Recovering from Bonding Pause

[BeanMode]

I think most of us hit road bumps while bonding yes? For us we’ve hit a few recently (some bunny related and some human health related- the sorts of things we can’t always plan for) that have meant for about a month we haven’t been able to do dates for as long or as frequently as before. We were at a point where we were doing 4 or so hours at a time twice over the weekend, and hour long ones during the week. But lately we’ve only been able to do a few hour long ones ever week and even had to put a pause on switching xpens when one bun learned he could get out by climbing on the hide box (fortunately the other xpen is slightly taller and he couldn’t get out of that one) and until we figured out a feasible solution to that we could only switch stuff from pen to pen, not the buns themselves.

We finally figured out a solution to that and start switching them between xpens again- and we get a return of some territorial behavior, urinating outside the litterbox, from one of them. I have no doubt it’s the result of the humans not able to keep up with things, and especially not being able to switch them from pen to pen- it just feels very discouraging right now, like we’re back at step one. I’m trying to keep myself high spirited and have faith it’ll all work out because I know if I go into a bunny date feeling crummy about it the buns aren’t going to respond well. For anyone that has ever had to pause bonding, or seen some steps backwards in terms of behavior, do things tend to bounce back quicker the next go around or should I be prepared for potentially just as much time with territorial behavior and needing to work them entirely back through that?

[tannr]

I have had a lot of stops and starts with the bonding that I am doing right now, and haven’t gotten as far as you have yet, but I have noticed that when I do pick up and start to be more consistent it takes less time for those negative behaviors to pass and the buns are quicker to interact kindly and will remain calm around each other for longer periods of time.

[Author]

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