My bunny died at the vets, they didn’t know when, or why and we feel like we sent him to his death :(

[Laelae]

Hiya, I’m new here, sorry in advance for my first post being a gloomy one but I’m sat up with my lop Spoops (not the name we gave him initially but what everyone ended up calling him!) And I can’t help but cry over how he’s being at the moment.

He’s been to the vets today and been fully checked over (our vet specialises in small animals, rabbits being the extra speciality of one of the vets at the practise.) They couldn’t find anything wrong with him apart from a very minor tooth problem which they said didn’t warrent any action and just said to keep an eye on him and bring him in again if he still won’t eat properly soon.

What’s been happening is, about 10 days ago he all of a sudden stopped eating his Burgess nuggets and forage mix (which he usually goes mad for) and instead began eating hay (a miracle we thought, as we’ve bought him all different hays and he very rarely does more than nibble at it normally.) A couple of days passed and he stopped eating anything, we’ve dealt with tummy troubles before with him as he’s a very fussy eater!! (Vets blame the fact that his previous owner only fed him carrots and bread!) The vets have advised us previously not to bring him in for tummy treatment unless it’s a dire emergency since he gets even more stressed out there than the average bunny. Often we manage to get him through it at home by feeding him a selection of fresh herbs for a day or two and then he goes back to eating as normal. This time however, he munched up the herbs just fine, but still refused to eat anything but those and a couple of other vegetables (fennel and kale). This certainly wasn’t ideal but it was all we could get him to eat so we hoped it’d be OK for a couple of days…. It wasn’t, he ended up having a little bit of runny poops luckily after that he started munching a good amount of hay again and his poops went back to normal. Next day, he barely eats anything, day after that he eats a full bowl of hay and some of his fibre sticks, then the day after next to nothing again!

The vet said that because it’s intermittent and he’s still eating his poops and mostly acting like his usual self that he should be ok but just keep an eye on him and that as long as he continues to eat hay, it’s not so terrible that’s he completely gone off his nuggets.

However, since he came back from the vets he pretty much hasn’t moved, it’s like he’s now gone into super ill mode like he gets when he has dire tummy trouble. He won’t accept any food, not even his favourite treat. The only normal thing he’s still doing is hunkering down when I touch him which he always does when he thinks he’s about to get lots of rubs and cuddles. I just know he’s not well though, he’s a house rabbit and I’m currently unemployed so we spend a lot of time together and he’s just not well if it wasn’t for the fact that he was only at the vets a few hours ago I would be having him seen right now. Since it’s night time now I’m going to call in the morning and get him seen again but I’m just so worried about him. (He makes me worry a lot!!) I just wish there was something I could do to make him happy right now.

Has anyone else here had a bunny that was on and off with his/her food over a similar period of time? It’s really weird as this has never happened before for us.

[Bam]

My Yohio was off on and when he had molar spurs that the vet failed to diagnose for three weeks. But he never ate hay when he decided to eat, always just willow leaves and a bit of herbs and i support-fed him with Critical Care. Have you had his teeth checked?

The discomfort you’re seeing could be gas, and simethicone (baby gas drops) can help with that. I’ve found it often does.

If he seems to enjoy being pet, I’d pet him. Do his ears feel cold? Sometimes they get a lowered body temp when they aren’t feeling well, and it can help to place the bunny in your lap with a fleece blanket on him, so he gets warmed up by your body heat.

[Laelae]

Thanks for your reply. That’s really interesting because the vet mentioned molar spurs last night when he checked his teeth! He said that it was so minor and couldn’t see any irritation/inflammation etc. Caused by it inside his mouth so it would be better to leave it for now. He said in his opinion he wouldn’t want to do anything yet, but he did say we could get a second opinion from one of his colleagues if we liked.

I’ve read a lot about people using baby gas drops and thought of getting some, I just don’t know if I’d be able to get him to take them. He’s a lovely bunny who enjoys lots of snuggles on the floor together but because of his previous background we’ve never been able to pick him up/handle him which makes things very awkward when it comes to caring for him at home. We can’t clip his nails, we can’t syringe feed him in times like this, we can’t even clean his bum for him… So he has to go to the vet for all that and even they struggle to handle him (He’s a big french lop and wasn’t handled at all by his previous owners.)

All throughout this week his ears have been on and off like his eating, one day cold, next day fine again and so on I’ve been giving him lots of pets as usual and he has his own special bunny hot water bottle too.

This morning his few poops are different again to how they’ve been through the week, I expected them to be really tiny and hard like when he’s barely eaten before, but they’re the right colour only they’re more shaped like a fat version of a guinea pig poo!! There’s only 3 of them. He’s only eaten the tiniest bit of grass and a small handful of kale. He showed interest in his nuggets but did something he’s never done before, just dropped them out of his mouth instead of eating them. He’s booked in to see a different vet at the practice this evening so hopefully they’ll be able to diagnose something and help him somehow.

