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Female becoming over protective of her partner

egg

Warren Scout
Hi

I've noticed this for a few months now but it's getting worse. My female rabbit, Shimmer, who is the submissive one and is normally very gentle and sweet is becoming extremely over protective of Charlie to the point where she will lunge and now bites anyone who tries to stroke him.

This is such a shame as Charlie is the biggest softy ever and loves attention and fuss but we are afraid to stroke him while Shimmer is around (most of the time).

Sometimes when I go to give Charlie a head rub I can see Shimmer is not happy with it even before she's attacked me. She has a look about her and she sort of tenses up as if she's really uncomfortable with us stroking him. I don't think it's jealousy as Shimmer doesn't like to be touched, never has done. She likes our company but hates to be stroked or touched in any way by humans. She wasn't a rescue rabbit and had a fairly happy life before we brought her home and she's very affectionate with us by licking us and sort of hanging around us, provided we don't touch her.

I know part of the solution is to give Charlie attention separately but is there anything I can do about this over protective aggression? We want to give Charlie as much love as we can as I think he's very old (we don't know his age/background) and he clearly loves it as he sort of melts into the ground when we stroke him.

Any tips about this please?

Thanks xx
 
Hi

I've noticed this for a few months now but it's getting worse. My female rabbit, Shimmer, who is the submissive one and is normally very gentle and sweet is becoming extremely over protective of Charlie to the point where she will lunge and now bites anyone who tries to stroke him.

This is such a shame as Charlie is the biggest softy ever and loves attention and fuss but we are afraid to stroke him while Shimmer is around (most of the time).

Sometimes when I go to give Charlie a head rub I can see Shimmer is not happy with it even before she's attacked me. She has a look about her and she sort of tenses up as if she's really uncomfortable with us stroking him. I don't think it's jealousy as Shimmer doesn't like to be touched, never has done. She likes our company but hates to be stroked or touched in any way by humans. She wasn't a rescue rabbit and had a fairly happy life before we brought her home and she's very affectionate with us by licking us and sort of hanging around us, provided we don't touch her.

I know part of the solution is to give Charlie attention separately but is there anything I can do about this over protective aggression? We want to give Charlie as much love as we can as I think he's very old (we don't know his age/background) and he clearly loves it as he sort of melts into the ground when we stroke him.

Any tips about this please?

Thanks xx

Hope you get some advice. I wonder as a newbie if we could encounter a similar thing when we have two. Have they been together long?
 
Thanks Bluesilver. They have been together for a year and one week but it only started happening over the last few weeks or months.

I'm worried it might be that Charlie is coming to the end of his life and somehow Shimmer can sense it and is trying to protect him. We believe he is very old as he has no muscle tone, sleeps a lot and wanders around as opposed to darts about like his younger partner. We rescued him just over a year ago but nothing was known about his age or his past, other than he was thrown out in a car park :(
 
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