Sulking

[Lippy]

OJ has taken to sulking in his house and I don’t understand why.  He’s never been particularly friendly – he doesn’t like being picked up but he will tolerate (and enjoy) a nose rub, but recently (last week or so) he’s started avoiding us completely. 

He spends all day in his house while we are at work, but he’s freed every evening for about 4-5 hours and he has all weekend to run around as well.  He used to come into the lounge to play and sit with us – he was just starting to jump on my lap etc.  But now he just comes out for a couple of minutes, has a nose around, looks at his toys and goes back to his house for the rest of the evening. 

He loves ripping newspaper, yellow pages and chewing cardboard and there are plenty of other toys around for him to play with, but he doesn’t seem interested.  If we try and play with him or talk to him he just runs away, although he will groom my boyfriend for a few seconds in the evening. 

I don’t know if this is a phase and something he’ll grow out of (he’s about 6 months old) or if he’s angry with us because we had him neutured (four weeks ago) and made him stay at the vets overnight .  I’m just worried as he’s not getting much exercise and is not interested in become friends with us any more.

Maybe he’s lonely, we thought about bonding him but we don’t really have the space for a new bunny at the moment or the time available to spend bonding them regularly plus he has a teddy for a friend but he’s totally not interested in it. 

Any ideas for what we can do or why he might be behaving in this way?

[poopy]

Maybe there is a health problem. Is he eating and drinking normally?

[Lippy]

We can barely get him to stop eating – there doesn’t seem to be anything actually wrong with him except that he’s sulking! I’m sure he’s OK, but it was such a change in his behaviour that I was a little worried.

[Lucy]

has your environment changed? have you guys changed your schedual around? anything around the house change? less light? different temp. in the apartment? I noticed once that I started using a new lotion, and Fujoe wouldn’t come near me.. I know that sounds odd, anything that you might put on or in your body that might change your chemical balance and freak him out? I would see if any of this stuff happened.

also, fujoe went through that stage though.. for a few weeks kept to himself and then *binky* he was fine. so I wouldn’t be that worried about him unless he wasn’t eating.. also the bear, oj might not like the texture of it.. I found out that fujoe likes his stuffed rabbit but not cookie monster, maybe put in another one with different fur and see what happens.

[BinkyBunny]

Is he still sulking?  If so, maybe you can entice some activity by getting a few boxes and cutting holes in them.   Put them right outside of his cage/pen to encourage exploration.   You could even put a tiny bit of his favorite treat in little holes on the upper sides of the box to get him up and moving.

keep us updated.

 

[Lippy]

He appears to have stopped sulking and taken a turn for the destructive (I’m not sure which is worse!). Just to make you all laugh – he has a fascination with getting behind the bookshelf so we currently have boxes in the way to stop him getting there – he DESTROYED these, and I mean destroyed. Then he started trying to dig his way through to the downstairs flat so we put his grass mat there to protect the carpet, a mat I might add, that he’s shown mild interest in only. Within 5 minutes there was nothing left and our flat looked like some scene from a horror movie – cardboard, grass, hay scattered everywhere!! Think I preferred him when he was sulking!

[Gravehearted]

he sure sounds like a teenager to me! one day sulking and the next ripping everything apart!

I’ll echo binky’s advice to give him a phone book, new boxes and anything else that might keep him entertained. my kids really enjoyed the bordem buster box (as binky described – there’s more details on how to make it on the site)

[Author]

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