Need help with aggression

[Yuyu]

I adopted a 6 month old Florida White doe rabbit back in the end of August. I have two children, very young aged 3 and 18 months and a little dog who is great/indifferent with small animals.

For a few months she was really great. She had free roam of the house (living room/dining room anyway) all day even when we weren’t home until bedtime. Then we’d put her in her 4ft dog crate. She used the litter box great.

Fast forward to about two months ago. She starts to get really aggressive with my kids and the dog, all of which actually don’t pay much attention to her or bother her. The final straw was she ran from literally across the room and bit my son right on his shoulder while he was playing!

My husband is not happy about this all of course and wants her gone now.

So I buy her an x-pen to attach to the cage for now and only let her out when they are in bed, so only 1-2 hours a day. I feel awful.

I call the vet, make the appointment to have her spayed… Soonest they can get her in is June!!

So now we’re just waiting on that and hoping and praying it fixes the issue. Well now she decides that she isn’t box trained anymore when she is let out. She’s destroying my home. She’s destroying my relationship.

I tried to put her on Craigslist with no luck. A bunch of breeders or people who think it’s okay to keep them outside.

I contact multiple rescues, even really far away (6+ hours round trip drive!) And no one can take her.

I don’t know what to do. If it was a dog biting my kids it would be gone already. Please help me.

[LBJ10]

Unfortunately, this is why a lot of rabbits are taken to shelters or dumped. I’m not saying you would do such a thing, I’m just saying that what you’re experiencing is not uncommon and for some people it is a breaking point. It’s very sad because many people don’t realize that a lot of this can be resolved by spaying or neutering. I’m glad you have done your research and you know that spaying is the way to go.

She’s a larger breed, which means they mature a bit later. Right now, she is probably flooded with hormones. She isn’t trying to be mean, she is simply overwhelmed with the urge to claim her territory and defend it. Restricting her access is probably your best bet right now. Having a couple of hours of playtime each day for the next few months isn’t going to be the end of the world. To make things better for her, you could expand her enclosure by attaching an exercise pen to her crate. You could get a low pile rug or linoleum remnant (covered with fleece) to protect the floor. Once she is spayed, you should be able to retrain her to use the litter box.

June does seem like a long time to wait. Is it because of COVID-19 concerns? Perhaps you could call some of the shelters and ask what vet they use for their rabbits? There may be another place you can get her into sooner. Just make sure they have experience with rabbits.

[Hazel]

Completely agree with LBJ, this is probably the number one reason people dump their rabbits. They don’t realize that spaying/neutering is pretty much mandatory for pet rabbits and once the poo (or even pee) hits the fan, the rabbit must go. I don’t know who you got her from, but they should have talked to you at length about the importance of getting her fixed, not only because of the behavioral problems you’re dealing with now, but also because intact females have an above 80% chance of developing reproductive cancer by the age of 3 or 4.

As LBJ said, until she’s been spayed and her body has had a month to drain all those hormones, there isn’t much you can do besides restricting her free roam time and keeping the children away from her.

It’s very important for you to remember that this isn’t her fault, she’s a slave to her hormones right now and is only doing what any other intact rabbit would.

[Wick & Fable]

I’m sorry to hear about what’s going on, and to everyone’s point, yes. The frustration and distress is absolutely real, and at the same time, she does not intend for that to be happening. I agree that for now, making a semi-permanent (as in until she is spayed and recovered) restricted space (i.e.  dog crate open attached to large Xpen(s)) can be a solution. If she starts pen rattling, something helpful can be clipping a bed sheet to the outside of the pen so she can’t see the other side:

It’s important it’s just on the outside, as fabric inside will probably be chewed up/used to climb up the pen. If she tries to chew the outside fabric, you can put cardboard between the fabric and pen to stop that.

In addition to delineating her own space, I’d up the enrichment by providing more toys she enjoys (so not toys she ignores, but things she has actually shown interest in; willow baskets, wood chews…) and also try and get some energy out by feeding her pellets in a more active way, like a pellet ball. Provide multiple litter boxes in there to make it easier for you and encourage her to eat hay/use the litter boxes. Just make sure with all these things there is space for her to move around freely and exercise as much as she likes.

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.

[Wick & Fable]

I also wonder if you ask talk to your vet, if you can get the appointment moved up. I know many vets are only doing emergency procedures, so perhaps if you inform them that your rabbits hormonal behavior has actually been a bit dangerous for your family/kids, maybe they will try to squeeze her in sooner.

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.

