WARNING! This is not a professional website! I am NOT an expert. Do NOT believe everything on this site.

Last Updated: 1/17/08

Photos
Story

Photos

Photos are listed from oldest to newest.

Sweetie in April of 2003.
Sweetie on 10/31/04, hiding in the run. "You can't see me!"
Sweetie on 2/13/05.
Sweetie on 2/13/05.
Sweetie in the dog run on 10/2/05.
Sweetie in the dog run on 10/2/05.
Sweetie and Mr. Tiny in the dog run on 10/2/05.
Harry, Sweetie, and Mr. Tiny (left to right) on 3/18/06. There is a video from then too on my video page.
Back iris garden - I put this photo here because the rabbit hutch is in the back corner. You can actually see Sweetie in the window of the left room of the hutch. The photo was taken on 4/26/06.
Sweetie and Isabella in their cages on 7/10/06. This is where Sweetie was kept (yellow cage bottom) while her new cage was coming.

I took three views of Sweetie in her new cage.
Sweetie in her new cage on 7/22/06.
Sweetie in her new cage on 7/22/06.
Sweetie in her new cage on 7/22/06.

Sweetie in her cage on 1/13/08. Wow, I did not take any photos of her last year, oops!

Story

My mother saw an ad for the animal shelter with a bunny in it and wanted to rescue her. After going through extensive interviews, a home visit, and paperwork, they deemed our home good enough to adopt her. Sweetie is a 9-pound mix-breed doe. She is brown and white, kind of like Jimmy, but with normal ears. According to the previous owners (they filled out a form we got), she was 1.5 years old when they gave her up on 2/12/03 (four days before the blizzard of 2003 in MD). So, I will assign her the incorrect birth date of 8/12/01. The previous owner's kept her in an outside cage. They cleaned the cage every two months. From that, I am assuming it was a wire-bottomed cage, bad on her feet. I cannot imagine that she was warm in an open-bottomed cage this winter when it got down to 5 degrees F. My bun hutch has a solid wood floor. That way, it is warmer, safer on their feet, and dogs cannot terrorize them from below. The snow was so deep during the blizzard, I had to bring in Izzy. If Sweetie had still been in her open-bottomed hutch, she may have been swallowed up by the snow. Certainly the owners would not have been able to tend to her as I could not get to my hutch for three days to dig it out (while Izzy was safe inside). The owners say she ate rabbit pellets "all day." They list no other foods. They say she does not use a litterbox but I am sure she will for me (they probably did not even try). They say she is afraid of brooms (how would they know that?). Two months ago (roughly 12/12/03), she scratched someone "because of long nails." I guess they did not bother to trim them! They say she is "fun, loving, sweet" and plays soccer (huh?). She came from a breeder. Since she has no tattoo, I am assuming it was not a licensed breeder, probably some kid breeding them in his back yard or something. The questionnaire says "Why are you surrendering your pet?" They answered "can't take care of them." They should have said, "I won't take care of them because I don't care enough!" The shelter had two more rabbits and a cute guinea pig. Too bad we cannot take in all the needy animals! One of my many dreams would be to create a permanent sanctuary for unwanted small domestic animals (not including dogs and cats since there are simply too many). Unless a million dollars falls into my lap, it will never come true.

We visited Sweetie on 3/22/03. On 3/26/03, Sweetie was spayed by the shelter's vet (required), and my mother picked her up around 6 pm. Her eyes were wide from a mix of shock, pain, and anesthesia. By the next morning, she still had not eaten. That night, when she was still not interested, I had to hydrate her and force feed her. I used lactated ringers to put some fluids into her back (subcutaneously fluids), about 100 mL. While doing so, she made her first pee, all over my pants and socks, nice and deep yellow since she was dehydrated. After that, I force fed her half a syringe of Critical Care by Oxbow which is fine timothy-based pellets with good stuff in there to help sick buns. She ate about half and half got all over the floor and I. When I put her back into the cage, she peed again, not in the litter pan so I had to soak it up with a paper towel. The next morning, we saw her eat a few bites of spinach and kale but no major eating yet. So far, the water bottle is untouched (I normally use bowls for water for my buns but she has spent her life so far using water bottles so I wanted to start with that, plus it lets me know how much, if any, she drank). She is not as timid now and is more dominant like most does, grunting and lunging a little when I put my arm in the cage. She does not fight being petted though but was not too happy being manipulated the night before in order to give her fluids and syringe food. Hopefully, she is okay now. She will visit the vet Sunday to see if she has mites or other obvious problems. If not, she can go outside into Jimmy's old room in the hutch. Since she was not littered trained, I am hoping she takes to it quickly and naturally and does not pee all over the wood-bottomed hutch. Ellie came from the wild, and she always used the litter pan after we caught her. My other buns also put 95% of their pee in the litter pans (not as much poop though which they like to spread around a little, luckily it is very easy to sweep up). On 3/29/03, she is eating a little hay and fruits and vegetables but will not eat any pellets. Since the water bottle was untouched, we gave her about 80 mL of lactated ringers under the skin again to keep her hydrated. She now grunts at me (typical intact-doe aggression, hopefully it will go down as the hormones leave her body). She does not grunt at my mother so she just does not like me I guess. On 3/30/03, she went to the vet for her checkup. The vet could not find a thing wrong with her! That is a first as there is usually something wrong! I was very happy. So, on 4/2/03, Sweetie moved into Jimmy's old hutch next to Izzy. She spent the day sniffing and standing on her hind legs to explore every inch of the place. By that night, she ate some food, and by the next day, she seems to be settling in. Now, if she would just put her pee in the litter pan and not on the wood floor, everything pertaining to her would be perfect! This is just too easy! Maybe my luck with buns has turned around!

