Emergency Vet

Scamp spend Saturday night at the emergency vet. He stopped eating and was obviously uncomfortable, with a tummy that looked like a balloon. Thankfully, he’s doing much better now and is under strict instruction not to worry me again. Ever.

Symptoms of an ill rabbit:

1. A refusal to eat.. Scamp left his breakfast, which he does occasionally, but turning down apple and hand fed pellets is unprecedented. Eating is no. 1 activity for most bunnies and their stomach stop moving pretty quick when they stop.

2. Lack of poop… sometimes I think Scamp must have hollow legs to store extra poop in from the size of the pile he can leave in one visit. Lack of poop means the gut isn’t moving poop along… a sure sign something isn’t working right.

3. Sitting uncomfortably.. Scamp could decide how to lie down, he moving from sitting to half way between a crouch and a stretch. Not surprising considering his poor tummy looked like a football, that’s got to be uncomfortable however you sit.

4. It’s the weekend and/or middle of night… okay only joking on this one but how is they always seem to pick when the vet is closed to start looking off colour.

He stayed in overnight to have fluids, painkillers, gut stimulants etc. which helped his tummy go down. The vet decided Sunday morning he could come home as he was ‘sat in the back of the cage giving everyone evil looks’ and they felt at that point he was probably not eating because he was upset at being there. They were quite correct, he started eating as soon as he got home. His preference is for grass and raspberry leaves.

He was most unimpressed with his first experience of a night away from home. He had to go to the usual vet for a check up today and refused to come out the carrier – he’s not usually at all bothered by the vet. I think he can differentiate between vets though as he perked up when he realised it was his normal vet not the evil bunnynappers. He’s still not back to 100% but is eating and pooping and hoping about again. I’ve not idea what caused it. He usually has a cast iron stomach and has never had any issues before. He was in the bin the night before (don’t ask!) so he could have stolen something from there or perhaps nicked a potato without us noticing (though that hasn’t effected him before).. it’s a bit of a mystery. The vet prescribed dandelion root extract at his check up which is apparently a appetite stimulant.  Anyone tried that before? It’s not something I’ve come across.

We went to a different emergency vet than usual. It seems pretty standard now for vets to contract out emergency care. It used to be out of hours you’d get a phone message with a vets personal number to call and you’d get them out of bed to meet at the surgery. Now there are specialist out of hours vets that provide an out of hours service for many local vets and your call is automatically directed to them. Makes you feel better about calling in the middle of the night but it did mean a 40-50 minute drive to the emergency practice instead of the usual 10, but this new service is only 20 minutes away, much more practical in an emergency. I would definitely recommend shopping around for emergency care before you need it. Find out if your local vet offers it and if not check out the local practices that do.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 16th, 2010 at 8:40 pm and is filed under Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.