Hi,
Yesterday we had to make the heartbreaking decision to have 9 month old Fiver put to sleep. We still don’t know what is wrong, we’d done CT scans and dye tests, and despite all the abnormalities no causation was found. After six days he was still weighing 708 grams, and had to be supplemented with his blood glucose levels, despite eating and pooping well.
I am still kicking myself for not seeing sooner. Fi had GI Stasis back in October 17 and in the past couple months had some incontinent issues. He’d maintained eating and drinking and pooping as normal, the thing that made us take him to the vet on the 14th of this month was the sudden falling over. We feared e-cuniculi, but it appears no parasites or infections where found, and the medicine did nothing. We are waiting for the postmortem, but with main abnormalities being in his abdomen we guess it could be cancer? He was staying with an exotic mammals specialist who said it could have been something she had never treated in rabbits before.
I feel like I let Fiver, and his bonded brother Strawberry, down. Strawberry was in the room when Fi was PTS. Not for as long as we wished, but I couldn’t bare it for much longer. He had a bit of a sniff, lay beside his body, and then came to me where I stroked him. A rare occurrence, Strawberry is very uncomfortable touching!
Since we returned home, Strawberry did 2 very large stinky pees, and had some soft poos. His poos have started to harden and after we changed the pen, has stopped peeing outside his litter trays. Now, Strawberry is just spending his time flopped in small spaces. Flopped in his cardboard tunnel, in the wall space between his tray, in the far corner of his pen.
Sometimes I go to stroke him but it appears to disturb him, and since our stroke after Fi passed he isn’t interested in myself or my partner. We aren’t worried – he is grieving, we are too, and we just want to do what is best but I don’t know how to help and I need to talk to someone who understands. Strawberry is also 9 months old, and the brothers bond was so unique. We’d had them from 8 weeks from the same litter together, bonded them, and it was honestly a love I had never seen in any other species. It breaks my heart that (when we can bare it) even his new partner will be a wife-bun, and not grow old with his brother.
Sorry for such a long forum message.
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