Hi,
I'm the owner of an un-neutered 8 1/2 year-old male lop-eared rabbit (Thumper, he's grey and my sister chose his name not me
). He's always lived in the house.
Anyway, going back to around October, I started to notice a slight bloodiness and loss of fur at the tip of his tail, suggesting he'd somehow cut it (or possibly chewed it). The vets, who have always been pretty good with him, gave me baytril which I administered by syringing it into wholemeal bread. This lasted about a week and it seemed to be starting to clear up, but intermittently it would look bloody again and the very tip of his tail remained visible. I took him back again two or three times, and the vets never seemed too concerned, and advised us to continue bathing his tail with warm salt water applied with soft cotton wool.
However the problem continued, with the tail regularly appearing slightly bloodied at the tip, and I'm basically certain that this is due to him chewing the tail and aggravating it, having noticed a bit of blood on the fur above his front legs one or twice. when I took him to the vet recently they applied pressure to the tip of the tail to see if he showed any signs of pain. He didn't bat an eyelid, so they advised that this suggested the very tip of the tail may need to be removed under general anaesthetic (obviously a slight risk), presumably as the tissue was dying or dead.
However, given that this would mean wearing a collar for some time after while the tail healed, together with the risk and his age, I was reluctant. The alternative they suggested was to put him in a collar anyway and see if it would heal if he could be kept from aggravating it. They gave us a collar to try and he was fiercely resistant to wearing it, and again, given his age, and the fact that he's been his usual contented self throughout all this, I'm reluctant to take either option; slightly risky surgery would do more harm than good even if successful should he reject the collar, and the collar alone is a non-starter for the same reasons.
So having abandoned those options, I'm wondering what I might be able to do to try to manage the problem. On reflection, salt water, given the salt, may have attracted him to chewing it and so on, so I wondered whether some kind of anti-septic cream or similar, so long as it wouldn't be harmful to him, might do the trick? I wondered whether something like that could possibly serve a dual purpose of helping to keep it as clean as possible, and maybe by its smell deterring him from chewing etc.
Any thoughts on this, or other suggestions?
Thanks!
I'm the owner of an un-neutered 8 1/2 year-old male lop-eared rabbit (Thumper, he's grey and my sister chose his name not me
). He's always lived in the house. Anyway, going back to around October, I started to notice a slight bloodiness and loss of fur at the tip of his tail, suggesting he'd somehow cut it (or possibly chewed it). The vets, who have always been pretty good with him, gave me baytril which I administered by syringing it into wholemeal bread. This lasted about a week and it seemed to be starting to clear up, but intermittently it would look bloody again and the very tip of his tail remained visible. I took him back again two or three times, and the vets never seemed too concerned, and advised us to continue bathing his tail with warm salt water applied with soft cotton wool.
However the problem continued, with the tail regularly appearing slightly bloodied at the tip, and I'm basically certain that this is due to him chewing the tail and aggravating it, having noticed a bit of blood on the fur above his front legs one or twice. when I took him to the vet recently they applied pressure to the tip of the tail to see if he showed any signs of pain. He didn't bat an eyelid, so they advised that this suggested the very tip of the tail may need to be removed under general anaesthetic (obviously a slight risk), presumably as the tissue was dying or dead.
However, given that this would mean wearing a collar for some time after while the tail healed, together with the risk and his age, I was reluctant. The alternative they suggested was to put him in a collar anyway and see if it would heal if he could be kept from aggravating it. They gave us a collar to try and he was fiercely resistant to wearing it, and again, given his age, and the fact that he's been his usual contented self throughout all this, I'm reluctant to take either option; slightly risky surgery would do more harm than good even if successful should he reject the collar, and the collar alone is a non-starter for the same reasons.
So having abandoned those options, I'm wondering what I might be able to do to try to manage the problem. On reflection, salt water, given the salt, may have attracted him to chewing it and so on, so I wondered whether some kind of anti-septic cream or similar, so long as it wouldn't be harmful to him, might do the trick? I wondered whether something like that could possibly serve a dual purpose of helping to keep it as clean as possible, and maybe by its smell deterring him from chewing etc.
Any thoughts on this, or other suggestions?
Thanks!
