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.