Leo the Leg Man

Leo is a leg man

A slight change of plan here to keep this post brief.  Until little Leo’s hormones finally calm down, I need to start scheduling my writing time for his nap time.  Usually, I have been writing after Blaine gets home from work so that he can distract Leo from his pursuit of me.  Unfortunately, Blaine has come down sick with a cold / flu today and has been sleeping most of the day.

It is now two weeks since Leo’s neuter, but his hormones are still raging.  Leo is a leg man, an arm man, an anything he can reach rabbit man.  My legs are getting cramped trying to keep them up out of his way and he is at times chewing on my chair in frustration.

Leo at the moment is a poster bunny for why a house rabbit needs to be neutered.  We are thinking that the reason we were given for his being turned in to the shelter (owners working long hours) might not have been the whole truth of the matter.  Or he may be much younger than was thought and just hit the full hormonal burst right as we adopted him.  Any way you look at it though, the love bites that accompany Leo’s rabbit embrace are quite painful if I fail to evade him.  This really isn’t an ideal way to start off our bonding process.  We are glad to have rescued him, but so sad it was necessary because so many don’t properly understand the needs of a house rabbit.  Our vet told us it would take 1-2 months for his hormones to settle down.  I am guessing it is going to be the  full 2 months at this rate.

Gotta go for now, but I will make sure to finish the story on the diagnosis and the long road to recovery for Shadow and get that posted tomorrow …

Spay Time for Tigger

Tigger restingWhen Tigger got to be six months of age and Shadow was turning four months, it was time to take them in to be fixed.  There will be a tale to tell with Shadow about that, but with Tigger, we thought it was going to be a straight forward spay.  We should have known better.  The day the surgery was scheduled, we were gathering everything together when something spooked Tigger.  She was still in her cage, but she had developed a habit of gnawing on her cage bars.  She had been doing that when she took fright and must have jumped backward while her teeth were still around the bars.  It was pretty clear immediately that something was really wrong.  She was grinding her teeth in obvious pain.

When we got to the vet, we explained that she needed to be examined for the mouth injury before anything was decided or done with the spay.  They told us they would call us, so we left to await what they would find.  That was a mistake.  We should have stayed and made sure the injury was examined and we were consulted.  Instead, we got the phone call that she had cut the inside of her mouth on the top and her teeth were loose and the spay was completed, so they would call us when she was ready for pick up.

We were really upset that the surgery had proceeded with such a serious mouth injury and questioned why that had been done without consulting us first.  Tigger was not a good eater and we were terrified what it was going to be like trying to help her recover from both the spay surgery and a serious mouth injury at the same time.  We were really scared and thought this just might be too much and might cost Tigger her life.  The vet just said he felt it was in her long-term best interest and wanted to get it out-of-the-way.  When I looked at the spay incision with the very obvious stitches, I asked what was to prevent her from trying to chew them out.  The vet said that rabbits didn’t do that, only rats did.  I doubted he was right about that, but didn’t know what else to say at that time.

We were told to take her home and keep her in her cage for ten days, then the stitches would come out.  The removal day was set for the eleventh day since the tenth fell on a Sunday.  So we took Tigger home knowing we had a nursing challenge ahead.  Fortunately I was working at home at the time and could keep a close eye on her.  I broke up her pellets really tiny and put a few in a bowl and moistened them just a bit.  She was not interested in her food that night and had the most awful dragging hop to pull herself from the front of the cage to the back.  She wanted to be as far from us as possible.

A few hours later, I looked in and saw her lapping something off the floor and realized she was drinking her own urine.  That is when I realized that the mouth injury was probably not allowing her to drink from her bottle.  I immediately got a small bowl we had that could attach to the side of the cage and filled it with water.  She was so thirsty.  I felt terrible not realizing sooner that maybe Tigger would not be able to drink from the water bottle.

The next morning, I was relieved to see that Tigger was munching on some hay.  That gave me hope that she would pull through.  Still, it was really rough, I was having to check on her every few hours around the clock to make sure she was eating and drinking enough.  We had put pellets in a couple small bowls around the cage as well as water bowls front and back since she was so obviously in pain trying to hop around.  The vet hadn’t given us anything for pain.  Looking back with what we know now, we should have insisted on being given something for pain for her since she was dealing with two recoveries at the same time.

Tigger was obviously experiencing strong hormonal changes too.  She would get really grumpy, then angry and in spite of the mouth injury would try to throw things. Other times, I would come in and find her hunched up as small as she could get. When I would put my hand on her head, her ears would be so cold.  I would get a towel and wrap it around her and just stay with her petting her head until she warmed up again.

About day six, she was getting really anxious about being in her cage all the time. I called the vet and asked if it would be okay to let her out if we did it in a hallway that had nothing in it.  We got the okay and let Tigger in the blocked off hallway.  We had all the room doors closed and a huge piece of cardboard four feet tall blocking the opening, so she couldn’t even see the other room.  We should have known not to trust Tigger.  She hopped up to the cardboard and leaped straight up in the air about three feet as if she was trying to see over the top.  Fortunately, the stitches and incision appeared fine and Miss Tigger was put back in her cage with no reprieves for the rest of the ten days.

