A couple months ago my bunny got ringworm on his ear and since then it spread to his other ear and now to his neck. His ears look good now, but his neck now has a balding red spot…. I took him to the vet and was given topical and oral medication to give him. For the first few weeks I could not get him to take his oral medication. Finally I mixed it with pure carrot juice and he gets very excited when it’s time for his medicine. The vet prescribed him griseofulvin and said it might upset his stomach.
Because I am afraid he will spread the ringworm around I have kept him in his cage almost constantly since the ringworm started. I feel so bad for this that I stress about it all the time. Before, I made sure to let him out to play for at least 30 minutes to an hour a day. He loved getting out of his cage and would run around and jump happily. I would even bring him downstairs sometimes with many other people around and he didn’t mind at all.
Today I decided to bring him out again and put him in a closed off tiled area of my house. (most of my house is carpeted) Since it is tile it will be easier to clean after he is done playing. With some help, my entire house was vacuumed and steam cleaned about two weeks ago. I wrote about this in a post around when all this started. My boyfriend’s mom gave us a kitten from an animal shelter that we later found out had ringworm. He was the one who gave it to my bunny and was treated at another house so I could clean and protect my bunny from it. He ended up getting it anyway…
When I brought him downstairs today he did not act like his usual self at all. He acted a little lethargic and kept stomping his feet and making a strange squeak sound I have never heard him make before. While he was down there I was cleaning parts of his cage outside and whenever I’d come back in he would be hiding in a corner. This is not how he acted before all this started!
I don’t know what to do. I feel so sad for him and feel like it’s all my fault if he is scared or sick. Do you think he is acting this way because he has been in his cage so long? That is what I suspect. It seems like a disaster to me. Could his behavior also possibly be because of side effects from his medicine? Maybe it is making him not feel so well. I really don’t know, but my best guess is because he has been in his cage for so long. Keeping him in his cage too much was something I promised myself I would not do to him from the very beginning and because of the ringworm I ended up doing that anyway.
I am sorry for such a long post but I am afraid I hurt my bunny somehow. Do you think he will go back to normal once his ringworm is better and I can let him out in his normal play area again? Should I keep bringing him downstairs on the tiled area even though he seemed scared today? I would like to try letting him out a lot more despite the ringworm problem, but if he is too scared then I don’t know what else to do. If I let him out to play in the normal carpeted area it seems like the ringworm problem will never go away and all the effort it took to clean the house would be a waste.
I am also going to call the vet tomorrow to see what they think.
Thank you for any help!