Hi, been lurking for a while but this is my first post, so hi
Recently I acquired a second bunny as a friend for my first (Fu). His name is Tiggywinkle (out of beatrix potter, Tiggy for short). He is approx. 4 months old.
Today, I did an incredibly stupid thing, and am absolutely distraught. I’d always wanted to take my bunnies to the beach. It wasn’t a hot day and I brought them plenty of moist veggies as well as a water bowl, and it was only for a couple of hours.
However, the stop I was planning to go to wasn’t in use, and so I got off earlier, at a place called Dawlish Warren. It’s a mini seaside resort with lots of fields around it, as well as the beach. I initially sat on the edge of one of the grassy fields and let them run around for a few mins (they have leads) but was worried they’d eat some poisonous weed or something so I moved to the beach itself, where they had a whale of a time digging up the sand etc. Again we weren’t there for long, around 20mins or so. I went back to the train station but missed my train by seconds, and so had another hour to kill. I sat on a picnic bench on a patio, but still near the fields, with them for a little while, then moved to a grassy bank where it was sunny. This latter part I think is where it was most dangerous as it was dusk. I didn’t see any mosquitoes and it was a field that wasn’t ‘wild’- very short cut, mainly for kids to play on, with lots of arcades and food stalls around. They were in their little carrier for this time. There were also a fair few dogs around for the entire trip but none got within a metre or two of the buns.
Eventually I caught the train back, but on the way, it suddenly occurred to me to check of there had been a myxi outbreak in the area, cos i’m paranoid about that kinda thing. Dawlish Warren’s website had a page with a list of the animal species that lived there, and under the rabbit section it said there were myxi outbreaks every now and again. Obviously I freaked the F out.
Since coming home I gave Tiggy a very gentle bathe with some animal friendly shampoo (he was thoroughly dried and the room is very warm so he’s pretty much all dry now), cleaned out their carrier and thrown out all the hay/newspaper that was in there.
Fu came too but he is vaccinated so I didn’t bathe him.
Am I being paranoid? Just how easy is it to catch myxi? Bearing in mind they weren’t on grass for long, and when they were on the grass at dusk they were in their carrier and it was very very short grass (also I never saw any bugs flying around). Is there anything else to be done other than bathing and chucking out the hay? Should I bathe Fu? Is there much danger to Fu? Would an emergency vaccination in the morning for Tiggy be of any use? I was planning on getting him done anyway when he is neutered in a couple of weeks.
Really sorry for the length of this but I’m so upset right now and really need to know what to do. If there is anything that CAN be done, that is