Bunny Marking My Bed?

[Lykan]

Hello all!

I’m new here, so thank you all for your patience if this has already been asked somewhere! I adopted a bun about a month ago. He’s been an absolute dream for the most part, but for a couple of reasons I decided to move his enclosure. He was originally right beside my bed, and has just been moved to the adjacent room. I put the enclosure in a spot where he already lounges a lot (he free roams most of the time), and he seems excited about the move so far!

My question is: will he still consider my room that to be his territory? A big reason that I moved him was because he likes to jump up on my bed (very cute) and pee on it (not cute). I was hoping that moving his cage to another room would help to stop him from thinking of my room and everything in it as rightfully his, at least to the point where he stops trying to mark my bed… I would hate to shut him out of the room altogether, but right now it’s looking like the only option, as every source I’ve found on getting rabbits to stop peeing on the bed either tries to tell me how to remove the smell or says not to let them on the bed at all, which would be easy if he weren’t very big, very good at jumping, and very determined to be on it.

Overall, I’m hoping that him seeing my room less as “his” and more as a neutral/secondary space might make him less inclined to try to claim my bed. Is this a realistic hope? Are there any alternatives (options aside from blocking off the bed) that you would suggest?

Additional details: he is 8 months old, he is neutered and has been for about 3 weeks now, I currently have no other rabbits that he would be competing for territory with, he is very well litter-trained and has never peed outside of the litterbox (except when he’s on my bed)

[Bam]

It could subside, since he’s only been neutered 3 weeks (it takes time for the hormones to die down) and it is early spring right now, when even neutered rabbit’s become more sexually interested (“March hare syndrome”). I would block off the bed and keep it so for several weeks in the hope that he forgets about it.

For a rabbit, the bed has a strong and lovely scent of you though. For a rabbit that means the bed is an important place, and they like to mark important places.

[Lykan]

Thank you! I’ve raised the bed and he no longer seems confident that he can jump up on it, so at least as of now it looks like blocking off the bed has worked out really well!

[Author]

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