Troller wrote:
To those who went against the grain, was it difficult? Did any errant behavior diminish over time and age? Any helpful advice?
For female rabbits, spaying is no-brainer. Just too much evidence of the danger of uterine cancer.
For males, neutering is purely a matter of behavior. If your rabbit isn't showing behavior you can't put up with, then there's no reason to put him through the surgery. However little risk there is, it's too much if there's no behavioral problem to solve.
Scone began to show his hormones at around six months of age, and his teen-age months lasted until he was about a year old. After that he settled down a lot. While he was a teen-ager, though, I had to constantly remind him that I was not a female bunny. I found that pushing him away and saying, "No! Just kiss!" eventually worked.
One thing that helped was to provide Scone with a stuffed bunny to act as an ... erm ... love object. (this is a family forum, after all...)
He would work off his urges on Butter - in fact, he'd knock any stuffed animal with uppy ears flat and have his way with it. Animals with floppy ears, or non-rabbits, he ignored. Oddly, when I bought Borders, a stuffed bunny who looked just like Scone, with a natural rabbit-like posture, Scone treated him as a friend, and would groom him and lie down next to him.
Even though she's a female, and spayed, Natasha does the same - humps Butter and grooms Borders. It must be something about the way Borders looks.
