Hello all!
For context: we are bonding our girl Sushi (4 years old. 8 weeks fixed) with our newest baby boy, Fellini (11 months, 8 weeks fixed).
This binding process has been coming along for more than a month now. We started with the standard interchanging smells, evolving to them seeing each other through fences, to them being in a neutral territory (bathroom).
It has all gone relatively well, although (reasonably) slow. The biggest “issue” per se is that Sushi has been extremely independent all her life and has an extreme “I’ll do it myself” personality. By this we mean that she loves her alone time, her peace and her quiet…
Enter Fellini, a rebel without a cause, parkour aficionado, little ball of energy. The dude literally radiates love. He’s extremely curious and has an infectious puppy energy to him. The bonding sessions are usually: Fellini sees Sushi and wants to interact, Sushi avoids Fellini, Fellini keeps trying to interact with Sushi, Sushi gets overwhelmed and we end the session. It has never evolved into something violent and they both share a space quite well. When we have the sessions, we usually start them by having them eat Romanian lettuce out of bowls next to each other. They eat, drink water and poop in the same room and don’t have any sort of intense body language around each other.
Today we have Sushi in Fellini’s room (so his territory). Fellini is welcoming, he tried to mount her face for five seconds but then Sushi broke it up (in a friendly manner). I think by now Fellini has learned that Sushi needs her space, and he is beginning to respect that by not chasing her around or getting to close to her. Now Sushi is the one who gets closer to Fellini and is approaching him. If this does not happen, they both sit incredibly still and awkwardly just waiting for the other to make the first move (like two dorky teenagers in a prom dance).
They just booped noses for a good amount of time and Sushi even nudged Fellini in his cheek. He just stood completely still and let it happen lol.
My question is… Is this it? Is this the relationship they will probably end up having? Do they get more lovey dovey later based on past experiences or will they just be like my parents when I was 13, and share a room pretending that the other person just doesn’t exist? Will I ever get to see them grooming (the rabbits, not my parents)?
Anyhow… sorry for my weird analogies. Hope someone chuckles and hope someone with similar experiences can tell us how to proceed!!
by Icy_Gold3994