First post, our Holland Lop Arthur suffered an unfortunate accident when we were cleaning his cage 4 weeks ago when he was accidentally knelt on… We were relieved that his back seemed okay as he hopped away perfectly normal. However, he didn’t show interest in food, and he is our little piggy, so we knew something was wrong. We discovered some blood in his mouth and took him to the vet within a few hours. They wanted to X-ray his spine, to which we objected and asked for them to please examine his mouth as that was the source of the issue. They ended up doing an X-ray and we were relieved when they told us there was no break, just a loose tooth or two and that after a few weeks of a critical care diet he should be as good as new.

2 weeks later and we bring him in for his all clear check up. His teeth are completely misaligned, there is an infection in his gum, and they decide his jaw was in fact broken….

So we decided to keep trying to save our little guy and they did a CT scan the following morning to see the extent of the break and decided that instead of wiring his jaw as was the plan, that they needed to wire his teeth instead. So for some imagery, he basically has braces on his lower teeth to pull his broken lower jaw together. The problem is, by doing this instead of the jaw we were told he still couldn’t eat hay, and that half way through recovery he would need to go through the whole thing again because his teeth and the wire will have grown out too much. So here we are almost halfway, 2 weeks, his next surgery is in 2 days.

Sorry for all of the back story.

My issue, worry, concern, question, problem–

Because he can’t dig around in his hay and chew that he is becoming very bored, and aggressive. We have had to separate him from his bonded friend because she still needs hay. He is free range in the same room as her, and she is still caged with hay. Because he can’t eat hay, he is now trying to eat everything else in the house. Carpet, bed frames, base boards, etc. I get that he needs something to relieve those natural urges to forage and have fun. But are there any suggestions of what activities he can do without chewing? I just want to help the little guy, we’ve had some bad luck with a previous rabbit dying during his neutering, and our little Arthur hasn’t even been with us a year. We want him to be around for a long time and be healthy.