3 months ago now I walked into a pet store with a friend of mine, which was our weekly routine (get coffee and say hello to all the animals on Main Street.
Until I met Dirk I’d always thought of rabbits as pretty skittish and not very affectionate but I asked to take him out and fell in love with him right there. 3 days later I took him home.

My two cats are very docile so I knew they would love the bun and they did. He loved them too, and would hop in circles around them and let my Crouton (one of the cats) bathe him. I spoil my pets so I tried to make sure he had the best of everything, I got a large dog kennel and repurposed it as his new cage. I built him multiple floors and he would jump up and down and run around in them when he wasn’t out. When he was out he would run and binky and occasionally jump onto
my chair and wedge his head between my leg and the arm of the chair for scratches.

When I got home today he seemed pretty tired. He took a nibble of an apple slice but didn’t seem intent on finishing it. He was in loaf mode so after some googling I just assumed he had a rough night and was sleepy. I checked on him every 15 minutes or so and he slept for a few hours. When I went to check on him again his eyes were open wide and he was breathing heavily. When I went to move him he didn’t struggle and I found a large soft mass of stool under him. I googled again, this time frantically. The search led me to 2 diagnoses. Either gas or GI Stasis. I gave him some water from a feeding syringe and rode my bike in the snow to the store to get him medicine, pedialyte and baby food, hoping it was just gas and I could nurse him back to health.

When I got home 10 minutes later he had passed away. I petted him and cried for a while. I decided to bury him next to the kale plants outside our garden, I used to pick him a leaf every other day in the fall, he loved kale. I broke through the frozen soil (winter has been pretty mild so far this year) and buried him with his favorite chew and some hay. Before I took him out to bury him I was just looking at him, crying and thinking “what did I do wrong”. He is the first animal to die under my care. It hit me harder than I thought it would. Such a happy little guy with such a goofy, curious disposition. What did I do to disappoint him?

I’m going to miss you, Dirk. My first (and maybe last) rabbit. I don’t know if I could handle another furball dying on me. This is the most I’ve written in a long time. I hope this forum post stands as a memorial to him.