[Susanne]

Where do you happen to be located? I wonder if you were willing to drive to far away shelters you could find a vet a little farther away? I wouldn’t want to have them too stressed or gone too long, but after the surgery I think they are still out of it for a couple hours anyway. I also wonder if the kids and dog are scaring her unintentionally(mine freak out if I move too fast) so if you have maybe a large area you can block or one room just for her to keep her feeling safe vs out free roam but still have enough space.

[DanaNM]

You’ve been given some really great advice so far, just wanted to offer some encouragement that it most likely will get much better after spaying! I volunteer at a shelter and we often have rabbits surrendered that are unspayed and are just MESSY, smelly, and kind of crazy. After spaying they calm wayyyyy down and box habits return. So don’t loose hope.

So if you can tough it out and hopefully find a vet that can do it sooner, that would be great.

Some rabbits also just aren’t suited to free-roaming, especially when they are in their teenage years. You all might be much less stressed if you can create a space that is 100% bunny proofed that she can exercise in. If you could have an x-pen attached to her crate that she can be in 24/7, and then let her out into a larger room to get her zoomies out twice a day (even if just for 30 min or an hour morning and evening), she will be quite content. I know it’s not the most ideal, but it will be better than the situations many rabbits end up in (especially if you re-home via craigslist), and will help you get through this rough time.  Young children and rabbits are often a tough mix anyway, so for a while it would probably be safest for the bunny if they are kept separate.

I’m currently living with my in-laws with my 4 bunnies, and I bunny-proofed a room by putting down a sheet of vinyl and some of that indoor/outdoor carpet with plastic sheeting under it. So maybe you could do something like that under her pen? Then messes from poor box habits will be easier to clean up as well.

Hormones aside, some bunnies can also get territorial when they are 100% free-roam and don’t have their own space, as they feel like they need to defend everything. So you might find that with that set-up she calms down a bit.

. . . 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.  

[Yuyu]

I really appreciate all the encouragement and help! Especially for the cage rattling help, I would have never thought to clip a sheet!

We have a x-pen hooked around her crate right now. She gets 1-2 hours out when the kids go to bed and that’s it.

She’s pretty neat inside the crate/pen area keeping her pee in the box but she has started pooping all in the x-pen area and her little rug. When she’s out she will poo and pee on the couch (I got a water spray bottle to deter her from getting on the couch). But other than that just a little poo here and there outside the pen. It doesn’t bother me too much but it really grosses my husband out. The poo isn’t really gross I think it’s the pee that’s gross lol

I bought her a short hallway runner rug for her to lay on and she has this big cat scratcher tunnel she likes to chew on.

I will definitely look into a pellet ball! That sounds great! And some other enrichment so she’s not bored.

She does know when I’ve put the kids to bed which is pretty funny. She will start pacing up and down the pen and making a grunting sound. It’s like a grunt/beep noise. Then I let her out. I lure her back in with fresh greens when it’s time for us to go to bed.

I just hope it’s enough space and enough time out. It’s 8 panels 2ft wide and I have it clipped on each side of the crate. The crate is 42″ and has a huge litter box (I had to get a high rise one because she likes to kick everything in there) and a big cardboard box on its side she chews. And her hay rack is clipped on the side.

She has lost some interest in her hay also, any tips here? I buy the high quality stuff Oxbow timothy/orchard mix. Thanks guys!!!

[LBJ10]

The pen you have sounds like it’s a good size. Believe me, hormonal pee is kind of gross. LOL  The poop doesn’t bother me though because they are strict herbivores. It’s not like there is anything potentially nasty in their poop (like a dog or cat). Rabbit poop is perfectly acceptable for compost to be used in a vegetable garden.

Hay can be tricky sometimes. It could be anything from them being bored with it to that particular batch is a bit “off”. You could try a new bag that smells fresher, then mix the old hay with the new so it doesn’t go to waste. You could also try a hay topper, like dried herbs, willow leaves, or similar. The different smells and tastes create interest.

[DanaNM]

Ooh I agree that hormonal pee is the worst! And hormonal poops are smellier too! We had this gorgeous unspayed female at the rescue (this cow-spotted standard rex named Lady Bun Bun)… and she was gorgeous but OMG was she smelly!

All of that sounds like territorial marking, so hopefully it will get better once she’s spayed. The couch peeing can be tricky even with castrated buns, as the soft texture and strong smell of humans can trigger marking. You might want to invest in a second x-pen to block the couch off when she’s out and about for now, just to make sure the habit of peeing on it doesn’t get too ingrained.

. . . 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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