Help with my bunny!

[Harry123]

I have had my a 3 year old male, neutered bunny for a couple months now. I rescued him from a terrible situation where he was starved, and kept in a hutch. I don’t know much about his past home other than that, but I suspect something traumatic happened to him, because although he has gotten better, he is very cautious and will run away if he hears a very loud noise or if I pet him anywhere near his stomach, or try to pick him up for that matter. He. Hates. Being. Picked. Up. He is very social though, and will come up and say hi to me, and give me lots of kisses. I keep him in an extremely large x pen with his wife who he loves dearly 🙂 the only thing is, he doesn’t really like to be pet and he HATES being held. I understand there are some bunnies that just don’t like to be pet,  and it is natural instinct for bunnies to hate being held, but is there any way I can train him to be more bonded to me, and at least tolerate being held? I am very understanding that he probably had severe trauma from his last home, and I will definitely be patient with him! Thank you in advance!

-Claire

[Bam]

Practically all rabbits hate being picked up. Most also heartily dislike being held. You know this already, but I do think all your bun needs is more time. It is of course important that he associates you with nice things like food and treats and for example unconditional headrubs.

A bun that has a bonded partner tends to be less demanding of human interaction.

It is difficult to train a bun to accept being handled. I do think the best thing is to slowly gain the bun’s trust with treats and love and by only very rarely picking it up. Buns that need to be handled a lot due to health problems will eventually become used to the procedure, but its very stressful for quite some time (often weeks) before the bun realises that putting up a fight is useless. You sometimes see people recommend frequent handling in order to make the bun accepting of being handled, but it may result in the exact opposite thing. With poorly buns we have to, of course, but that is a different situation and the rabbit has something to gain from it (medicine, wound care etc).

 

[Hazel]

All rabbits hate being picked up. I wouldn’t try to force him to accept it, as Bam said, it’s very stressful for them and there are better ways to deal with handling them if the situation demands it (training them to go into a carrier for example). So there’s really no need to put them through that. Most likely you would just end up eroding the trust he has in you.

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