Bunny Drama!

It’s been nearly a week since I’ve blogged, unfortunately there has been a lot of stress in the bunny household.

We had to separate Sawyer and Sophie Tuesday night. I think that Sophie’s hormones went into overdrive and poor Sawyer took the brunt of it. I came home Tuesday to a cage with hair everywhere and a very tense Sawyer. Kent had already warned me there was probably trouble because when he came home that afternoon for lunch they were tense, so when I got home I was somewhat prepared to deal with them. I let them out and laid down on the floor with them so that I could carefully watch their body language. Sawyer initially looked really stressed but seemed to relax after they played a little and then started grooming each other, the next thing I know Sophie is trying to hump his head. I quickly pushed her off of him, sat back and watched she came up and groomed him on the head and then she ran off. Sawyer then went under the cage to his favorite place and she came over and immediately tried to hump him again, I pushed her off and then they started staring at each other and just looked really tense. Then she growled, so I squirted them in the face to break it up and just started talking to them which calmed them down and then she went over to Sawyer and stood next to him and took a bath like nothing was wrong. After they chilled out and were both taking a bath I saw that Sophie had taken some of her frustration out on Sawyer and chewed on one of his ears and actually bit a hole in the other. That combined with the hair in the cage and all the tenseness I was seeing made me decide to put Sophie in a cage next to Sawyer’s and keep them separated unless we are home to closely supervise their visits. I love them both and do not want to see them to hurt one another, so with all of this uproar we decided to get Sophie spayed as soon as possible. We were originally going to get her fixed the middle of April but with this development we made Sophie an appointment Friday to get her spayed.

Until the surgery we let them take turns getting out to play and only let them out together when we could be right in the floor with them to break any skirmishes. Most of the time when we let them out we didn’t have any trouble, but whenever she would get near his behind he would whip around at her and tense up. After observing them, I really don’t think that their bond was breaking down because they would groom each other and lay next to each other like normal, I just think Sophie is so hormonal she couldn’t control herself and Sawyer saw it as she is trying to dominate him.

Well we took the little one to the vet Friday and I must say she handled it like a real trooper. I remember when we got Sawyer fixed he was still groggy the next day and at one point had his foot stuck out grooming and then started staring out into space forgetting that his foot was still stuck out. When we went to pick Sophie up was pretty alert but we didn’t really let them have much interaction on Friday because when we got her home you could tell she was hurting. We did let Sawyer greet her when we got home, even though they haven’t been the best of friends lately you could see that he was curious and actually might have missed her all day. After we put Sawyer back up we let Sophie have free roam of the living room and after moving from spot to spot trying to get comfortable, she ended up staying in the litter box in the floor most of the evening. I had put litter all in the bottom of her cage so I eventually picked up the litter box she was comfortable in and coaxed her into her cage so that I could let Sawyer out.

We let the two of them out together on Saturday and ended up putting Sawyer up more than once. It became a lot more obvious with Sophie not feeling 100% yet what was going on between the two of them. Sawyer was constantly trying to get her to groom his head, which she was willing to do, but if she didn’t do it for however long he thought was needed he would try to lunge at her. As soon as he exhibited that behavior he was scooped up and put in his cage. We want them to get back to normal but we don’t want them to hurt each other.

Sunday turned out much better, most of Sawyer’s aggression wasn’t there basically because every time he approached Sophie to be groomed she willingly washed his whole head. They actually ended up in the big open cage that Sawyer has been staying in together a few of times and there wasn’t any aggression from either one of them. Several times Sophie stood on one of the ledges and Sawyer would put his head up so that she would groom it, I just wish I’d gotten a picture of it. By bed time we had two apparently content bunnies who just wanted to be next to each other. Sawyer was laying in the next to the entertainment center, Sophie plopped down with him and they took a bunny nap. We’re going keep them separate until Sophie heals but work with them every day. Hopefully we are well on our way to getting these two back together.