Hi! I am a longtime lurker on Binky Bunny and am finally making my first post! We have an approximately 4 year old, altered male rescue bun. We adore him, but would like to adopt a dog who can go on hikes and runs with us. We have done a TON of research on introducing dogs and rabbits, but most of what we have found seems to focus on bold, confident rabbits. Our bun is mostly chill, but skittish at times. We found a wonderful rescue dog who has experience with rabbits and are preparing for a meet and greet to see whether it’s a good fit. In preparing for the meet and greet, we swapped blankets with the dog’s foster mom so that the animals could get used to each other’s scents (we’re giving them over a week for this step). We live in a building with lots of dogs, and their barking and scents don’t seem to bother our bun at all normally. While we weren’t expecting our bun to immediately start grooming the dog’s blanket, when we brought the blanket home, he didn’t react as well as we thought. He was kind of running around and thumped (but only twice throughout the entire evening, which isn’t bad compared to a typical thumping duration). Everything we’ve read indicates that the dog’s temperament is really what defines how successful a dog-rabbit relationship can be, but now we’re really worried that our bun is just too scared for this to ever work out. We live in an apartment where it would be possible to keep the rabbit in our large bedroom and keep the dog in the other living areas. Do you all have any thoughts or advice? Can we overcome this and make it work with a super slow introduction process, or is there no way our bun will ever get used to a dog if this is how he reacts to the blanket? We don’t expect them to be best friends and will never leave them alone unsupervised—just looking for peaceful coexistence and don’t want to subject our bun to a high stress environment that he will never get used to.
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