Building Rabbit Confidence
Almost always, aggression or exaggerated fear responses ("'fraidy cat syndrome") in rabbits are the result of a lack of bunny confidence.
Confidence, in the sense that we mean it here, means the ability to self-assure. Self-assurance lies at the foundation of "bounce-back," the ability to recover from a temporarily frightening situation or stimuli, as well as trust - trust that their situation, including the people in it, is secure and safe.
Scroll to the bottom for the tl;dr recap!
A confident rabbit may be met with something new and therefore possibly scary, or something that's simply instinctively frightening, and be able to quickly incorporate that experience into their daily existence.
An insecure rabbit, on the other hand, will, over time, resort to measures of self-defense in order to make themselves feel safe. Many of these self-defense measures, or anxious behaviors, come out as aggression, or else they surface as fear, directed at the world around them... including, of course, us.
Before we dive too much further in, though, I want to talk specifically about territory and why it's so vital to rabbit confidence.
Rabbits are a lot like cats in some ways, and as far as a very familiar analogue, I believe they're the best ones we have. They're certainly much more like cats than they are like dogs, including but not limited to the ways in which they socialize and form bonds with other members of their species. Another way in which they are similar to cats is the importance they place on their territory.
In the rabbit world, territory is practically synonymous with safety. Territory is the familiar place, the place where the warren is, the place that they should be able to go to hide if need be.
I have observed that it can take rabbits - even intact rabbits - weeks to months, perhaps even longer, to determine that a space is truly theirs. It's not just a matter of chinning everything in sight, although that's probably the first step towards establishing territory, nor is it as simple as soaking their scent into absorbent materials, although that goes a long way to helping.
I see stories and questions like this all the time: why did my rabbit suddenly "lose their litterbox training?" Well, more often than not, they didn't lose their box training at all. They just decided that the territory they're marking is safe enough to be claimed as theirs, or else something new came along and threatened that fact so they had to remind the world what belongs to them.
It's almost like if you ever made a camp when you were a kid and stuck a sign on it telling the grown-ups to stay out. That sign was your territorial marking.
Without a true sense of territory, a rabbit is sort of without firm footing. Without at least something that smells, feels, and looks familiar to them, they'll never be able to gain confidence because they'll never have a consistent sense of safety. Now, some rabbits are born adventurers or are just chill enough that not much bothers them - they are the exception, and by no stretch of the imagination are they the rule or majority.
For the rest, we have to work with our rabbits to help them gain confidence so that socialization with positive association can actually stick.
Building Confidence
To build confidence in a rabbit, let's take a look at what I'm going to call the four Rs of rabbit reactivity:
React
Retreat
Recover
Return
Let's examine these more closely.
React
This first phase of the three Rs is, as you might have guessed, Reaction.
Okay, so let's say you've got your bunny in your room, and something happens to spook them. Every rabbit person has seen this before: the bolting for cover, sometimes prefaced with a suddenly stiff and alert body posture, and if there's enough time to squeeze it in, that very stilted and alarmed series of movements; the eyes get wide and every motion seems like it's punctuated with a 2-second pause.
So, an apparently threatening stimulus has occurred. The rabbit reacts. If the stimulus (scary thing) doesn't immediately hit their panic button, leading to a full-out bolt, then instincts will tell them to assess the situation. Freeze, for safety. Stare, with ears pointed up or perhaps swiveling to get more auditory data as they assess the situation. Maybe they will thump, depending on the personality of the rabbit, although thumping will usually occur once the bunny feels safer. (Remember, making noise in an insecure location as a prey species is the opposite of a safe instinct.)
React is the phase at which you, as their person, can assess the rabbit's fear threshold; it's a good way to measure what your rabbit finds threatening, and what they don't; and precisely how threatening they find the scary stuff. If every little thing is hitting the panic button and triggering a bolt, then we have a very, very insecure (and very poorly socialized) rabbit on our hands. But if it takes a little more than the wind blowing for your bunny to freak, then we have the foundations of some confidence there already. Paying attention to the degree of response is a great way for you to understand where your starting point is.
