Bonding Frankie & Major – Done!

[Dreya T]

Hello! The time has at last arrived.

We’ve had Frankie and Major, both male, since the beginning of September, when Frankie was 13 weeks and Major was 9 weeks old. They’ve lived in separate rooms since we got them. We had them neutered about a month ago, and in preparation for bonding, we’ve given them stunt doubles, which they both seemed to like, and we swapped the doubles over after a week to get them used to the smell of another bunny. In the last two weeks we’ve let them into each other’s rooms, with and without the other bunny present, and they don’t seem too fussed by each other.

We’ve just done bonding session number one, in the bath, with some hay in the bottom.

Session 1: ~10 minutes, 22/12/2010

My husband and I each put a bunny in at the same time. Frankie immediately humped Major. Major just took it. When Frankie stopped, they sat at opposite ends of the bath and ignored each other for a few minutes. They went up to each other and scrapped a couple of times, nothing serious, just running around in circles with one trying to get underneath the other. Major lost some fur, but he’s moulting a little anyway. This happened maybe 3 or 4 times, and we interrupted them once. In between each episode they sat at opposite ends of the bath, looking at each other. Major groomed himself a little bit. We split them up after about 10 minutes because Frankie was trying to jump out of the bath, and he was breathing very heavily. (Frankie does NOT react well to stress.)

Neither of them seemed to like the bath much – hay went everywhere because their feet slipped every time they tried to kick out backwards. But all in all, it was a lot more positive than I was anticipating, as Frankie is a scaredy bun and Major can get quite aggressive at times.

I’ve got the next couple of weeks off work so we’re going to try two bonding sessions every day until just after New Year.

[Deleted User]

that sounds very good! You have a plan, time set aside, and gone through the beginning stages of scent exposure already. You even have a bonding session assistant in your husband by the sounds of it so your bonding should show success soon!
Don’t worry about the stress they felt in the bathtub, it should decrease as they go through more of those meetings. They will get used to the bathtub and even learn to stay in it ~

Petzy

[Dreya T]

Session 2: 30 minutes, 23/12/2010

We put them in the bath at the same time again. They both sat at opposite ends of the bath for a few minutes. They chased each other around for a few minutes, with Frankie trying to get out of the bath. I had to push him back in a few times. After this, they seemed resigned to the bath.

Major kept pushing his nose underneath Frankie. Frankie would ignore him, then try and run away, until they both ended up in the corner of the bath, with Major wedged underneath Frankie. They sat like that for several minutes. We presume they were really cold. :S (Note to self – try and warm up bathroom first.) Major tried to groom Frankie and Frankie ran away. They sat at opposite ends of the bath for about 10 minutes, in which time Major flopped out and then groomed himself all over. After that, Major tried on some number of occasions to groom Frankie, starting with his eyes, which are a bit gunky. Frankie at first just thumped and ran away, but over the next few attempts would sit for longer whilse Major groomed before thumping and running away.

The last time, Frankie sat while Major groomed his face and didn’t move at all. Major eventually hopped away, so we thought we’d end it there, on a positive note.

Have high hopes for this evening’s session.

[Dreya T]

Didn’t manage a session last night, too much going on.

MANY pictures to come from today, with some videos too, once I’ve edited them.

Session 3: 50 minutes 24/12/2010

Started with scuffling between bunnies with them chasing each other around and around in circles. Followed by large period of Frankie sitting with Major’s head underneath him. Major sat with his head lowered for ages, and Frankie seemed content to let Major be underneath him. Major tried to groom Frankie, resulting in lots of scuffles. Both bunnies sat at opposite ends of bath and ignored each other for some length of time. Frankie gets more okay with being groomed the more Major does it, but he does NOT like Major trying to groom his rear. He thumped lots and ran away, resulting in lots more scuffles. Major groomed himself thoroughly before trying to have another groom of Frankie. Ended on a high note, with Major grooming Frankie and Frankie not running away.

Session 4: ~1 hour, 24/12/2010

More of the same, with much less scuffling than morning session. Starting to follow a pattern – bunnies will lie together for extended periods of time. Major will groom himself and Frankie. Frankie is at first very twitchy and will jump when Major touches him. Whilst this gets better with time, when Major tries to groom (presume grooming and not just nipping) Frankie’s rear, Frankie thumps and runs away, ending in scuffles which we think may be both bunnies trying to nip the rear of the other. There was fur EVERYWHERE this evening, but Frankie has a really thick winter coat and we think he’s just moulting a bit.

