but he still has hormones raging through his system and that may be scarier for Juni
I really hope this bond works out because it could make Juni more comfortable and confident. Keep us posted if you decide to try it out!

[Zoetmuis]

Forgot to give an update! We’ve been very busy with a lot of different stuff and postponed introducing Juni and Benji, but we finally did it today! The good news is, Juni wasn’t scared at all like we were afraid she’d be. We held her in our arms to introduce them, so they wouldn’t be in contact with each other. This all went well, they sniffed each other for a long while, and eventually got to where we thought Juni was safe to put down. She seemed just excited to hop around and explore this new neutral territory (the hallway/stair landing), so she didn’t seem interested in Benji much. He followed her around like a lost puppy! We wanted to sniff her and stick his head under her, to let her groom him. When she finally seemed interested in him, she instantly started to hump him! We were so surprised, because she is so calm and zen, we thought if anyone was to be aggressive or hump, it would be Benji. We are unsure of whether she was humping to assert dominance or because she has yet to be spayed. I’m thinking maybe both. We are using this as a push to make us call the vet and finally set up her spay, but I’m still worried. What if she gets spayed and continues this behavior? After we stopped her humping extravaganza, she nipped and growled at him a few times, and this was really upsetting. She doesn’t seem bothered by his presence, but if he gets too close she is aggressive. I’m hoping spaying her will solve most of this problem, but I really don’t know yet ?

[Candace Ford]

I’m following this because I’m in a similar situation. My bunny lost her eye recently and I’d like to bond her.

[LBJ10]

Welcome to BB! This thread is from 2018. I don’t think we have heard from this member since, so we don’t know what the outcome was. If you have questions about bonding, you are welcome to start your own thread. I’m going to lock this thread so as to not cause confusion. We try to discourage people from reviving old threads.

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