If your rabbit will still take treats in their reaction stage, definitely offer them one. When rabbits get focused on something potentially threatening, they may no longer have any attention to spare for food (as improbable as that sounds!), so they may not take a treat. Do not move suddenly towards their face, but do make a habit of moving something tasty towards them, slowly. If they ignore the bribe, leave it be and back up. Do NOT force anything near them.
Retreat
When a rabbit feels insecure, spooked, overstimulated, or even irritated, their instinct is to retreat to the "warren." Our domesticated rabbits' wild cousins build these intricate underground lairs with quick-access doors to and from the outside world. When a bunny feels frightened, the first thing they want to do, and therefore need to be able to do, is run for cover in the safety of their "warren."
So it's up to us as their people to give them the closest thing we can provide to them as that warren. This means something you've put in their territory, that they ALWAYS have access to, which limits their visual stimulus as much as possible - auditory, too, if you can manage that.
When the rabbit has retreated is usually when they will begin thumping, instinctively "sounding the alarm" to the other members of the warren. A fearfully thumping rabbit is of course not a happy one, but actually a rabbit who's willing to make noise at all is certainly better than one scared stiffless in the corner, which is what happens when rabbits aren't provided that safe space they can retreat to.
If not given the option to hide, then either a fight response will kick in, or the rabbit will become extremely stressed, potentially to a degree that's very dangerous to their health.
Therefore, it's very important that a rabbit be able to retreat, to their territory, which they must be confident will always be where they expect it to be.
During this time, the best thing you can do is remove the stimuli (if possible) - pause the TV show, turn the radio off, shut the door, stop the vacuum, whatever it is; you don't necessarily need to leave the room, but be sure to stay quiet and allow the bunny to listen to the world around them. Speaking to them in a soft voice is okay.
If you cannot remove the stimuli, the best thing you can do is to make sure their territory is equipped with a very safe-feeling, familiar hiding spot well ahead of the event.
Recover
This can be the most stressful part for us humans, as we await to see our furry friends re-emerge from hiding. Recover is basically the opposite process of React - the rabbit must take time to themself as they await further data from the world, whether that's signals that things are a-okay or if there really is something to worry about.
We can probably apply the term "bounce-back" to the recovery time of a rabbit; bounce-back refers to the ability of an animal to return to a normalized state after a frightening stimuli. Noticing how long it takes your rabbit to Recover is a really good way of measuring their confidence.
Shorter recovery times mean a more confident bun; longer times, a less confident one. The more secure the rabbit feels in their territorial hiding spot, the easier their recovery and therefore the shorter time it will take.
Return
At long last, your bunny emerges from their hiding place and is ready to hit the proverbial town again. Typically, especially with less confident bunnies, you will still see some signs of apprehension: the tuned-in ears, perhaps widened eyes, cautious steps, and so on.
I find that it's very important during this time to offer positive reinforcement (food - most especially rabbit-safe treats) during a Return, to reinforce the return, give the rabbit something else (something good) to focus on, and to generally make the return process something that, over time, will feel good to them to do.
It may also strengthen the association they have with you to good things, rather than that thing that scared them. We definitely don't want to let neutral Returns be the reason we become associated with negative stimuli!
So to recap:
Ensure your rabbit has a safe, small-ish territory that they can easily claim as their own. I recommend a small room to which the door is always kept open, or your traditional large x-pen. Even free-roaming rabbits need someplace they can call their very own!
Inside their territory, make sure to provide them with some kind of hiding spot, preferably filled with scent-absorbers like cotton towels. I strongly recommend using their pet carriers for this, which makes traveling to the vet additionally more comfortable.
Use the four Rs of rabbit confidence to measure and react appropriately to improve your rabbit's sense of self-assurance.
Don't give up! It takes time, especially for more skittish bunnies, to develop a sense of safety in their new homes.
Over time, once you've used practiced using the four Rs to adequately understand your rabbit's fear threshold, you can begin to slowly approach that threshold without crossing it, so as to introduce your bunny to new things that you can then use positive reinforcement (treats and pets!) to habituate.
The more you do this, the less your rabbit will spook, and the happier you'll both be!