Emotional Problems

[pinkiemarie]

Hi all! I’ve been posting for a while about my trio bond so I’ll give a quick recap and get to my question.

 

I have 2 bonded neutered males and about 2 years ago introduced a spayed female. All are in the 3.5-5 year old range now. One of my males is a little strange and is also a Polish so he’s only about 2.5 lbs. The reason I have him instead of one of the other babies from his litter is that even as an infant he was just off from normal rabbit behavior. He would go off exploring by himself while the other two babies huddled and hid and my friend wasn’t sure if she could handle a rabbit with such an unusual personality. So, he basically is Joe Pesci. He was very aggressive towards the female during the first year I had her which really slowed dating and bonding attempts. He broke into her play area once and she almost killed him.

 

Over the last 6 months he has really calmed down with her and never shows aggression towards her and I’ve had progress with each of them grooming each other, however the female tends to bite him and it scares him (and frankly scares me after she almost killed him that one time). I took a break and started over recently and it’s been going very well. She is not biting, has made very polite grooming requests and I’ve had about 5 two hours dates where I no longer have to be in the pen, just in the room. They aren’t grooming much but are sitting next to each other politely which seems like good progress.

 

The problem is that the male is very moody. When I started prebonding he went through an emo phase where he just sulked constantly because he didn’t like the smell she left in his litterbox. Now he’s being totally sulky again and has had some issues with his BFF. Their bond hasn’t broken but he has been doing some chasing and humping (which is honestly a little hilarious because the other male is full sized and just keeps running away from this little crazy guy). Normally when I get them up in the morning they’re together but the last few days they have been sitting in separate areas. This morning my little one was being picky about salad, and he’s totally obsessed with salad. He is eating hay so I don’t think he has a tummy ache. I gave them Sat and Sun off, and I’m going to give them today off too but I’m not sure what to do going forward. Do I just make him push through it like he did with prebonding? Do I introduce the 3rd rabbit back into the dates? He was removed because he would hump the female and she would bite the smaller male in retaliation. Do we take a longer break again? I feel like his sulking and behavior towards the other male might mean we’re about to have as breakthrough where he accepts the submissive role with the female but he’s just having emotional problems getting that point and I want him to be ok…

 

[pinkiemarie]

That was longer than I expected. TLDR I think we might be close to a breakthrough but one rabbit is being very sulky and agressive with his bonded partner.

[DanaNM]

Hmmmm that’s tough. I really am not sure, as you know them best. I’m also probably not the best person to advise on this as I’ve just completely given up on my quad LOL.

If you are 100% sure that he is feeling OK, then I think it might be OK to keep pushing… but its possible he’s acting grumpy because he’s in some discomfort that hasn’t fully developed into stasis yet.

If you think you’re close to a breakthrough then it might be good to start working with the full group. But again, who knows what’s going on in those bunny brains!

 

. . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

[pinkiemarie]

I actually ended up giving him a day off and by the end of the day he was being more normal and more normal the next morning as well so we’ve done a couple more dates. No breakthrough yet. I tried not going in the car today and Clover is being more bitey. Sigh.

[pinkiemarie]

Clover has been very good with Ben with only occasional biting so I decided to reintroduce the 3rd rabbit into the dating pool and oh boy… They’re doing really well! Clover likes him a lot so she’s been happy to have him back and she is part time ignoring Ben and part time being nice to him :D. We still have to do a short car ride unfortunately to keep her from biting but hopefully we can stop that soon.

[DanaNM]

I really admire your persistence! It seems to be paying off!

. . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

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