This little bundle of chaos is my approximately 5 month old female Flemish giant mix. She’s very sweet and curious and of course, destructive. Rabbit proofing my room is going well and she doesn’t mind being handled. Vet said she’s healthy and well socialized. I’m just having a bit of trouble with correcting her when she’s misbehaving. A firm “no” or stomping my foot or a correcting sound or clapping my hands is viewed as a gentle suggestion. Picking her up and moving her away from what she’s doing is treated like a game. Her reactions to my best efforts are indifference. Any advice on training would be greatly appreciated.
My second question is about grooming. I try to brush her daily and when I do, she acts like I couldn’t possibly have chosen a more boring and stupid activity. She’ll look at me funny and hop away. I’ve tried holding her, but she just scratches me up and hops away. She’s not scared, just bored and maybe a little insulted. She’s a sassy little lady. Anything I can do to make brushing her less difficult?
Thank you in advance! This is my first young girl bunny. My last one was a little old man, so he was quite a bit calmer.
by Morbid_Optimism
1 Comment
It’s about a hundred times harder to train a rabbit to NOT do something than to DO something.
I would just physically remove the possibility of that particular negative behavior.
Negative reinforcement works very poorly with them. I *have* trained mine to stop a couple little things but it took months each time. Teaching him a new trick takes minutes.
I personally don’t see the point of grooming a short haired bun, but mine’s a rex, and he can definitely do it himself.
Overall, my biggest recommendation in general is to hand feed. Mine gets all of his pellets from my hand. He is very tame and friendly as a result.