30/06/2025
🥳PET OF THE MONTH - JUNE 🥳 Aurora, a 6 year old harlequin rabbit who had initially presented to our out of hours provider due to a reduced appetite, a reduction in faeces and salivating excessively.
It was discovered that Aurora had sores on the inside of her cheeks from spurs on her back teeth (molars), causing pain when eating. Rabbits continuously grow their teeth and if they are misaligned or do not wear down equally this is how spurs can form. She was administered pain relief and a gut stimulant via subcutaneous injection and discharged with further pain relief to continue at home.
Aurora's owner brought her to us to continue her care, we repeated the injections to keep Aurora comfortable and planned to perform dental treatment to remove the spurs.
Pets require an anaesthetic in order to be able to perform dental treatment and rabbits are more risky than our canine and feline friends, so therefore she was monitored extra closely throughout. Aurora was given plenty of pre-operative pain relief before her operation via subcutaneous injection, a cannula was then placed into her lateral ear vein for intravenous access and two types of sedative administered to then allow us to visualise and treat her teeth. We found that the spurs were predominantly on the right hand side lower teeth with a cut on her tongue on that side, the spurs were removed with a low powered dental burr until her teeth felt smooth to the touch. Our veterinary surgeon also checked all her other teeth and removed a few small burs on the left hand side to ensure Aurora would definitely be comfortable. She recovered all fine from her anaesthetic.
It is very important for rabbits and rodents to eat post operatively as they are prone to a condition called gut stasis. This is a life threatening condition where their digestive system can slow down and potentially stop. Therefore we kept Aurora in for the majority of the day for syringe feeding after her procedure and also to monitor her temperature as that is also something risky in rabbit recoveries. Aurora was discharged that evening with instructions to continue giving pain relief but her owner was also given a gut stimulant medication to help prevent any gut stasis.
We set Aurora up a fairly large kennel in our isolation area (as seen in the pictures) where it would be quiet and she would be away from any cats or dogs to minimise stress. We provided her with a selection of food and encouraged her to hop around a little as this can help prevent gut stasis. She had one on one nursing care throughout the day with a veterinary surgeon overseeing her treatment plan.
The next morning Aurora's owner contacted us once again as Aurora had been quiet overnight and was not taking syringe feeds well or eating much by herself, her faeces were also very small and infrequent. Another visit to the practice was advised and we kept her in for the day to give her subcutaneous fluids to improve hydration, we gave injectable forms of her medication and we continued syringe feeding. Aurora was very quiet when she first arrived but we were pleased when she gradually became more lively throughout the day. She was discharged again that evening.
We called Aurora's owner the following day and were happy to hear she'd made some progress and was happy to eat parsley and apple, her frequency of defecation had increased and she was headed in the right direction. Regular vet visits can be quite stressful for rabbits so we opted to leave her to settle back in at home.
We are very pleased to hear that Aurora is back to her usual self now. 🐰🐇💗
