Our beautiful, sweet little bunny, Fawn has passed away. It is very difficult for us to accept he is gone. At only 3 years of age we were not ready to say goodbye to our bouncy little chap.
We had begun to suspect there was something wrong with Fawn, when his appearance started to change. At first we just thought he was molting, as his fur looked a little unkempt. Then we noticed his energy levels had dropped slightly, it was very slow at first, he just didn’t seem quite his usual bouncy self. He would come and see us in our home office in the morning as normal and then he’d spend all day asleep. His interest in playing with the cats had also waned. The real shock came when we realised he had also lost some weight. We booked him an appointment to see a vet the next day.
The vet suggested that Fawn’s problem could be worms, and gave us some worming paste for him. We have had no experience with worms in any of our previous bunnies, and were glad the vet had diagnosed something quite simple and treatable. We also got Fawn’s teeth checked, he has a history of dental problems and although he still seemed to be eating okay, it seemed best to ask. The vet felt that Fawn’s teeth did need treating again, and so we booked him in for a dental the following week. If neither of these two treatments helped we’d then move on to more serious tests for Fawn.
Throughout the week waiting for Fawn’s operation we became more concerned for our little bunny. He was still acting happy enough, but we both had this feeling that felt there was something seriously wrong with Fawn.
The day of Fawn’s dental arrived and we weren’t happy at the thought of our little bunny undergoing an anaesthetic while he was so poorly. We took Fawn to the vets and voiced our concerns for our poor little bunny. The veterinary nurse checked with the on-call vet and he confirmed Fawn was in need of a dental.
Derek and I still had an uneasy feeling about leaving Fawn, but we did, as not treating his teeth would only make Fawns problems worse. Two hours later we got the terrible call that Fawn had passed away. We were told that his surgery hadn’t even begun and that they had only just started to give him the anaesthetic.
It was absolutely devastating news for us. Even though both Derek and I were sure there was something dreadfully wrong with our beautiful bunny, we were in no way prepared to loose him.
Life is going to be very different without Fawn in our lives. We work from home and Fawn running around our home office, kicking his legs and wobbling his head was a daily occurrence, one that we are going to miss everyday.
Unfortunately while Fawn was having his vaccinations, our vet gave him a check-over and noticed his teeth weren’t wearing down evenly. This means that Fawn is going to have to have an anaesthetic and have his teeth filed down for him. We are very nervous worried about this, as he is so young to be having problems with his teeth. Our vet told us it is becoming a common problem in rabbits, because the breeders don’t take good care of the young bunnies. To increase their profits they feed the growing bunnies poor quality rabbit food, so the baby bunnies don’t have all the nutrients they need to grow healthily, so their teeth don’t develop evenly. To add to this one of our previous bunnies, Jupiter, had problems with his teeth, much later in life than Fawn, and he failed to recover from one of his anaesthetics, which makes what is happening to Fawn really frightening.
Our house bunny Flower gave us a terrible fright, he began having seizures. It started one afternoon when I found Flower under the bed. He was lying on his side and appeared unable to get up. I picked Flower up and cuddled him for a while, although he seemed fine once I had picked him up he had given me quite a scare. As Flower seemed happy, we did not take him straight to the vets, though that night he had several more turns. Next morning we took him straight to the vet who listened very carefully to Flowers symptoms and tested his reflexes. Our sweet little bunny was very groggy and his reflexes where quite poor. The vet gave Flower an injection and asked us to bring him back the next day. That night Flower had several seizures. We were getting very scared not only was it very distressing to see our bunny so helpless, but we were also getting up several times a night to take care of him.