[tobyluv]

It’s difficult to get a good look at a rabbit’s molars unless the rabbit has been anesthetized. It sounds like your vet may have just looked in your rabbit’s mouth when he was awake, so the vet might not have been able to fully see what the problem could be with the teeth.

Since you are going to the vet later, maybe you could go ahead and pick up some infant simethicone to take with you and let them administer it to your rabbit. The dosage is 1 -2 ml every hour for 3 hours. If it hasn’t helped by then, the problem probably wasn’t gas. I’ve found it very helpful with my rabbits when they get an occasional spell of not eating and looking uncomfortable. Usually, one dose really helps.

Have you tried putting your rabbit in a burrito wrap to give him medicine? You can find videos of that method on You Tube.

[Bam]

The dropping food out of his mouth is a classic sign of dental problems. My Yohio did just that. He was clearly hungry, came running for food, took a bite, dropped the food and backed away.

Rabbits can have very sensitive mouths and the spurs don’t have to be big to cause pain. That’s why my vet ruled out teeth for three weeks before she finally decided to give burring the molars a shot. And it worked! He needed metacam for a couple of days after the burr, but then his appetite and poop went back to normal, like nothing ever happened.

He had to do a repeat treatment after 6 months and after that he went a whole year before he needed the next burr. His life didn’t get long enough for him to need more burrs than that, sadly.

[Laelae]

Thanks for your replies guys. I thought I’d pop back to update on this and to let you know that my poor bunny died on Friday, at an unknown time at the vets after we dropped him off

We saw a different vet a couple of days after my last post, the vet said he looked and felt fine, also mentioned the tiny spurs but doubted they were causing any trouble. He gave him 3 injections 1 painkiller and 2 to get his gut moving (I can’t remember the names without finding the receipt to look at). He then said bring him back in in 48 hours if there’s no change and not to syringe feed him since it stresses him out too much, just keep on feeding him tasty herbs like we had been.

So we took him home and he seemed a little better than usual after a trip to the vets. The next day he ate a lot of grass very enthusiasticly and half of his excel nuggets, along with his favourite herbs. He seemed happier than he had been earlier in the week, however the next day he hardly ate at all again, just picked at a bit of everything and only really showed enthusiasm for dill, which he was still more than happy to gobble. We phoned the vet and explained he’d eaten well one day but not so much the next and he said to bring him in the next day, so we did.

He checked him over again but rather than suggesting more pain killers and gut stimulants like he’s had in the past (1-3 doses has sorted him out previously after a moult) he wanted us to take him to the hospital the next day to have his teeth checked thouraghly, under anaesthesia. We asked if it might be better to try one more lot of medicine first but he really wanted to rule out teeth so we agreed, with him telling us that the next step after that if teeth weren’t a problem, would be to trial an antibiotic.

Unlike just popping in for check ups and routine treatments where you can book an appointment, we were told we would have to bring him to the hospital at 8:30am and depending on when they looked at him, would be able to go home at 4:30pm earliest bit more likely around 6pm.

When we got there to drop him off we had to fill out a short form, on it it asked if there were any special requirements they needed to be aware of, so I wrote down that he had hardly eaten in the last 12 hours or so and done minimal poops, I also mentioned the fact that he doesn’t deal well with vet trips at all and gets very stressed out.

A vet nurse came to collect him from us in reception, she asked about special requirements so we also repeated to her what we wrote on the form. Then she took him away and that would be the last time we saw him alive

We went home to tidy up as he’d made quite a lot of mess in the house recently, hay everywhere etc. We got a phone call at 1:20pm, it was a vet phoning to tell us that he’d just gone to go and get him but found he was dead. He said he didn’t know when it happened, gave a short apology and asked if we’d like to come and collect him.

Needless to say we were devastated. When we went to collect him it was an assistant who brought him out, she didn’t offer an apology, just said “we put him in a towel for you.” Handed us the carrier and walked away! We couldn’t ask any questions, we were too upset, we just walked out in tears and went home.

We unwrapped him to see what condition he was in and give him a stroke and a hug. There was nothing obviously different about him, we could only guess that he got so scared that he had a heart attack or something. I can’t stop thinking about the fact that the last thing we did was herd him into his carrier and leave him there to die, scared and alone I know that there’s no way we could have known this would happen, but that doesn’t help ease the pain. It feels like we just sent him to his death.

My vets pride themselves on being small animal specialists and have won awards. They were the best reviewed (and most expensive) vets in the area, but I just feel like my poor bunny shouldn’t have had to die like this, he was only about 2 years old

What I don’t understand is, when they specialise in small animals and had written and verbal warnings from us about his current state, why was he left alone for so long? If they had seen him close to when we dropped him off, he would’ve been out of it from the anaesthetic and not had to worry about what was going on, then he could’ve recovered in peace and we could’ve taken him home. By the time they even went to get him almost 5 hours had passed since we dropped him off and since the vet couldn’t even guess at when he died, we assume that no one was even checking in on him to see if he was ok. That’s such a long time to leave a frightened, ill bunny on his own!

