It's not so much about the smell - as about the 'texture' of what bunny is sitting on i'm afraid. Some buns like to pee on a soft bed! :roll:
We have had this problem with our female bun since we adopted her - there were 'many' reasons for her peeing on her bed, one of them simply being that it 'felt nice'! :lol:
We solved each issue one at a time by a process of elimination (if you pardon the pun! :lol
and the final one to prevent her from peeing on the bedding in the hutch was to keep it away from the corners! So instead we have the vet bed/blanket bed at the front of the hutch both upstairs and downstairs but atleast 3-4 inches from touching the back or sides of the hutch - that solved one of the peeing issues.
She only pees now on her bed if her routine is disrupted in some way or she is overtired and can't be bothered to hop to her litter tray in the middle of the night! :roll: Insecurity played a very large part - but this is just us and our situation and our particular rabbit.
Re positioning the litter tray to a 'safe' location in her eyes also helped as did having two litter trays in the hutch - upstairs and downstairs. Around the house and on the 'soft' rugs and blankets she never does it - only in her hutch.
I think there is an aspect of 'risk' involved. Does tend to spend more time in the burrow in the wild I think and 'surfacing' to use the latrine requires a certain risk - braving predators. Droppings are used to mark territory and therefore worth depositing on the latrine - I think they would also attract predators and fill up the burrow rather over time! But urine in an emergency will soak into soil or sand and not cause a problem if the doe doesn't feel the risk of surfacing is worth it. I must say - these are my
own theories and not a definite description of what happens in the wild - I could be WAY OFF and probably am!
:lol: