Peeing and pooping everywhere

[MissyBun]

Our 11 month rabbit has been acting weird lately. She started to pee and poop everywhere although the poops happen less often. She isn’t spayed yet due to some health issues. She’s mainly peeing on the bed which she’s done before but not to that extent, on the carpet which has NEVER happened and on her relatively new bed. I haven’t noticed any difference in her water intake and the pee looks normal. She’s also won’t leave my side, she flops next to me and waits for pets, keeps circling me and making weird noises and doing binkies when I come back into the room, she’s also licking the bed a lot. She got a new litter box a couple do days ago but she goes in there normally. I was working from home up until now so I was always with her but now I’m back at work so I’m gone for about 10 hours daily. Could this maybe be because of me being gone or hormones?

 

[Bam]

It sounds very much like hormones! She seems to be courting you 😃 The peeing in odd places could be marking, if theres no change in water intake.

[MissyBun]

Thanks for the reply! The behaviour yes, the vet confirmed it. However, she peed on me in the morning, the pee was thick and lighter than yesterday so i took her to the vet and they said it’s either a UTI or she might be infected with e cuniculi given her history. She’s getting her blood and urine tested. The vet doesn’t want to put her on antibiotics before we know for sure it’s a UTI because she had dysbiosis and gets stasis often. She’s only getting metacam for pain and panacur. They don’t have any probiotics, and I only have Bio-Lapis at home at the moment. Fibreplex should be delivered next week. Would that help her if she goes on antibiotics? I’m really worried about it….

[GlennTheLionhead]

Hey!

Sorry your bunny is unwell.

I would just firstly make sure your vet is super rabbit savvy and very rabbit experienced before accepting a diagnosis and medication from them. Its good they are doing bloods and urine first. I have had experience with vets that aren’t that rabbit experienced and it often ends in misdiagnosis or suggestions for unnecessary procedures. If they are a rabbit vet then fantastic 😀

Fiberplex is a good supplement to give during a course of antibiotics. Antibiotics can be harsh on bunnies because they kill all the healthy bacteria in their tummies, but Fiberplex is a probiotic so will work to replenish the bacteria that being lost.

 

[MissyBun]

Hi!

We have bad experiences with vets too. Rabbits aren’t popular pets here.. They aren’t rabbit savvy but they’re an exotics vet and they see a lot of rabbits and other small animals daily. It’s the only choice in my area. An actual rabbit savvy vet is about 4-5 hours away. That’s why the thought of getting her spayed is absolutely terrifying… They seem ok though and they are considering a lot of options and waiting for the test results to diagnose our bunny. We should get a call with her results today and go from there. Fibreplex got delivered today so we’ll use it if she goes on antibiotics. Thank you!

[Ellie from The Netherlands]

I don’t have anything to add about the peeing issues, but I read that she often has stomach problems.

Discuss it with your vet first, but this is what helped our bridge bunny Breintje: switching to grain-free pellets. Breintje often had mushy poop which smelled rather bad: a bit sour and even eggy at times. Switching pellets improved his digestion and it also helped us to manage his weight better.

Grain-free pellets have less sugar and starches and more fibre, which creates a better environment for the bacteria. If they’re properly balanced out these mixes also have fewer calories than mixes with grains.

If the vet thinks it can be helpful, slowly mix in some pellets every day so her stomach can adjust to it.

[MissyBun]

She doesn’t tolerate pellets at all. She’s very sensitive. Someone on here recommended Cuni Sensitive. We gave it to her slowly and she’s only been getting one to two pellets a day for about 3-4 days but her cecotropes turned soft yesterday so I don’t think it’s an option either. We’re trying to get our hands on Pro-Fibre and we’ll see how she does. The vet told us to supplement her with small amounts of critical care for now since she’s tolerating it. They said we’ll try to tackle the diet after we sort out her peeing issue. Thank you for the suggestions!

She also started to try to hump our arms and our cat so it might be a hormonal thing afterall.

[MissyBun]

The vet called us with the results. Apparently there was some issue with clotting because it was hard to get blood from our bunny. Everything seems to be normal but something related to the liver was elevated. They’ll run more tests on that. Kidneys are ok. We’ll know more tomorrow. Her urine has some sludge/crystals. The vet found no bacteria. They said that her bladder was definitely inflammed so the infection could be in the lining of the bladder but to check they’d have to sedate her. They don’t want to sedate her because it might cause stasis as she’s prone to it. They suggested to put her on baytril for 10 days starting Wednesday. We’re not sure what to do. There is no definitive diagnosis but her symptoms started last week and we don’t want to do nothing… Would it be smarter to do more tests even if she needs to be sedated for them or do the antibiotic treatment?

[DanaNM]

Hmm, did they give you any pain meds? Sometimes just noticing if there’s an improvement with pain meds is informative.

Baytril is a safe antibiotic to use in rabbits, but I’m not too familiar with its use in bladder lining issues.

For bladder sludge, encouraging hydration and movement can help. Some bunnies need to have their bladders flushed out at the vets if they have a severe case.

. . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

[MissyBun]

They gave us metacam but it tends to upset her tummy and makes her eat less so we usually give it to her for 3-4 days max. She didn’t seem to be in pain at all, if anything she was more energetic than usual. The vet told us to watch if she seems off. If she does they said we can try a smaller dose

The vet said the baytril they have is the more potent version (?) apparently it tastes horrible and it will most likely upset her stomach. So far it’s a suspected UTI…
The vet mentioned that they sometimes have to flush bunny bladders if there’s lots of sludge but she said the amount of it in our buns urine doesn’t seem that bad. They said to get her moving and keep her hydrated.