Or so we thought, day nine was a Saturday morning.  Tigger was scheduled to have her stitches out on Monday, but she decided that was too long.  We woke up Saturday morning to find her chewing them out herself.  So much for the vet thinking that only rats did that.  It would probably have happened sooner if she hadn’t injured her mouth. Off we headed to the vet.  Fortunately, the stitches were ready to come out and Tigger had only scratched her skin a bit with biting at them.  We were given an antibiotic ointment to put on the incision and scratches to aid the healing.

After that everything did finally proceed without more trouble with the spay incision.  Tigger did need to have her teeth trimmed by the vet for a few months, but was fortunate that when they fully healed, there was no malocclusion and she was able to keep them worn down herself with normal chewing.  She no longer needed the tooth trims.  However, Tigger never forgot the spay.  She absolutely hated to have anyone come anywhere near touching her tummy.  If you put your hand anywhere near her tummy, she would be across the room in the blink of an eye.

Tomorrow senior Tigger …

Call This Tigger TMI

Tigger troubleThere are a couple of things I will write about that some may feel falls in the too much information category.  In case anyone else finds themselves dealing with similar things bunnies do that aren’t quite for polite society, just know you aren’t alone.

So, teenage hormones in any species can be a train wreck for everyone trying to deal with the raging hormone levels and behavior that can go with them.  I had read about the territorial aggression and sexual frustration that can be seen in unaltered rabbits.  Although my early house rabbit experience was with an unaltered male, he had been a pretty mellow little guy.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with Tigger as she neared the age to be spayed, but had read that rabbits who aren’t spayed or neutered can be quite a destructive handful in addition to all the babies they can produce.  Tigger’s chewing behavior was decidedly starting to be a problem.

Now this part of female rabbit hormonal behavior I hadn’t seen written about before and would have questioned if I hadn’t experienced it with two little girl bunnies myself.  The first experience was with Tigger as she was turning about five months of age.  She was getting to be a tiny terror with her attitude going over the edge from sassy cute to just plain ugly.  Worse, there came times that she actually frightened me.  She was still only about four pounds of bunny, but I found myself one day sitting on the guest bed as she was stalking around me and giving me what I can only call nasty evil looks.  I was afraid to take my eyes off of her as she paced behind me, because I truly thought she just might charge me and bite me.  There was a look in her eyes I had not seen from her before.  It was clear she suddenly regarded me as the enemy for some reason.

So what had set her off?  Guys, I apologize, but the little stinker was obviously quite aware I was putting out my own female hormones quite strongly.   She was not liking it one little bit.  I didn’t really put it together until a few days later when she was suddenly calmer right in sync with me. I had a couple of months before she was old enough to be spayed and another afterwards before all her hormones left her system to see that she was not liking my hormonal times at all.  She was four pounds of female rabbit anger and outrage.  She did the best menacing stalking I have ever seen in an animal so tiny.  I was genuinely relieved a month after her spay when Tigger mellowed out again to just her original energetic sassy self and I didn’t have to keep watching my back at times.

This wasn’t just a fluke with Tigger.  The second time I experienced hormonal clashes with a female rabbit was when Blaine and I had agreed to help out by caring for and showing a rescue bunny that was being kept at a local pet store.  We went in on a Saturday to clean out the rabbit’s cage and set up a pen for her to run in to let people see her and get to know her.  She was just out of recovery from her spay and had been described as a really sweet interactive rabbit.  So, I wasn’t prepared at all for a rabbit that wanted to attach herself to my ankle and gnaw away like a rabid animal.  It was really hard to tell people what a wonderful pet she could be for them when they would look down at her and ask me, “Isn’t she biting your ankle?” I finally had to step out of the pen completely and let Blaine take over.  She didn’t seem to be having any problems with him. Like Tigger, she had recognized that another  active female had entered her territory.  She obviously still had enough hormones in her system to recognize and respond to what she regarded as a territorial threat.

The second less mentioned thing about our Tigger is that she truly was a little stinker.  Very early on, she was laying up on top of her cage with her back to me as I kneeled on the floor to pet her when I got a huge breath of noxious air.  I thought, oh wow rabbit, what did you just do?  When I moved her behind, there was nothing to see.  That is when it dawned on me that Tigger had just let out a silent but deadly (SBD) gaseous cloud large enough and stinky enough to make a skunk proud.

I wish that I could say the SBD was a one time event, but Tigger had a habit of being able to produce an unending supply of gas if she got freaky nervous.  She would run around the room spewing toxic gases and would quite literally clear the room, because it was unbearable to stay.  We would be gasping with our eyes running as we fled for clearer air.  There wasn’t anything the vet could find wrong with her on exams.  It was a heck of a defense mechanism against being picked up or chased by Shadow.  If she was wanting to be left alone, she knew how to accomplish it!

Tomorrow Princess Lady Bunny …