This morning didn’t start out so great for our Family. As I was feeding the bunnies I noticed that our smallest little black bunny was not moving, just sort of huddling in a corner. When I went to move him and see if something was wrong he went sort of lifeless in my hand. He kicked but it was feeble and not very strong.

NOT GOOD!

I needed to go buy bunny food so Erica and I took him with us to the store, as we were there his condition noticably got worse. He fell onto his side and started arching his head backwards. Since Petsmart has an animal clinic I took him over there only to be told that bunnies count as exotic pets and that I needed to see a specialist. And their specialist wouldn’t be in until friday.

GREAT!

The only help we got from the receptionist is that his bladder area looked engorged so it might be an infection. So we immediately went home and called around the vet clinics seeing if there was someone who could take care of our bunny. We found one, and upon arriving they took one look at our poor bunny and wisked him into a back room.

Now during all this I kept explaining to my daughter that the bunny was very sick and we might be too late in being able to save it, so she needed to be prepared for losing the bunny.

The doctor took us back in and informed us that she had never seen this kind of bladder malfunction in a bunny before and that it usually is a birth defect in cats and dogs. And so we concluded since the baby bunny was only six weeks old that it probably was a birth defect here too. The bladder infection had most likely affected the kidneys as well and since the baby bunny was slowly slipping into a coma of sorts we decided that it was in it’s best interest to put it to sleep. Of course I can’t tell bunny sexes yet and the area was so engorged that even they couldnt’ tell what sex it was.

So, we buried the bunny out in our backyard. Hopefully I’ve dug the whole deep enough so that the animals don’t go digging it back up. We are now left with only six babies who are all healthy as can be. Erica has had to deal with death today and hopefully she will be ok, we have a very different view of death and I think that helps. With everything going on, it was a very teary and upsetting day. Erica is a trouper, however, and I’m so proud of her. She still wants to be a vet after all this, which really makes me proud of her.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 20th, 2003 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Family. 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.