Frankie does not initiate any contact with Major, he just lies, panting heavily and looking terrified, although he does calm down as the session continues. Major runs around the bath trying to get out for a bit, stops to groom himself, then goes back to trying to groom Frankie.

Towards the end of the session, bunnies both sat down. As an experiment, we pushed them together so that they were touching each other, as they do with their doubles. They sat like this for the rest of the session with no qualms, about anout 10-15 minutes.

Major is taking the whole thing in his stride but Frankie is still extremely stressed. We think that a change of scenery may help. We’ll do a few more days of bath sessions but as there is no serious fighting we think that things are progressing very well. We’d like Frankie to be more proactive about engaging Major but are not sure how to do this – the semi-neutral territory we intend to use is the hallway that Frankie runs around in but doesn’t really seem to like. It may be that Frankie is more confident in a familiar surrounding.

Both bunnies head straight for the door that separates their rooms when we let them out in the morning, and Frankie especially is spending a lot more time with his double. Hoping this means they are getting used to another bunny!

[Deleted User]

Posted By Dreya T on 12/24/2010 03:28 PM session. 

Major is taking the whole thing in his stride but Frankie is still extremely stressed. We think that a change of scenery may help. We’ll do a few more days of bath sessions but as there is no serious fighting we think that things are progressing very well. We’d like Frankie to be more proactive about engaging Major but are not sure how to do this – the semi-neutral territory we intend to use is the hallway that Frankie runs around in but doesn’t really seem to like. It may be that Frankie is more confident in a familiar surrounding.

 

 

This is all VERY good. Frankie will calm down with more time, and as Major becomes more gentle. Frankie is submissive here and this makes the likelihood of real fighting very low.

I think trying them in Frankie’s semi-neutral space is a good idea. I am curious for your next update. I like your journal — it’s concise and yet packed with info, I can just picture them in my head.

[Dreya T]

Thanks, you give me great hope by saying that!

I’ve come down with a rubbish cold, so we didn’t do a session yesterday, but we managed one on Christmas day (a delight to get to spend time with our bunnies on Christmas day.

Session 5: ~1 hour 25/12/2010

Nothing new on previous sessions – some scuffling to start, followed by Major sitting with his nose underneath Frankie. They sat like this for some time. Major groomed himself and Frankie, Frankie got scared and having thumped some, settled down and didn’t move for the rest of the session. We put a bowl of carrots in with them, which Frankie had a sniff at, but then wouldn’t eat, and Major gave them a wide berth for a while but then settled down and ate a whole load of them.

Finally uploaded some pictures, and a video, which is somewhat typical of all sessions so far.

Session begins with Major underneath Frankie:

Major will groom Frankie:

Frankie will sit and not move:

But bunnies will sit amiably for long periods of time towards end of sessions:

[Dreya T]

And here is a video, with apologies for length. I would have cut it down, but then figured it’d be a more accurate representation not to…

[Deleted User]

Frankie is too scared to blink… but when he freaked out they settled down again quickly. Neither seemed to really even nip during the short circle chase. This is very good especially since Major is so interested in Frankie, it will speed up the process. Such close interaction between two rabbits without fighting helps them to figure out each other. Did you place them in the semi-neutral space yet to see if Frankie is more comfortable there?

[Dreya T]

We didn’t manage anything until today, because I’ve been in bed with flu since Boxing Day.

Session 6: 31/12/10 ~1 hour 50. We had a session in the bath this morning. Nothing much to report, more of the usual, Frankie picked up the courage to hop over to Major, and sniffed him a bit, but he got spooked when Major moved before anything great happened. We tried to give them some parsley, and Major ate his, and then hopped over and ate Frankie’s too. Frankie could not be convinced to eat anything. Frankie did groom himself towards the end of the session.

Session 7: 31/12/10 ~5 minutes. We tried them in Frankie’s hallway, in a cage with newspaper on the floor. We thought about covering the sides of the cage but didn’t because we didn’t have enough newspaper. Frankie was much more active – there weren’t the usual circular scuffles, it was all over the cage scuffles within half a minute of putting them in. it could be that there was more room to run around and therefore the usual scuffles were wider. They paused here and there, and Major tried to groom Frankie, but Frankie didn’t want anything to do with Major, he just ran away. There was lots of running around and over each other and it looked there were claws drawn, and we we figured they were properly fighting so I held them down for half a minute to stop them and after that things seemed to calm down briefly.

