Anti-Aggression Training Phase 1

Having decided that the main problem with trying to bond the bunnies together is Cricket's agressiveness, we are now working on making Cricket like other rabbits and enjoy their company. The first step, associating the clicker to food, is complete. Now working on the second phase, clicking whenever they get close.



Toby inches closer

Decided to start the process with Toby since Toby's proven to be a fast learner and nothing really deters him from eating. He's picked up pretty fast that what I want him to do is stick his face next to Cricket. Unfortunately Cricket has not picked up on the liking Toby by her as quickly. She will sit there and tolerate it, which is a good first step. But she starts nipping after a little bit. I feel bad for Toby since he's just doing what I'm telling him to do and getting nipped at for it. It's at least a start though. This is pretty much what the last week has been. I've read that for rabbits it's better to clicker train in short bursts of 5 minutes in several intervals than to do long training sessions. It seems to hold true. After a bit, Toby will get bored and decide to hang out behind the toilet. Using pellets as their treat inspiration has been great so far though. It's small and convinient.

Another shot of Cricket being tolerant and Toby inching

I think I'll try the banana thing in a week or so - where you put banana on the top of one's head to get the other one to groom. In this case the banana will go on Toby's head. The last time I tried it, Cricket was too scared of Bunny to even come close enough to lick her. Hopefully by a week's time she'll start approaching Toby instead of it just being one-way. Toby really is a very quick learner. He's still maintained his stand-up on command trick even though it's been a week since we clicker-trained that last.

Random picture of Cricket

All in all, things have been progressing slowly but surely. I also increased the size of their x-pens since this process has been taking longer than I was hoping it would. It's kind of sad seeing all of their toys and bunny houses unused and empty in the bunny room.

Waterbonding

Tried out a new method of bunny bonding yesterday per suggestion r/rabbits. Filled the tub with 2 inches of water and put the bunnies in. After a bit, put in a towel to give them some traction on the bottom. This forces them to sit together. This is a method of stress bonding that apparently has had a lot of success without the threat of violence that can occur when using other, more time spanning, methods.

I put Cricket - the most aggressive bunny - in first, then added Bunny - the usual opponent, and then Toby - the chill one. I wanted to make sure that while bonding Cricket and Bunny that the bond between Bunny and Toby didn't break as well. It went pretty much as to be expected, they tried to climb out and slipped around a bunch in the water before settling down next to each other. They were clearly terrified and doing the teeth chattering terror noise - all three of them. Bunny put her head on Toby's back and Toby just seemed like he was in a stage of shock. Cricket kept trying to clean off her paws and bothered Bunny by flicking the water off of her paws and onto her.

After about 20 minutes in the water, I pulled them out and towel dried them. First Toby, then Bunny, then Cricket. I used the same towel to try to transfer scent as much as possible. I put them down together on a towel in the bathroom - which by that point was warm and steamy. It seemed like the method was going to work for a bit. Bunny seemed to want to be friends with Cricket again and ducked her head under Cricket's chin for licks. Cricket just snubbed her and hopped away. I was still pretty hopeful since there hadn't been any biting. After a couple more attempts from Bunny, Cricket started looking like she was going to start nipping but it wasn't anything angrilly agressive like it has been in the past.

I decided to bring them back to the bunny room to do some encouraging clicker training - the idea was that when Bunny approached Cricket I would click and ectect. It would have been much better to do this in the bathroom I think but alas, I didn't think of it beforehand and was clicker-less. I put all three in one of the pens and sat down in the center with the clicker and a bag of dried blueberries. They were all excited and it wasn't terrible at first until Cricket started biting the other bunnies. The cause was most likely that she thought I wasn't giving treats fast enough or that Bunny was taking her treats. But from there it just spiraled downwards into a puddle of fail. Luckily I intervened quickly enough that there wasn't any fur pulled and to the best of my knowledge, all bunnies are injury-free. I can't say the same for my hands or my knees (since I was sitting).

Sigh. I guess I didn't actually expect it to work but the idea of a "quick fix" was so appealing and the way the bunnies were acting straight out of the tub gave me a bit of hope. I do think this tub method has a lot of good aspects to it but unfortunately it won't work while Cricket is inclined to attack everything. So once again, it's time to make Cricket friendlier - via clickertraining - and if all goes well, maybe we can try this method of bonding again in a month or so.

Sorry, no pics of wet buns. I should be better about taking pictures of this process. They were so very miserable and unhappy looking in the tub but at least it would have been a picture of them all together.

The bunny room!

Things have been progressing awesome-ly! The bunny room/library is finally finished!

The bunny room!

The next step is getting them all to love each other so they can permanently live in the room together with bunny love and peace.

Bonding status: The bonding has been going slowly but I now think that the first obstacle to beat is Cricket's angry responses to everything any other bunny does (growling and biting when another bunny goes for a sniff). I will be working mostly with her ClickerBunny style to get her to associate other bunnies with happiness (food = happiness = click = other bunnies = happiness). We are currently at the click = food = happiness stage but she seems to be catching on quickly! She's learned to stand up on her back legs at a hand sign and be rewarded by a click and treat. Again, I'm not sure if this is because of the clicker training that she's picked it up so quickly or if it's because she's naturally inclined to get food as fast as possible but it still can't hurt. Her clicker training sessions have been inside while Toby and Bunny run around outside but soon I'll start clicking for her when she sees the other bunnies/interacts with the other bunnies/sniffs the other bunnies. I've also been trying to make sure that the bunnies don't develop territory issues by swapping them from x-pen to x-pen.

Cricket is still mostly scared being outside and spends most of her time sitting in the dirt against the house but she ventures out a little.

She's also been eating flowers

So I guess overall, progress has been slow but that's nothing new.