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Advice for someone I work with.

helgalush

Wise Old Thumper
Hi :wave:

I found out today that a lady I work with has a 1 year old unspeyed lionhead rabbit that is being very aggressive towards her. She cant pick her up because the bunny runs away and scratches and bites etc.

I advised her to get the bunny neutered as I thought hormones could be a big reason for the aggression and also to prevent uterine cancer. Is there any other advice I could give her?

We talked about the right way to pick the bunny up and she is going to try and practice that. And she said she would speak to a vet about getting her neutered.

The other thing was that she says that the bunny is in with a guinea pig and I said straight away "oh no they shouldnt be together" but then she said that they get on really well - the rabbit "mothers" the guinea pig and licks her and the guinea pig squeaks like mad when the rabbit isnt present. So it sounds like they are really bonded. Though she did say she would think about getting another guinea pig for the guinea pig and then said I could have the rabbit! Not sure how serious she was.

She is a really lovely lady and I dont want to be patronising to her or offend her, but if anyone has some ideas as to what I could say to help...?

Thanks
Helen
 
I'd probably suggest to her that she starts taking things quite slowly and focus on getting the bun used to people rather than trying to get it to accept being picked up straight off the bat. She needs to teach it that people = nice things. If she can avoid handling it or doing anything that'll reinforce the idea that humans are unpleasant to be around she can then start tempting it with tasty things, maybe sitting quietly on the floor and if the bun comes to investigate it gets a treat with no pressure to be touched.

We had a quite aggressive doe and this method worked wonders on her. She never really liked being picked up but we never did it unless it was absolutely necessary and she learned to tolerate it without taking chunks out of people!!!
 
I'd probably suggest to her that she starts taking things quite slowly and focus on getting the bun used to people rather than trying to get it to accept being picked up straight off the bat. She needs to teach it that people = nice things. If she can avoid handling it or doing anything that'll reinforce the idea that humans are unpleasant to be around she can then start tempting it with tasty things, maybe sitting quietly on the floor and if the bun comes to investigate it gets a treat with no pressure to be touched.

We had a quite aggressive doe and this method worked wonders on her. She never really liked being picked up but we never did it unless it was absolutely necessary and she learned to tolerate it without taking chunks out of people!!!

Thank you. That seems really obvious now that I think about it, because although Twinkle and Star werent aggressive, they were very shy and skittish, so had to build up slowly to get their trust (we still are actually!).

I think I overheard her saying that she has to pick the bunny up to take her from her hutch to her run...

Perhaps I should suggest she use a carrier in the meantime, if she has one, though it can be just as tricky trying to do that cant it?
 
If she needs to carry the bun between her hutch and run I'd probably suggest she tries and gets the bun to willingly go into the carrier itself. I'm sure something super tasty would be enough to entice the bun into the carrier of it's own accord and if it gets a reward each time it goes in I don't think it'd be long before it was quite an easy operation to get bun into carrier then move it to wherever it needed to be.
 
If she needs to carry the bun between her hutch and run I'd probably suggest she tries and gets the bun to willingly go into the carrier itself. I'm sure something super tasty would be enough to entice the bun into the carrier of it's own accord and if it gets a reward each time it goes in I don't think it'd be long before it was quite an easy operation to get bun into carrier then move it to wherever it needed to be.

Great advice, thank you. :wave:
 
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