We stopped the session after less than five minutes because we noticed blood on the floor. We’ve examined both of the bunnies – we think it was Frankie that was swiped – we found some blood on the fur around his neck, but we couldn’t find the injury and neither bunny appears to be bleeding now. We’ll continue to keep an eye on them both for the evening.

What do we do now? Do we go back to the bath? Make the semi-neutral space smaller? Cover it up? Find another semi-neutral space? I’m concerned that the hallway is not as semi-neutral as we would like, but we don’t really have anywhere else to go, and the purpose of using Frankie’s space was to bolster his confidence. I’m hoping they weren’t really fighting, and that there was blood drawn because they were scuffling. Frankie doesn’t seem to be displaying any more dominant behaviour. It seems strange to go to stressing when they were doing so well in the bath.

I’m panicking a little bit – we can’t risk a serious injury over the weekend because a trip to the vet would cost us a fortune. :S

[Dreya T]

Both rabbits are fine this morning, and I appreciate now that I properly panicked. I’ve been reading other journals and it seems a little bit of blood doesn’t mean a huge problem. I think the main problem was way too much space – we put them in a (not especially) semi-neutral space in an enclosure that’s larger than the cages they live in, and the shock of both the big and new space was too much.

We’re taking it back to the bath today, since Frankie seems to be getting better with that, and then we’re going to try the bathroom floor, which is considerably more neutral and just a bit bigger than the bath, and not the vastness of the hall.

*phew* (rookie mistakes, not really a fine art to this, ramble.)

EDIT: Session 8: 1/01/2011 5 hours 40 minutes. (Sheesh.)

Back in the bath. No scuffles to begin with, just Major grooming. There were some scuffles over the course of the first few hours. When they’d run around and mucked up the towels and got their initial squabbles out of the way, I out a litterbox full of hay in with them. Frankie has started to pick up confidence and he didn’t just sit around looking scared. . He waited until Major has flopped, and then he scooted around the bath looking at stuff, and then he sniffed out Major. He looked like he might groom him, and then Major moved and he got spooked. They eventually settled at opposite ends of the bath. Major flopped out and went to sleep, Frankie sat for ages but then groomed himself. (Win!) He eventually flopped out too, the first time he’s done that.

Um… 5 hours is a long time, not a lot happened. Most of the time they just sat, and I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, and they occasionally hopped about a bit. Events worthy of note:

There were several stand offs, where one hopped too fast towards the other, and they stared at each other. Then they both backed off.

Litterbox was a success – completely new box, we bought it the other day and didn’t put any scents in it. Both of them used it, and both of them ate hay – Frankie has not before been okay enough to eat anything.

At one point, when Major was more or less asleep, Frankie hopped over and sat with him.

There was one serious scuffle, where it looked like they were actually having a go at each other, not just the usual sniffing each other. I split them up and stroked them both for a whole.

Frankie got a bit odd on occasion and thumped lots for no reason. Every time major moved he just thumped. Often, Major wouldn’t be doing anything and Frankie would just thump.

As an experiment, we took them out of the bath and put them on the floor in the bathroom at the end of the session. (Last forty minutes) The bathroom floor is semi-neutral territory – we don’t let Frankie in on purpose but he follows us in whenever he can and is familiar with the room. Frankie and Major hopped all over the room, then Major groomed Frankie a bit, and then… then Major started chasing Frankie around, nipping him on the butt. There were huge clumps of fur coming out. We held them both down for a while, and then let them up. After that, Frankie didn’t move much, but every time Major came close, he put his head down and asked for grooms, which Major then didn’t deliver.

We had to put them away eventually. Major was just ignoring Frankie by then.

Both seem willing, but never at the same time. *sigh*

(Apologies for length.)

[Dreya T]

Session 9: 3/01/2011 2 hours

My husband did this session, I popped in and out. Nothing new to report – lots of scuffles early on, but no serious aggression on either side. Frankie is still plucking up courage to sniff out Major and will randomly thump at him for no discernible reason.

Half an hour on floor of bathroom – Frankie was animated when Major was out of sight but tended to freeze when Major was there. Major didn’t try to nip Frankie this time.

[MarkBun]

I know it seems like a long process without any end in sight, but it’ll just take some time. You seem to be doing well though and things do seem to be progressing.

