Disabled Rabbit
Meet our newest family member, Rocky!
Rocky is a rather lovely little chap with one hell of a story to tell – He is a lion-headed dwarf lop, approximately 4yrs old, and he only has three legs. He was was found in April 2016 in a garden, not much was known about where he came from other then that, he had sore, weeping eyes and looked a bit unkempt and sorry for himself, so he was taken to Pets at Home in Llandudno and surrendered to their adoption charity.
The charity paid for him to have a vet check up and they tidied him up and prescribed some eye drops for his eyes to try and clear up the infection that was blocking his tear ducts up. Then once tidied up and medicated he was popped into a cage to be cared for until they could find him a new adoptive family.
Now, the fact he was found running loose gives you a clue to his adventurous nature, so, it shouldn’t be a great surprise to you that it didn’t take long for him to get bored in his cage, and while no-one as about, he decided he was going to go take a look around.
Sadly, in the process of wriggling out of the cage, he managed to hurt his back leg, and so it was back up to the vets, where they prescribed rest, painkillers and careful monitoring as they didn’t know if he had just bruised the leg, or done more permanent damage.
Three days later, he started biting at his leg, probably as it was annoying him, it didn’t feel right, it wouldn’t move right and it was generally painful, so the vets decided he had permanent nerve damage, and the decision was made that he should be put to sleep….
Through one of the kind ladies at the rescue, my husband and I got to hear about this, and got a bit cross on his behalf as we knew it was perfectly possible for rabbits to live long and happy lives after an amputation, and there is a wealth of information out there thanks to the wonderful people behind DisabledRabbits.com and so we drove other to see the vet to try and change their mind. I hadn’t even met Rocky at this point, but I knew he didn’t want to go over the bridge yet from everything I had been told by the wonderful kind soul who put me onto him at the rescue.
To be honest, I thought I had lost the battle – the vet we saw just wouldn’t listen to what I was saying, and was adamant her assessment was the right one, she wouldn’t even consider what I was asking, and so after a very heated discussion, we left the vets with heavy hearts, and boiling blood, already mentally composing the social media rants and letters to head office. But something wonderful happened, something I said had hit home somewhere, and within 40mins of us leaving, I got a message asking to call the charity and speak to the head vet, who agreed to take the offending leg off and give him another chance.
Well, his operation was just under two weeks ago now, and things couldn’t be going better, He is moving around much better now that the leg has gone, he isn’t bothering his wound at all, and he is eating all the yummies we are putting down for him.
He isn’t really keen on medicine time, but seems to know that he needs to take it to make him better again, so doesn’t complain too much when I pick him up to do it, but it can’t taste very nice.
We bring him to my craft shop everyday, so I can give him his medicines, and keep an eye on him.
Well, that is the start of his “paws 4 thought” story, I am sure there will be many more adventures to come though.