Daisy has been widowed a few months now & throughout those months I have been attempting to bond her with Apollo. It has been one of the more tricky pairings simply because their pasts caused certain behaviours. Daisy for all her bravado is actually quite an unconfident bunny & finds it difficult to deal with the world on her own. Since losing Teddy she went back to her old self of being aggressive. This I believe is her defence system when she is worried about a situation. Both me & Apollo have seen her teeth but fortunately for Apollo he has a nice thick coat.
For Apollo it was quite different, he basically didn’t understand what was happening & what he was supposed to do when he met Daisy. With Daisy being on the offensive it made him back off quite a lot & he was always very worried about being in her company. The first few meetings we did actually got to the stage where they were cuddling up, although strained. Daisy always loved to bury her head in Teddy & she tried this with Apollo, but he was like ‘What the heck is happening?’ & was very anxious about it. They often put their heads together & Daisy’s expectation was that Apollo would groom her, but as he didn’t know what to do he just remained there. This frustrated Daisy & she would then launch into nipping his head which ruined everything.
It was looking great at this last picture but as they moved about, things got a little silly so I had to call it a day.
After a few weeks, the penny seemed to drop for both of them. Daisy changed from moving away from him if he looked like he was going to nip her & whenever she could, she’d shove her underneath him. Apollo had got used to this behaviour & as Daisy had clamed down he too became less anxious. Shortly after this photo he groomed her which was a major break through, after an evening of continuing to watch their progress I felt safe enough to leave them together. I did set up a camera so I could keep a watchful eye though.
Daisy now seems a much happier bunny & Apollo loves her cuddles.