more bladder problems this past weekend

[peepi&warri]

On Sunday when I got home, I noticed Peepi was changing positions frequently and breathing fast. He had also urinated a lot of red sludgy stuff under the coffee table, which isn’t a good sign from him since he has almost perfect litterbox habits. After about 10 minutes he calmed down and didn’t seem in pain anymore and would eat food offered to him. After that when he went to the bathroom, his urine didn’t look sludgy in the litterbox, but he would still act like it hurt to go pee every now and then. This went on for about 4 hours. Then I noticed he would sit in his litterbox for about 5 minutes at a time trying to go to the bathroom maybe every 20-30 seconds and looking around at his hind end like “WTF.” When he would get out of the litterbox, nothing was in there. I kept putting dry litter over any wet spots, so I could tell he wasn’t producing anything. After seeing him go through this 3 times, off to the emergency vet we went.

They took x-rays and thankfully there weren’t any stones. The vet was able to express his bladder and said there was a waxy plug that came out. After that he was able to go on his own. The vet said his bladder was about the size of an orange before she expressed it. They did a urinalysis and he has a UTI and blood in his urine, so he’s on antibiotics (smz-tmp) and an anti-inflammatory until the end of the week.

After we got him home, he was in a good bit of pain and wouldn’t eat much, but started acting more like himself after a few hours. Every now and then I’ll see him jerk when he goes pee, but I think it’s getting better. Poor boy.

Ever since I cut back on their pellets and parsley, they’ve had much less sludge, so I was thinking we were headed on the right track and it was starting to clear up. Even on the x-ray, there was much less sludge in Peepi’s bladder than on previous x-rays. Very frustrating.

Anid it just makes me mad that when I took him to a rabbit vet last month, she didn’t want to do a urinaylsis because she said it would be too hard to collect urine. But this vet (not even a rabbit vet) was able to easily get urine and within a half hour we knew he had an infection. This whole episode might have been avoided.

[Sarita]

Poor Peepi. Did he have bladder sludge too? What was the waxy plug?

Luckily the SMZ-TMP is supposed to cause less GI problems too – my vet prescribes this frequently. Did she give him fluids? Obviously it sounds like he didn’t need them but sometimes that helps with sludge too at least in my rabbits. I usually do sub-q’s at home on my sludgy rabbits too. Also you can express his bladder at home too – this is not difficult and standing them up so the sludge goes down to the uretha is helpful too.

How old is Peepi? Is he an active rabbit?

I have and have had many bladder sludge rabbits. According to my vet there just is not enough known about sludge in rabbits – I’ve read and heard all kinds of varying information on this. I do think pellets are a problem – moreso than vegetables – pellets just seem to cause lots of problems for rabbits in many different ways.

I hope Peepi gets better soon – this is such a frustrating thing to deal with.

[Kokaneeandkahlua]

Oh you know, it’d depend on how well I knew the original vet, but I might just phone them up and tell them what you just said-objectively and non confrontationally tell them that their reluctance to perform the tests you asked for caused your rabbit a great deal of pain and more vet bills. That sucks though

But glad your at the bottom of the problem and Peepi is on the mend!

[peepi&warri]

Peepi did have bladder sludge. The vet said the plug was waxy and mucousy. I’m guessing that if the urethra was really irritated, it probably secreted mucous and what not and all the secretions blocked him up.

He’s done with his antibiotocs and did well on them, no appitite changes or messy poops. She did give him fluids, so much that he had little wings behind his front legs for a day!  And she did show me how to express his bladder. So far I’ve only seen a tiny bit of sludge from him and that was just yesterday, so I don’t know if that means he’s starting to build sludge up again or if what was in there got mixed up and made its way out.

Peepi is 4. Neither of my boys are very active, but he does run around a good bit, especially when he gets hungry. Everytime anyone goes to the kitchen, he runs after them and runs back into the room and does a few circles when he knows he’s getting food. But he definitely isn’t as active as he used to be, I’ve presumed because he’s getting older, but I don’t know for sure.

I agree about the pellets. I used to give my boys too many pellets and I would see sludge every few weeks probably, and they would usually have a lot at once. Now I’ve decreased their pellets, first to 1/8 cup each and now about a tablespoon each, I’ve seen sludge just a few times in 2 months and its almost just 1 or 2 potties with a tiny bit of sludge in it.

I think I might try a new vet for now on. There is a vet recommended on the HRS page who is an hour away, but it’d probably be worth it.

Also, when I took him to the vet in January, he weight 4.5 pounds. At this vet last week he was 4.1 pounds. Is a drop of .4 lbs in a month and a half OK?

[Sarita]

Maybe the vet got the majority out when she expressed his bladder initially. Sometimes I gently rock my rabbits bottom while I’m expressing their bladder – I think it sometimes help to get the sludge moving too. They don’t always like this but I’ve read other bladder sludge rabbit owners who do something similar when expressing their rabbits bladders.

I’m glad he’s getting better. I imagine bladder sludge is very uncomfortable and painful for our rabbits.

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