Hi everyone,
I started writing in here about two months ago trying to diagnose Chocolate’s health problem. He did not want to put his right hind foot on the ground and he began holding it up, and refused to put any kind of pressure on it at all. We noticed an area on his on his heel that looked like a large scab. I did some research, and sore hocks came up, and that sounded like what he had. We took him into the vet, and she thought it was the same thing. She did an xray just in case to make sure there wasn’t a problem with the bone–and it looked fine.
Chocky had his foot wrapped up in a bandage for one month before it was finally taken off. The vet said that sore hocks is one of those things where it takes a very long time to heal, but we were concerned when after about a week and a half that Chocolate was still not improving, and now he was more jumpy and protective of his foot than ever.
We took him into the vet again. She could not understand what was wrong either, but did notice that his ankle on that foot was more swollen than normal. She strongly advised us to do another xray to check the bone again.
We did another xray and this one was drastically different than the first that was made only about a month earlier. Chocolate’s heel bone now appeared feathery and there were small bone fragments throughout his heel–the vet said that was a sign that his body was trying to heal itself. The bone literally looked like it was being eaten away. She told us it looked like either a severe infection with especially strong bacteria (possibly originating from the “wound” on his foot) that had gotten into the bone or it was cancer.
A few days later we took him to another vet in NC who specializes in exotics. She put him under anesthetic and took a sample from the mass developing in his heel. She told us because there was no pus draining from the incision (like an infection normally would) it looked to be a tumor. About a (very nervous) week later, they called us back and confirmed that it was cancer and that his right back leg would have to be removed. The vet said that they have done 12 such rabbit leg amputations in the past…that surprised me because I didn’t realize it was such a common problem.
Chocolate goes in for his surgery tomorrow morning and he’ll stay at the vet’s for a day or two for recovery. We are all very upset about him losing his leg, although I’ve read up some about pet limb amputation and everyone says it is harder on the humans than it is on the animal.
Does anybody else have a tripod bunny? Any insight concerning what we should expect and how to care for him would be very helpful.
Brown Hare & Chocolate