No problem! We have lots of people here who are experienced with bonding, so you can always come to us if you have questions or run into trouble
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It's also worth noting that it takes up to 4 weeks for a female's hormones to die down after a spay and 6-8 weeks for a male's hormones to die down after a neuter. Depending on how long a bunny has been in the shelter, they may still be hormonal during the play-date and that can affect things. A hormonal bunny is more likely to hump and/or attack (though humping can also be a dominance display unrelated to hormones - my Gazzles was spayed over a year ago, and she was humping the crap out of Normie when I had a brief bonding session the other night. To be fair, he did it first, though his excuse is hormones - it's been about 3 weeks since his neuter)... but at the same time, not all bunnies who are hormonal will react undesirably to another rabbit. You just have to play it by ear.
I recommend finding out how long ago each bunny was altered before putting them with yours - that way you know going in that you'll need to try to determine what behavior is probably due to hormones vs what's a true indication of how the bunnies are getting along.
Hopefully a shelter that allows bunny-dating will have an employee/volunteer very familiar with bunny-bonding there to guide you through the process and point out the various signs for you; however, this isn't always the case so it's good to go in prepared in case you have to do most of the "translating".
Bunny-date body language/behavior guide:
1) Ignoring each other or only showing mild interest - IDEAL; match has a very high chance of success.
2) One bunny licking or grooming the other (lickee is accepting) - positive; moderately high chance of success.
3) Bunnies exchange grooming (both of them groom and get groomed) - IDEAL; very high chance of success.
4) Seeming quite interested in each other, lots of sniffing and such - neutral; could go either way, so watch closely. At this point, they're sizing each other up. They're inclined to like each other, but that could easily change.
5) Circling each other - probably negative; liable to escalate into fighting (or possibly a hump war; see below). Monitor, but don't break it up immediately.
6) One bunny much more interested in the other - neutral; watch closely to see whether the less interested bunny is going to take offense/get annoyed.
7) Humping - neutral-to-negative; let it go for 5-10 seconds as long as the humpee is taking it well, then separate (preferably with a spray bottle, a loud noise, a foot, etc. so you're not inserting yourself too much). If the humping resumes right away (after multiple separations) but the other bunny still isn't getting upset, call it quits on the play date before they change their mind - this is likely a good match, but the bunny doing the humping may need more time for their hormones to die down before bonding truly starts.
8) Hump-war (both bunnies trying to hump each other) - negative, likely to escalate into fighting, but not necessarily a deal-breaker; if the one who instigated the humping is potentially still hormonal and your bunny only humped in response to being humped, then it might actually be a decent match once hormones are no longer in play.
(I had this happen with Gaz and Normie the other night - she ignored his humping for quite some time but as soon as I added Nala to the bonding pen, Gaz suddenly started humping Norm back. When he could hump Nala while Gaz humped him, things seemed ok... however, when Nala escaped and the other two were left alone, a hump-war started and quickly started to escalate).
If neither bunny is potentially hormonal and a hump-fest ensues, deal with it the same way you would deal with fighting (see #12 below).
9) Bunny with their ears pinned back against their head but their eyes wide open (ie they're not extremely relaxed) - negative; indicates annoyance and a bunny on the verge of attack.
[With a lop, you have to pick up on much more subtle cues - I swear I saw it on Gaz's face around the mouth area when she got fed up with Normie near the end of their last play date (she didn't try to bite but I swear I saw her considering it) and I broke that up ASAP.]
10) Ears upright, especially if moving around as though they're curious - positive; bunny feels neither threatened nor inclined to attack.
11) Chasing - borderline negative on the way to going very badly; put a stop to it immediately.
12) Fighting - potentially negative; give them a moment to work things out if they don't look like they're going to hurt each other... if it seems to continue/escalate rather than quickly dying down, break it up. Separate rabbits, calm them down, then try again. If they go right back to wanting to fight, the match is unlikely to work. If they can sort things out and simmer down fairly easily, then the match stands a decent chance of working out.
I'm sure there are other things I've forgotten (or have yet to learn), but those are some of the main ones. If anyone else has something to add, I'd love to hear it as I hope to talk the HSPCA into letting me supervise bunny dates (which they currently don't allow) and teach others how to supervise them so I could use all the info I can get
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Anyway, the bottom line is that
aside from chasing and truly vicious fighting, you should never barge into the middle of things and break up a situation the second you see a negative sign. Always give them
at least 5-10 seconds to work things out amongst themselves unless the situation escalates to chasing or vicious fighting sooner than that. Scuffles happen - they've gotta work out who's going to be the boss. It's ok for them to challenge each other as long as one of them agrees to submit before things get too serious!
