Please help! Twinkle [emoji92] still destroying everything

kattymieoww said:

I'm sorry I can't help,but she does look extremely proud of herself in that second pic .My bridge pair were house rabbits and were destucta buns,you just have to do your best to bunny proof things.My pairs favourite pastime was wallpaper stripping..everywhere![emoji38]

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ghibli said:

I don't know if she's playing or if she's frustrated, or if it's anger, but she can do it for hours and and hours at a time.

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I don't think she is doing it because of anger or frustration. It's my experience that rabbits, particularly does, like to re-arrange their environment. My thinking is that they do it to reinforce the feeling that it's their territory. My doe has periods when she will carry large amounts of hay out of her litter tray, pat it down with her paws and sit on it. That seems to be similar to what Twinkle is doing in your photo. In my case it doesn't matter quite so much because they live in a shed, but I can understand how annoying it is when she does it in "your space". This doesn't explain the biting of wires, but this I consider to be normal rabbit behaviour and not much you can do about it other than protecting the wires.

I agree with zoobec that making a room rabbit-proof would seem to be preferable for you, although I imagine you would miss her and she would miss your company.

I'm pleased that she is happier. In your position I would still be minded to try to bond her with another rabbit. You could try to get a "very clean and obsessively tidy" buck in the hope that she would adjust her behaviour

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Omi said:

ghibli said:

I don't know if she's playing or if she's frustrated, or if it's anger, but she can do it for hours and and hours at a time.

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk

I don't think she is doing it because of anger or frustration. It's my experience that rabbits, particularly does, like to re-arrange their environment. My thinking is that they do it to reinforce the feeling that it's their territory. My doe has periods when she will carry large amounts of hay out of her litter tray, pat it down with her paws and sit on it. That seems to be similar to what Twinkle is doing in your photo. In my case it doesn't matter quite so much because they live in a shed, but I can understand how annoying it is when she does it in "your space". This doesn't explain the biting of wires, but this I consider to be normal rabbit behaviour and not much you can do about it other than protecting the wires.

I agree with zoobec that making a room rabbit-proof would seem to be preferable for you, although I imagine you would miss her and she would miss your company.

I'm pleased that she is happier. In your position I would still be minded to try to bond her with another rabbit. You could try to get a "very clean and obsessively tidy" buck in the hope that she would adjust her behaviour

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She does that as well, but there's something different about this.

She also tears at things and rips fabric off furniture. If I stop her, by placing my hand gently on her back, she will get out of the lit tray [or walk away from the chair] and calmly lie down and let herself be stroked, and be incredibly happy. Then she'll get bored, and wonder off, and five minutes later she'll be doing the same thing. The next time I go up to her she'll often jump out of the box before I get to her, and go to the spot where she gets stroked. Same thing, and then off she wanders, and back to scrambling.

The more attention she gets the less aggressive the scrabbling becomes [she still does it, but not in the same way, it's not as aggressive].

Also occasionally she stops and lays down. If I stroke her she's all happy, if I don't she goes back to destroying things. I love her, and I give her a lot of attention, but it's never enough. It wasn't ever enough when Ghibli was alive either.

I think your probably right in that it's a natural behaviour, but it's also definitely about getting attention, and I also think it's frustration about not having had enough of it earlier on in her life. She's had three homes [including me].

The problem is that there are days when she will do it for hours and hours on end.

When Ghibli was alive she would groom him relentlessly [when she wasn't chasing after him and biting him] but she'd never let him groom her. She only wanted to be stroked by people!

It's like somewhere along the way her behaviour got messed up and turned around, and it's become the only way she knows how to get people's attention, and even when there was another rabbit she was more interested in people! [which actually really ****** off pour Ghibli who liked her].

If I tell her off she just intensifies until I give in and stroke her. The problem is that by stroking her I'm basically reinforcing her behaviour, and what I want to do is teach her that there are better ways to achieve the same thing, but I don't know how?

How do you break a pattern of behaviour in an animal that only responds to positive reinforcement?

Sorry about the long rambling reply.

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Zoobec said:

I think I would be tempted to make a room rabbit rabbit proof for her, or failing that an enclosure for her, at least 10ftx6ft, and floor it with board with non slip Lino on top. Then I would fill it with lots of activities like a dig box, chew toys, rattle toys, treat balls, tunnels etc and swap toys over if need be. Then the destruction will be confined to her area. When you are there to stop her she will be able to free range as normally.

You can't discipline a rabbit I'm afraid!

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Omi said:

ghibli said:

I don't know if she's playing or if she's frustrated, or if it's anger, but she can do it for hours and and hours at a time.

Sent from my G8141 using Tapatalk

I don't think she is doing it because of anger or frustration. It's my experience that rabbits, particularly does, like to re-arrange their environment. My thinking is that they do it to reinforce the feeling that it's their territory. My doe has periods when she will carry large amounts of hay out of her litter tray, pat it down with her paws and sit on it. That seems to be similar to what Twinkle is doing in your photo. In my case it doesn't matter quite so much because they live in a shed, but I can understand how annoying it is when she does it in "your space". This doesn't explain the biting of wires, but this I consider to be normal rabbit behaviour and not much you can do about it other than protecting the wires.

I agree with zoobec that making a room rabbit-proof would seem to be preferable for you, although I imagine you would miss her and she would miss your company.

I'm pleased that she is happier. In your position I would still be minded to try to bond her with another rabbit. You could try to get a "very clean and obsessively tidy" buck in the hope that she would adjust her behaviour

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The buck idea I definitely like [emoji5]

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kattymieoww said:

It wasn't just wallpaper my two attacked,the corner of a sofa was chewed through to the wooden frame,also an armchair,table legs,chair legs,numerous cables.Wi sensor cable,three phone charges,comp cable,light cable,tv cable,this happened with supervision,haha.They were like a tag team,one would go for the wallpaper I'd shout "Hoi!" then chase the culprit round the room trying to get the large strip of wallpaper hanging from it's gob.Then the other would sneak in to attack cables etc.[emoji23] Lucky I wasn't house proud.I did get them willow twigs ,toys etc..not interested.I do still miss the boogers.

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