[Dreya T]

Hi! I’m still here! When I went back to work we kind of stopped the sessions because between my husband and me we couldn’t work out how to fit them in. :S Pleased to announce that my husband appears to have some kind of motivation as he is now running sessions whilst I’m out. :p

Sessions are still in the bath, usually an hour or two each, and things are picking up. Frankie does not sit, terrified the whole time. In fact, he is now happy enough to sit and groom himself and will occasionally groom Major. He sometimes follows Major around the bath, not that Major seems to fussed by this. I didn’t see it, but Frankie actually humped Major during the last session. Methinks that Frankie may not be quite the submissive bunny we had both expected.

Happy enough to carry on with bath sessions because Frankie finally appears to be coming out of his shell and we’d like to see what happens next!

[Dreya T]

We have moved to semi-neutral territory, yay!

The first session in our bedroom was much like the first session in the bath, except Frankie knows this area well so he wasn’t a scaredy bun. They went at each other with some ferocity but only fur was pulled, no injuries. We’re pleased with this, things are finally looking up.

[Dreya T]

Frankie is grooming Major!! *jumps up and down like a crazy thing*

[Dreya T]

So…. I realise I’ve been talking to myself on this thread for the last few months, but I like posting my bonding journal anyway. :p

The semi neutral sessions went very well, very quickly, so over the last few weeks we’ve stopped having proper sessions in a box and have (warily) opened the door that separates the two bunnies so that they can come and go as they please. At first this resulted in Frankie getting quite distressed and running around a lot but for the last few days it has been almost impossible to get him away from Major in the evenings to put him to bed. Major has taken the whole thing in his stride. (As usual.)

So today we have put them together for good. We’ve cleaned more or less the whole flat with white vinegar . I have added a second floor to Major’s cage, and they are now in the hallway. They’re still getting the hang of the logistics of the second floor – I hope I designed that okay. :S

There was much running around at first. then Major found the second floor and they flopped for a while. Then Frankie found the second floor and I caught him humping Major, which Major was totally unbothered by. They’ve run around a bit but are generally now cuddling up, with Frankie doing most of the grooming, which is certainly a turn out for the books. (Sorry for the blurry picture!)

We’re going to sleep with the door to our room open tonight to listen for noises, but we’ve got our fingers crossed that we’ve done it.

Two questions – is it likely they’ll scuffle/hump on the odd occasion, without it being a major act of aggression on either part? And is best to leave them in the new cage for 24-36 hours now just to give them time to settle in?

Ta!

 

[jerseygirl]

They look great! Funny, that last pic, you’d think they’d always been best buds.

Two questions – is it likely they’ll scuffle/hump on the odd occasion, without it being a major act of aggression on either part? And is best to leave them in the new cage for 24-36 hours now just to give them time to settle in?

They could have a few little hiccups and that would be totally normal. For some pairs, this might be just part of their relationship. Keeping them in close proximity of one another now will help secure the new bond and also get them familiar with having another there all the time. They’ll learn to navigate around one another.

I often think it’s funny seeing my pair squeeze past one another, sometimes just about sit on each other when going into a hidey-box and neither is bothered. Yet they’re totally aware if a human hand approaches. Jersey use to spook easily when not expecting Rumball to come into a room or space but now they are much more in tune with each others movements.

[Dreya T]

We’ve had them in the cage since Friday night now. The first night was noisy, with some very loud scuffles and Frankie thumping and we got woken up tediously early. This totally settled down yesterday. We’re going to let them out this afternoon. Bonding success!

It’s SO nice having them together at long last! ^_^

And thank you all for your help. It would have been much harder without all the fantastic advice we found on this website.

[mplsbunlove]

Yeah for Frankie and Major. Your success is reassuring – as we have 2 buns that are in the early phase of bonding ourself. Congrats. We are finding ourselves in a place that its hard to find time to bond the buns – in addition to regular play time, kids, spring house work and all the other stuff. It seems to be going slower than we had hoped( doesnt everything…). Hopefully it turns out as yours did- with a happy ending. Happy easter!

[brittbritt]

I like reading this post too as one day I hope to adopt Gabby a husbun to bond with.

[Dreya T]

Ugh – they’ve had some big fights this afternoon and we’ve had to split them up. They were doing absolutely fine right up til then, and they haven’t fought like this for months. No idea what’s going on. Halp?

[jerseygirl]

Oh no Do you still have the separated or have you done some additional bonding sessions with them?

[Dreya T]

They’re still separated. We’re back to square one. *cries*

[jerseygirl]

Oh this is a bummer!

If they fought badly then having a break from one another is not a bad thing. If the fight was not terrible, you can go back a step to what was working well during the bonding and go from there. Perhaps starting with a car ride and then some sessions to follow right after.

Were they fighting in the shared habitat?

[Author]

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