Furbaby adventures: Bunny bonding; friends at last…

Our two rescued rabbits are doing very well. We’ve had them for several months now and can’t imagine our life without them. I will have to say that Oreo (netherland dwarf rabbit) our first rescue has made a lot of positive changes. Initially, I mentioned that she had not been socialized when I adopted her from the Humane Society of Harford County. She was over a year old, when we rescued her and really didn’t like to be held. Fast forward a few months and she grew to love the interaction.

But even though she loved interaction with us, she still wanted no parts of Gracie, our lionhead rabbit. Female rabbits can be very aggressive with other rabbits of the same sex. This means, it can take a long time before they’ve bonded and some times the bonding never happens. Although I was hoping for a positive outcome for both of them, I’d already accepted that friendship might not happen. We received Gracie, perhaps a month after we’d adopted Oreo. You can read about Gracies’s rescue here. Because of this, their time together was heavily supervised.

Those who’ve followed my site, remember the images I posted of Gracie, shortly after she was attacked by Oreo. That encounter required laceration surgery, and back to square one we went with their bonding. After several months of restrictive bonding sessions, this is where we’re at now…

I will say even though it was challenging, making the time for Oreo to feel comfortable with another female rabbit has been worth all the extra effort! They’ve been hanging out for the past few weeks. I still monitor them, but I’m not physically holding Oreo to make sure she doesn’t lunge at Gracie anymore. Gracie is a lot bigger than Oreo. She could easily hurt Oreo if she really wanted to but all along she simply wanted to be friends. But, we had to wait on Oreo until she was comfortable.