Hi all,

Question: Do you think, situation considered, I should be worried that they are infected and have in turn infected Gus?

Background/Situation: I’ve been looking to get Gus a friend recently. We had a failed bonding attempt with a bunny from the closest shelter, Lily, who ended up bullying him into stasis and this shelter in particular offers a kind of program of “try this bun out, if it doesn’t work, try another”. When it all went down, I didn’t feel comfortable attempting to bond him with another rabbit whatsoever. It’s been a year now, and I don’t give Gus the socializing time he needs (in my opinion) to be the only bun in a home anymore. I didn’t want to go through that shelter again as they acted quite outwardly homophobic towards me – I had stated my partner and I were looking for a bunny and the woman went from very sweet to both extremely weirded out by and rude to me. So, I thought of the next best thing – save a bun from a bad situation. I’ve been looking for a few heartbreaking days, have reached out to a lot of people only to never get a response.

Until I found the worst I had seen in my ventures, and they responded within an hour. She was breeding rabbits for very saddening purposes, and to spare you some really nasty details – she kept them in horrible conditions. I instantly jumped, felt in my heart I needed to save as many as possible, and within a bout of impulsivity: one bunny became two.

I haven’t been active on this forum in a while, nor am I keen on social media so as far as I knew, RHDV2 had died down in 2021, or so I thought. Coming here tonight for advice led me to seeing an update and looking at the outbreak map. I found two cases that have happened in the last few months. One was about two months ago, a little less than 200 miles away in a neighboring state and the other about three months ago, just barely over 150 miles away. Both were domestic, house bunny cases, with no reports of wild bunnies being infected.

As I’m sure you could guess, two new buns (Marnie and Sophie, sisters named after the siblings in Halloweentown) were housed outside by the woman. RHDV2 wasn’t even on my mind, so I just set them up in an X-pen and covered the sides so nobody could see each other. Later on, I found Gus had poked his little head under the blanket and he was nearly touching noses with Sophie, seemed really buddy-buddy and the sight was heartwarming. Everyone had an overwhelming day and since there was no malice nor negative occurrences, I didn’t stop it. Even if I had, they’re still in the same room and with how it sounds, would have infected him anyways.

TLDR:

I brought home two bunnies from someone who kept them outside. The closest RHDV2 outbreak was 153 miles away, occurring in September of 2022, next to an outbreak in November about 200 miles away. No new cases anywhere near my home state, New Hampshire, have been listed on the map. My little guy, Gus, has already had -albeit very little- contact with the pair, certainly enough to infect him. Nobody is vaccinated as that isn’t an option at this point in time within my state. I know if the new buns have it, Gus does too, and it won’t end well. Gus is my whole world, and I can’t help but freak out…