Bonding two bonded pairs?

[TheFlyingDutchbun]

Hi all,

I’ve been lurking around and am finally coming out of my den. Here’s the situation: we are fairly new to the rabbit world. Our first bun, a tiny elder Dutch named Beatrix Hopper, came to us after we found her in the backyard of a house we were visiting with our realtor — she’d been abandoned in her tiny wire hutch weeks earlier to starve to death. Over the past six months with us, she’s gone from near-death (for real) to becoming the queen of our household. Our lives revolve around our two-pound, arthritic and blind bundle of love.

We bonded her with our second rescue bun, a youngish mini-lop. His name was William S. Burrows, but we quickly rechristened him HODOR! because he’s, well, very sweet and not so bright. They get along very well, and he’s helped her learn to be a real bunny (he taught her to thump).

Of course, this afternoon we are about to bring a second bonded rescue pair in — we don’t know much about them yet, but their current people describe them as a sweet Flemmie and a bossy lionhead. While our cat will be permanently p.o.’d about this, we’re interested in bonding the rest of the group. We love Bea more than anything but odds are that HODOR! will outlive her, and we’d like them to have more friends *if* it’s best for them.

The current setup: our two buns are free-roam in our living room, with their 8×4′ home base in the adjacent dining room. (Which we don’t use as a dining room now, clearly.) We’ll keep the new pair downstairs, completely separate from Bea and H. Obviously they need at least a couple weeks on their own to settle in while we get them vetted, sexed, possibly altered (no one knows if they’re fixed), etc etc.

I would love any suggestions from folks who’ve bonded two pairs about how to start setting things up for success. My biggest concern is Bea: she is so tiny and honestly pretty frail, despite her outsized attitude — I could never put her in any kind of dangerous or overly stressful situation that could hurt her health. A slippery bathtub scares me with her arthritis. (She had a heart murmur and bad liver problems when we got her, both of which have resolved now that she is fed and not in body shutdown mode, but the girl’s been through so much.) I’m definitely reading tan’s blog, but I’d love thoughts and suggestions moving forward. Thank you all!

[Boing]

I’ve one bun, so I can’t help with the bonding questions. I just wanted to say that I *love* the name “Beatrix Hopper”, and Dutch bunnies are my favorite!

Hopefully someone with bonding experience will chime in here.

[Author]

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