The biggest issue is that we still don’t know if the cause of this is a bacterial infection. Neither blood or urine tests indicated an infection. The antibiotics could be completely unnecessary and cause stasis in addition to whatever else is going on…. The vet is still saying it could be e cuniculi. I’m not convinced though. Her behavior seems hormonal but her pee is strange. Sometimes it’s thicker, a bit cloudy and pale yellow and sometimes it’s a tiny bit cloudy and brownish orange..

Bunny parent life is hard haha 😅

[DanaNM]

Honestly, since she is unspayed, they really can’t detect an infection, and her sludge is not severe, my bet is that this is hormonal. All the symptoms (marking, mounting, no signs of pain or discomfort) line up with an unspayed bun just acting normally. Since you mentioned your vet is not truly that rabbit savvy I would personally not want to start throwing medications at her just to see if it helps.

Are you planning to get her spayed? I know it can be really scary, but if you can go to the rabbit savvy vet it would be less scary.

In female rabbits there is a really high risk of reproductive cancers (around 75% or so by age 4), so there are health reasons to spay in addition to the behavioral reasons. If you had to go to the vet that was far away they could likely keep her overnight so she wouldn’t have to make that long journey right after waking up.

 

. . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

[Ellie from The Netherlands]

^ This is very good advice. I’d think about the rabbit savvy vet too. Maybe you can ask for a telephone consult with the rabbit savvy vet, so they can assess her medical situation.

I know that a spay is very scary,  especially if your bunny already has medical issues. Hell, even we were very scared to get our healthy little dwarf girl spayed because she’s so tiny.

But she really had to get the surgery. Besides the cancer risk her behaviour begged for a spay too. She was peeing everywhere in the house, got super territorial, and was oinking loudly with every step. The oinking was cute for about 5 minutes, then it drove us nuts. She was like a one man band clown: step-toot-step-toot toot-toot-toooooot…

It lasted for 2 months because they didn’t want to spay her before she was 6 months old. By that time we were more than ready to get her fixed.

The cancer risks are indeed very high. That makes it so difficult to choose whether a bunny with health issues should be spayed. I’d say: listen to the rabbit savvy vet. They’ll also tell you when it’s not a good plan.

[MissyBun]

We were considering everything being hormonal but it doesn’t seem like her usual marking especially not the thick urine at times. She did mark the bed when she started to grow up but not every 20 minutes. It seems like she isn’t holding her pee because sometimes it’s a lot of urine while she’s eating or drinking. She also leaves puddles after napping and leaves big piles of poop everywhere. We took her off metacam and she stopped drinking and eating. Today she seems lethargic and seems to be going into stasis… They said there was an issue with her blood clotting so they’ll do another test free of charge. They vet that saw us is on holiday until Friday so maybe we’ll get a second opinion. I might be overreacting a bit but I’m worried she’ll get worse and then it’ll ge too late to help her… Even the family is starting to think I’m going crazy haha.

We definately want her spayed just to avoid cancer. We’ll get in touch with the rabbit savvy vet and have her file sent to them. I don’t think we would trust this clinic to spay her. I do know they work with a lot of rabbits but they don’t seem to have a specialist.

[DanaNM]

If she isnt eating without pain meds then that does indicate a problem!

. . . The answers provided in this discussion are for general guideline purposes only. The information is not intended to diagnose or treat your pet. Seek the advice of your veterinarian or a qualified behaviorist.  

[MissyBun]

Hi again!

A little update. Our bunny isn’t peeing as often outside her litterbox anymore. She still is a bit, especially on the bed but that’s normal for her. She never went on antibiotics because she had a tiny stasis episode a day before she was supposed to start getting them. Her not eating or drinking was most likely due to that. She got fibreplex and emeprid for 2 days and she’s eating well now.

We took her to the vet yesterday for a checkup. She’s lost some weight, she was 1,94kg during the first visit and she’s 1,86kg now… The vet said it could be due to her no eating much over those couple of days. She also seems to be having issues jumping up places? She’ll sometimes miss the bed and she doesn’t jump up on her playpen where she likes to sleep anymore. In general she seems to be getting tired very quickly. She’ll do a couple binkies, them plop down and breathe heavily.

She’s still on Panacur for the suspected EC. We spoke to the vet about her blood test results. Her liver enzymes were high, I think it was around 153 and her urea was a bit low but they said that’s not as worrying. Everything else was normal. She’s getting another blood test done Wednesday. The vet said there’s something going on with the liver.

She never got tested for EC so we don’t know if that’s it but the vet said it can manifest in different ways and it’s hard to test for an active infection. Should we continue with panacur ( I read that it can mess with the liver and cause anemia but I’m not sure if that’s correct ) get her on antibiotics in case it’s due to an infection?

We looked for a rabbit savvy vet. Currently there is none in the entire coutry. The one that’s a bit far isn’t working until next year due to some health complications and the other exotics vet doesn’t work with exotics anymore. Our best bet is the current vet who sees a lot of rabbits everyday or one in a different clinic that just finished a course on rabbits.

We’re not sure what to do anymore…

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