Our landlords had just acquired the two rabbits a few weeks before they were due to move back to the UK and, for various reasons, they ended up leaving them behind in the care of one of the neighbours. This particular neighbour has many rabbits of her own - and several chickens and a couple of goats - but none of them are pets. They are destined for the pot. Perhaps with this in mind, our landlords agreed that it would be a lot nicer for their two to come back 'home' to live with us and we happily agreed. Unfortunately, it hasn't all been happy families since then...
 |
| Snowy, for some reason sitting in her poo |
 |
| Jura |
The two rabbits, Snowy and Jura, are sisters and Snowy is very much the dominant of the two. She has always beaten Jura up a bit, but from what I understand it's never been a problem - Jura just stays out of Snowy's way most of the time. But when we took them back from the neighbour, Jura was covered in lots of lumps and scabs - it looked like Snowy had really been taking it out on her in the intervening couple of weeks. They hadn't had a split level cage at the neighbour's, so we hoped that when they were back in their usual two-floor hutch with us, they'd have a bit more space to themselves and things would improve. Sadly Jura's wounds didn't seem to heal and we had to separate them to stop more damage being done. Then, last Saturday, we were horrified to see one morning that one of Jura's scabs had opened up on her back into a huge open wound. Evidently, in her efforts to clean herself, she'd begun pulling off the scabby bits and had managed to make things worse. I won't post the picture, but it was pretty gruesome.
We called the vet out that day and he agreed that Jura needed to go to a vet clinic as soon as possible to have everything cleaned up and looked at properly. It took until Wednesday for us to get an appointment, and by this time we were fearing they would take one look at her and say that putting her down would be the kindest solution. But she is such a happy rabbit, and she had been eating and drinking and seeming quite content throughout the whole ordeal, that they they simply suggested cleaning her up and treating her with antibiotics. They kept her in overnight, anaesthetised her, shaved off her fur (!) cleaned her up and called the next day to say I could collect her. I arrived to be greeted by a little blue bundle:
We now have to take her back to the vets every three days to have her dressing changed, and she has to receive antibiotics twice a day - fed to her orally with a syringe. The first attempt at this wasn't terribly successful and most of it went on my shoe. Fortunately, she's since discovered that she loves the taste of the antibiotics, and she gleefully laps away at them with her little tongue. Fingers crossed, in about a month's time, she'll be rid of her big blue bandage and the fur will have begun growing back. It's still a very big wound to heal but we're hopeful. Snowy, meanwhile, is going to be relocated to a happier home where she can have the place to herself and not take out her grievances on anyone else. Who would have thought rabbits were so complicated?
No comments:
Post a Comment