We want answers of some kind so we plan to write a letter to the practice manager, though we don’t know if we’ll get much of a reply. We just feel really angry and totally let down by our vets. For all we know they could’ve put him under, checked and decided they didn’t even need to do anything. But we’ll never know now

I’ve had multiple pets that died at home due to old age and it’s always horrible and terribly sad to lose member of the family like that; but this just seems so much worse, all we keep doing is thinking about all the things we could’ve done to prevent this from happening we put too much trust in our vets and now our beloved rabbit is gone and we’re left utterly heart broken.

[Laelae]

We don’t take that many photos, these are all I have of him, plus a couple of videos of crazy binkies, flops and loud kale munching. I miss him so much

[Sleepy]

Sorry about your loss. Spoops looks like an adorable bun who was very well-loved. It’s never easy not knowing what went wrong, especially with how young he was and the confidence had in the vets. Our last bridge bun (also had dental issues, on top of other problems) passed away while in the vet hospital and it left us devastated. One of our biggest regrets was not knowing exactly what got him in the end. 

If you haven’t taken care of the body, yet, you might want to consider a necropsy. It might be useful for helping you get closure over what happened to him, as well as answer some of your questions better than a letter alone.

Binky free, Spoops. 

[Azerane]

Laelae, I’m so very sorry for your loss. It is very difficult feeling like you were trying to do the right thing, but also feeling like you left them to die. I had the same experience when I lost Bandit. I knew he wasn’t well, that it was something serious. I had to take him to a vet that wasn’t my normal vet and tried explaining to them, she told me he seemed fine at which point I started crying and told her she had to do something because there was something seriously wrong which I considered an emergency. I got told that they’d give him painkillers and they’d do an ultrasound, but it had to wait a few hours so I should go home and wait for a call. Not having any other options with my normal vet closed, I left him there. They called me a little while later to tell me he had passed away from a ruptured cecum shortly after the ultrasound. However I got the impression that he passed before they’d done the ultrasound and they did it after, otherwise I should have received a call immediately when they’d done it asking to put him to sleep (I’ll never know, it’s just speculation, plus they didn’t charge me for the ultrasound, either out of guilt or sympathy). It just so happened that whether he’d had instant treatment or not, there was nothing to be done for him, but I would have liked the chance to hold him and pet him while they injected him rather than leaving him alone there to die. I knew it was an emergency, but they just didn’t seem to take me seriously since they couldn’t “see” anything wrong with him and he was calm (which was how I knew).

I’m sorry for the long story, it’s still raw sometimes. Just wanted to say that you’re not alone in feeling that way and while it does really hurt, you still did the right thing by Snoops, trying to get his treatment done and getting him looked after. Even though I do of course wish it could have gone some other way as I’m sure you do, I know I made the best decision for Bandit that I could have made at the time based on information and options that I had available. Which is what you did for Snoops too. He was very much loved. Binky free, Snoops.

[Bam]

I’m so sorry for your loss. He was a beautiful rabbit. You tried to do right by him by getting him appropriate care. You couldn’t have done differently, something was very wrong with him.

Binky free (((((Snoops)))))

[Ellie from The Netherlands]

I’m crying here, I’m so sorry for your loss of Snoops… Binky free without any pain now, little one. You absolutely did the right thing bringing him to a vet, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Sadly rabbits are very fragile creatures and GI issues are one of the main causes of death. A bunny can get beyond help really quickly, and then there isn’t much even a vet can do besides hope and wait.

I don’t think their knowledge is at fault here, because the treatments sound right. However, comforting people who just lost their companion is also an important skill for a vet. That vet has some very poor bedside manner if you don’t mind me saying. They could have offered a little more comfort or a few words about his passing. I do understand that the trust is gone now. Are there other rabbit-savvy vets around?

[LittlePuffyTail]

I’m so very sorry for your loss.

I lost a beloved bun in a similar way last Spring. She had a reaction to the anaesthetic and while we got a chance to say goodbye, she passed shortly after. My vet was so upset about not knowing what went wrong, she cremated her for free and didn’t charge me anything for the procedure. It’s so very hard, I know, the feelings of guilt and not knowing. But you did what was right for your bunny and he was lucky to have someone who cared so much.

((((Binky Free Snoops)))))

[Jessica]

I’m so sorry for your loss

Losing a bun (or any family member) without answers to why is horrible. I lost my previous bun with no answers, she was diagnosed with mastitis that we were treating and the same fluid moved into her lungs. I was able to hold her while she passed but the vet never knew what it was exactly or why it happened. That was 14 years ago and I just got another bunny. Time helps heal those wounds, and when you a ready a new fuzzy face really helps

[Author]

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