It has been a long, challenging process, but I'm happy to report that Brayden and Tulip have finally bonded!
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Things looked promising back in November when we brought Tulip home. Little did we know that it would take five months and an insane amount of work to bond these two. After a month of fights and little progress, we hired a professional bunny bonder. The rabbits made a small amount of progress, but not nearly as much as we'd hoped. Brayden was acting territorial and was clearly nervous around Tulip, frequently snapping at her; Tulip was acting bossy and would not respect Brayden's clues that he was upset.
In February, we completely rearranged our furniture in hopes that changing the environment would eliminate Brayden's territorial behaviors and give us a fresh start. Each rabbit had their own large x-pen (16 square feet), which opened into a common play space.
For two hours each morning and two hours each evening, I let them into the place space to interact. I followed them closely, petting them and soothing them as they approached each other, either cautiously (Brayden) or boisterously (Tulip). My attention was on them every second, because that's all it took for a scuffle to break out. Scuffles were fairly frequent at first, but true fights with fur flying were rare. Over the course of the bonding process, I broke up a total of four fights. (And I was bitten three times.)
I really wanted this bond to work, so I kept at it. Each day, there was a little bit of progress, which is the only thing that kept me going. We expanded the play space and introduced new toys one at a time. Soon, I could trust both buns not to lunge at each other if I wasn't right there. That was a huge relief.
As I continued to work with them, Brayden and Tulip were showing more and more signs that bonding was near. They wanted to be together and were approaching each other frequently.
Up until this point, I had closed their individual cages when they came into the common play area, so that each had a "safe zone" that the other had never been in. Then one day, Tulip zipped into Brayden's cage before I could close it. She explored every inch as Brayden watched. He didn't seem to mind, so I let him into her cage. Same thing. He explored every inch and it didn't bother Tulip. From then on, I kept both cages open during playtime and continued to supervise closely.
In mid-March, it clicked. The scuffles ended. Brayden started grooming Tulip, having accepted her as the dominant bun. And once he did that, she returned the grooming. I still supervised all their joint playtime just in case, but I could actually relax on the floor with a magazine instead of following them around constantly. Of course, if you put a magazine on the floor, you're going to have a bunny helper. Brayden was highly interested in this article about green foods - some of his favorites!
Another thing that happens when you're on the floor with rabbits - you become a jungle gym.
As the weeks have passed, the buns are spending more time together and we're supervising less frequently. There have been no issues. They choose to spend most of their time near each other. We separate them when we leave the house and when we're sleeping, just in case. Eventually, that will change. Our plan is to increase their play area to include the entire living room and dining room and make sure that's ok. If it is, we'll put our dining room back together and they'll be together 24/7 as the true house rabbits they deserve to be.
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