Adventures with Charlie

Charlie (left) and Stuart are brother bunnies who were, along with 16 other rabbits, abandoned by a breeder in a barn 2 winters ago. The barn was also used by a dog rescue group, who noticed that no one was taking care of the rabbits and contacted our local house rabbit society. Our original intention was to be foster parents for Stuart until his permanent home could be found, but we failed at this. Once we got to know Stuart we decided that we didn't like the idea of his little face on the "adoptables" page and decided to keep him. When we took Stuart

back to the rabbit society for his neutering, they said, "You know, Stuart has a brother who doesn't have a home yet". Unfair! Trickery! We left with both rabbits, who were so excited to see each other again and have spent every day since being best friends.

From time to time, Charlie gets a tummy ache and stops eating. This is a potentially fatal problem for rabbits and needs to be corrected right away. Usually it took a couple of doses of crushed Gas X in water syringe fed, time on a heating pad getting his abdomen massaged and he would start eating and return to his usual high spirited self. This past week, we did the usual treatments, and he did start to eat, but not much and not in his usual enthusiastic manner. We went to see our rabbit vet, who checked him out, x-rayed his abdomen, and found that he didn't eat something that blocked his intestines (good) but that his digestive track could use some help (bad). They sent us home with the instructions to give him non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medicine (one tenth of 1 ml!) by mouth and a medicine to improve his gastric motility, given as an injectable every 8 hours.

Now as you can imagine, Charlie is not in favor of this plan. Despite what most folks think, rabbits do not like to be picked up. They are prey animals and generally only get picked up just before they become someone's dinner. And it hasn't taken long for Charlie to be onto things, so he takes the "avoid at all costs" approach to being medicated. Fortunately, his pen is only about 3 ft x 3 ft, so it doesn't take long to get him, as long as I first remove the cardboard bunny condo that he heads straight for, in the door and up to the second floor because he knows I can't get him in there. In spite of his best efforts, I always manage to extract him and dose him up with all his medicines, petting him afterwards, then returning him to his pen, where he immediately begins grooming himself and glowering at me.

I am happy to report that Charlie seems much better, is eating normally and hanging out with Stuart. Hopefully he will, in the end, forgive me for intruding into the bunny bachelor pad.