The rabbit's bullying the dog - help!

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Mynstrel

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Can anybody give me any suggestions how to teach my house rabbit to stop intimidating my dog? The dog is really good & completely ignores the rabbit when he's out but whenever bun is in the same room he makes a beeline for the dog and just follows him round wherever he goes, sniffing at him (& trying to climb on him more than once) and the poor dog just can't cope with it.

They are and never will be left unsupervised together, I'm usually between dog & rabbit for safety, but it'd be nice to know I can trust the rabbit as much as the dog!

At the moment the rabbit's only allowed in the same room as the dog a couple of times a week if the dog is relaxed and in a safe place (ie hiding behind me on the couch) but I'd like to be able to let him in with the rest of us more often IF I can teach him to respect the dog. I've never come across a rabbit with so little fear of a dog & I'm totally at a loss what to do.

Any suggestions? To give you some idea of scale, the rabbit's 1.5kg & the dog's 23kg :o
 
Don't really see how you can teach a rabbit not to bully your dog ! I used to have a huge rabbit that was very territorial, he lived mainly in the back garden, never in a run as he hated it and he chased any animal who dared to come into his space. I also had a serious hunting cat at the time but he was scared of the bunny as were both my dogs and they all stayed out of his way.....
 
Neuter the rabbit (if he's climbing on dog in that way)?

My house rabbit used to climb on the dog (all 70kgs of him) all the time and just lie on his back asleep - they were best of friends.
 
He isn't territorial & certainly not aggressive and he's not climbing on the dog in "that" way or he'd be off to the vets in a flash! The comical bit is the bun totally blanks our other dog because she just ignores him, so it must be because he gets a reaction out of the bigger one that he thinks it's fun to annoy him.

Somebody has suggested clicker training to see if I can teach him to leave. He's obviously bright to have sussed how to bully the dog so I'm going to try that & see what happens.
 
My old rabbit lived outside - we let her have free run of the garden with her cage being open so could come and go as she liked ...

The cat next door is a right bully and used to prowl the rabbit ... you'd see her stalking poor bunny crawling really slowly when buns back was turned then at the last min buns would turn round and charge full pelt at the cat - cat was portified and legged it - used to happy all the time ... hillarious!
 
I had a Californian giant rabbit many years ago, used to chase next doors cat out of the garden, he was fine with mums dog when out in the garden, but would go for her if the dog went in to the rabbits run. When I married and left home the rabbit came with me and became best friends with our two collies, when he died the oldest collie most definitely missed him, couldn't work out why we had buried him.
 
That's the odd thing, he isn't being aggressive - to be honest I'd say its the dog's territory as the rabbit isn't allowed in there 24/7 but the dog is so if anything you'd think he'd be a bit dubious of coming in.

The best way to describe him is like an annoying little brother, he just seems to like to bug the dog cos he knows he gets a reaction from him. A friend suggested he wants to be friends but if it was something like that I'd expect him to bother the bitch as well, but because she just goes "yeah, rabbit, whatever" and ignores him he doesn't bother with her.

The difficult thing is not to laugh at this great big dog looking in horror for somewhere to hide when the bun comes in, it's not fair but it is very funny, especially as with other dogs he's a bit of a reputation as being a tough nut!

Somebody has suggested a book by a woman who has trained dogs and rabbit so perhaps that & her website might help.

My mum reckons it's karma for the dog being a little horror to us & our other dogs when he was a pup :p
 
I remember we had similar thing at one yard I was at and it was a goat that used to aggravate a GSD. Everytime the GSD was laying asleep in the yard the goat would nudge him with her horns until he got up, as soon as he laid down again she would start nudging him again, it was as you said like an annoying sibling, the goat never bothered the other dogs and none of the other goats did it.

Unfortunately one day the GSD had had enough and attacked said goat, ended up with goat at vets and having stitches but it could have been a lot worse :-(
 
That's what worries me, the dog's been an absolute saint up to now but I want to teach bun to leave him alone so it doesn't ever get to that sort of situation - just in case I ever don't spot him in time to herd him away.

At the moment bun's in the kitchen glaring at the barrier I've put up & dog's in the lounge looking smug :rolleyes:

It's worse than kids!
 
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