I don’t hear of many rabbits passing away during surgery….I don’t think that is common. But any animal going under anesthesia for any procedure will have a slight risk.

He definitely won’t hold a grudge! I always think it’s so silly when people think pets will be mad at them for taking their manhood – they have no idea what’s going on 😉 In fact, I think they’re much happier long term without those urges that they can’t control.

Otto was 100% perfect before his neuter – he’s always been extremely lazy and laid back, perfect litter habits, and not a chewer. His behavior didn’t change a bit except that he was kind of hyperactive for the week afterwards – normally keeping him quiet would be easy, but he was jumping all over the place for the couple days after his neuter.

It is definitely scary, but it has such a high success rate and really is the best thing to do for their health and happiness. Plus, just knowing rabbit people, you say you only want one now, but in a year or three you’ll start thinking about a friend for him and you’ll be so happy he’s already fixed. I know that’s how I felt!

I was lucky – my place didn’t allow pets either but I was able to talk my landlord into it. He thought bunnies were super messy and smelly (based on his brother’s vast landlording experience). He got to meet Otto and saw how clean and nice he was and when I asked for a second he just said “Yeah! Of course!” Haha. I’ve converted him into knowing how nice bunnies can be. It is nice having my own house though and being able to get whatever pets I want!

Pre-op appointments are exactly what you should do, you need to feel comfortable and understand the procedure and what to do post-op, ect. Ask the vet how many spays they do a year and what their success rate is. It should be 99% or 99.5%. My vet did blood work beforehand at the pre-op appointment to check for pre-existing conditions that would make the surgery risky. She also walked through the surgery and what recovery should be like, she also did extras like put Wilbur on an IV to make sure she stayed hydrated and stuff.

Here’s a list of questions to ask your vet: http://www.rabbit.org/faq/sections/spay-neuter.html

I was worried and nervous about spaying Wilbur too, but the vet answered all my questions and Wilbur was just fine. She didn’t even hold a grudge The first couple days after the surgery he will probably not feel too good, but your vet definitely should give you something like Metacam. I think you’ll be happy you did it.

When you hear about a bad neuter experience (or even a spay!), you need to keep in mind that this is the extreme minority of surgeries. For every rabbit who dies during surgery, there are probably a thousand that go through it just fine. It is extremely rare. People don’t generally post about successful neuters, so the bad posts will be a bit more biased towards the unsuccessful ones, or ones where the bunny does not survive.