Help: Enlarged heart 5 months old Holland Lop

[cadfax]

Hi All,

First time joining this forum and first post! I wanted to reach out to others to see if others could provide insight or recommendations. I understand this might be a little long of a post, but I feel it needs a little back story to help explain. If you don’t have the time to read the entire thing, please jump to the next paragraph that goes into detail about the question we’re running into. Thanks for ANY help and I understand people here may not be vets, I just wanted to put this info out there to hear others thoughts because my fiance and I are extremely shocked. We researched finding a Holland Lop rabbit for a long time. We felt it was going to be a perfect first pet together. It fit our lifestyle of relaxed, down to earth, but also just being a cute fur ball with personality. We reached out to a lot of local breeders to find a holland lop that we would be available to take in. We finally heard back from one that had a few brother and sister holland lops living together on a farm in a nice conditions. We arrived to clean farm, friendly animals and 4-5 cute bunnies to pick from. We were told that they were all in good health, litter trained and easy to pick up. We picked up a tan colored Holland Lop that my fiance fell in love with. We have had this little guy since end of November 2015 till now (Jan 11th). As of now, he is roughly 5 months old and a little cutie. Always following us around, being very curious, binky-ing around the place. Although this was our first rabbit, we researched all that would be acquired from other breeders, owners and others involved in the bunny world.

As of last week Friday, we noticed that he was acting very differently. He had an arched back, with his head tilted up and nose flaring. Almost as if it was hyper extended, trying to make breathing easier. We were carefully watching him because we have never seen him do any motion like this before. We went to go check out stomach, softly touching to see if his gut felt stiff or over extended. It all felt normal to us – soft and no issues. We thought there might be an issue with his GI tract, from our vet mentioning that its very important to watch consuming food and depositing waste. It was all looking normal, but then we started to realize that he quickly became reclusive. Hiding in areas he would never normally go to. His energy levels appeared low. We tried to motivate him by clinking his ceramic pellet dish that we put his bunny pellets in (this always gets him to come running). He seemed disinterested in this and those are one of his favorite things that he never refuses to gobble up. That’s when we decided to go to the emergency vet. They checked him out and recommended getting x-rays to assess his breathing, because it seemed like his heart beat seemed a little quick. It could also be from him being in a vet and out of his normal routine. The x-rays came back and the exotic vet mentioned that his GI tract was fine, no issues from the x-ray or from checking out his body. Then they mentioned that he has an enlarged heart. We looked at the x-ray and I could easily see that his heart was enlarged, for such a tiny rib cage and I don’t work with x-rays. It sounded like this is rare for bunnies and even more so for 5 month old. The next steps sounded like an ultra sound should be preformed to assess what is going on with the heart. They pointed out that the x-ray didn’t show any fluid build up in the lungs. His stool was tested and came back as checking out a-ok, no parasites or anything odd. We’re still waiting back for more tests, but wanted to reach out to all of you. One vet mentioned that this is most likely due to the breeding from the breeders, which is something we took the word from the breeder as being healthy.

Talking with 2 different vets and doing research online it is painting a difficult life for the little guy. With medication for this issue (cant remember the name for it) he will see fluctuations in his health. He will have good and potentially a lot of bad days with low energy, being reclusive, and so on. We want the absolute best for him and am wondering what others have run into with heart issues or similar related health issues. 

Thanks for reading.

[lillian]

I cannot say i have dealt with this, and i really hope someone who has can give you a better insight, but, i wish you and your bun the best health!

[Q8bunny]

Poor little sweetheart. Sending (((healing vibes))) from Chewie and me.

[cadfax]

Thank you for the support, Lillian, Kuwait and Chewie! Means a lot.

[LBJ10]

This is a link I posted in another thread. I don’t know if that is helpful or not.
http://www.lagomorphs.com/heart.pdf

[cadfax]

Teddy says thanks, LBJ10! Great information bundled up in here.

[LBJ10]

Oh good, it had some useful information for you! I posted that while on my phone earlier and I couldn’t remember what was all in the document.

[Author]

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