Update: 9/12/03. Sweetie is very good with her litter pan and puts most waste in there now. She eats like a little piggy. She grunts and lunges like all my rabbits have when I go into her cage. She seems happy and enjoying life. Izzy and Sweetie seem to enjoy each others company when I let them hop together. She does shed a lot but not as bad as Jimmy did. No real problems yet with Sweetie!

In the spring and summer of 2004, Sweetie had some problems with diarrhea (or just messy poo) so she got a few baths. It seems to have subsided by 7/21/04. She is just too big (fat, stone heavy).

In September, I realized Sweetie was having problems again with lots of poo on her rear. I had to give her a few showers to clean it off and prevent maggots. In addition, she has been shedding for months on end. That is not normal. When Jimmy had that, it was due to mites. Sweetie is going to the vet on 10/11/04 to discuss these problems.

Sweetie went to the vet on 10/11/04. He thinks the problem is that she simply is not grooming herself. For some reason, she is not removing her shedding fur or eating her night feces which instead end up all over herself and the floor which makes a mess, stinks, and attracts flies so I have to keep cleaning. The vet guesses it is her diet. I have cut back on her fruits and veggies and increased her hay and timothy-based pellets to see if the extra roughage gets her to eat her night feces like she is supposed to do. For once, I would just like to have a healthy bunny! Sweetie's problem may simply be eating too much, at least of the wrong things. She was up to 9.4 pounds in weight.

On 12/26/04, I scraped the huge amounts of poo out of the right side of the rabbit hutch where Sweetie lived, and I gave Sweetie a bath since she was entombed in feces. Since it was cold out, I brought her in until the morning of 12/29/04 so she could dry and heal. I put Neosporin on her to the sides of her privates as it was bloody raw. I really wish she would eat her night feces!!! Instead, I have trouble cleaning her often enough to prevent this. If she were indoors, it would be easier but my parents want her outside. While inside, no new poo accumulation occurred so maybe she is better. Also, she got to move into Isabella's side of the cage since Izzy is permanently disabled (cannot move at all basically) and inside now. The left cage is 35% larger in surface area so Sweetie has more room! It is 13.2 square feet versus 9.8 square feet. I think she likes it! I hope she does not cover it in too much poo!

Update 7/8/05 - Sweetie is fine except that she still smears night feces all over the wood floors. I try to keep it clean but it is hard. She puts her normal feces and urine all in the litter pans. Update 8/17/05: Sweetie still will not groom herself or clean her rear. I have to give her baths to keep her butt clean so the flies will not lay eggs there. I feed her less per weight than the other rabbits so I do not know why she is so overweight. She gets less than twice what Mr. Tiny gets, and he is about five times lighter!

Sweetie continued to have the messy butt problem to the point that I now have to bathe her weekly in antibacterial shampoo from the vet. When I started on 8/20/05, I had not gotten all the poo off her the previous week (with wet and dry paper towels). The result was fly strike. It is nasty and always makes most people feel guilty for not preventing it. I am sharing my errors if you will in the hopes that it will help others. It is very important to keep any animal's rear clear of feces. The flies will take advantage. After getting a small clump of poo off her rear in the laundry tub, I pulled open Sweetie's anal gland pockets. They were full of maggots. I used my fingers and Q-tips to remove maybe 100 of them. They were pretty big. It was like a horror flick but I had to do what I had to do. They had chewed a small hole into her body on the left side. I had to flush it with hydrogen peroxide to get them to come out and work them out. When they were all off, I packed the area with Neosporin. This should not be used if a bun can lick their privates but Sweetie cannot reach there which is the reason for her problem. I thought the cleaning would make her feel better but then she went off her pellets and hay and was just eating vegetables.

On 8/30/05, I took her to another vet for blood work (her regular vet does not do that) and a second opinion. She was down to 8.4 pounds or so. While that is less than last year, she is still plump. Her blood work came back basically normal. When I was pulling wads of fur off of her, it had reminded me of my cat, Elvi who has hypothyrodism so I wanted to rule that out. Sweetie's T4 was 1.8. They think for a rabbit normal is 1 to 4. Her red blood cells and protein were slightly low, and her blood sugar was slightly high. I was almost hoping the blood work would show something so we would have an idea of where to head. This vet basically did not have an answer either as to why she sheds like mad and does not eat her night feces aside from she just does not do it, partly due to being obese (which the vet whispered so Sweetie would not hear it!). They looked at her privates and agreed with me that her vulva was infected and had some pus. There were no maggots left but their damage had been done. Sweetie was put on liquid Baytril. Unlike Izzy's bubble gum flavored Baytril, this stuff was yellow and has no odor. Sweetie hated it. I squirted it into her mouth, and she just sat there, letting it drip down her chin. She did not want to lick it up! Even so, a week later, and her privates looked much better. I am going to keep a keen eye on her butt from now on believe me! This was only the first fly strike for Sweetie but Jimmy had it once (he had similar problems). Yes, I am aware that she would be better off indoors with regards to fly strike prevention. I think that as long as I keep her clean, she is happier in her huge hutch than she would be in a tiny cage. They just do not make nice sized decent indoor rabbit cages.

Update 11/5/05: I have been doing weekly butt baths on Sweetie. Each week there is always something there to clean, sometimes the size of golf balls of dung on her. She puts up a grand fight but she must be cleaned. It is now part of my routine so I will not let it slide again.

On 7/4/06, it was hot so I brought in Sweetie. I kept her in. She creates so much messy poo that I can no longer keep the flies off of her outside. It is smelly and disgusting. She is in a small commercial rabbit cage for a little bit. I ordered her a cage (large size) from this site that is almost as big as the hutch she was in. I will have to cover the entire thing with CareFresh. Right now, she has a litter pan but I cannot keep up with the smellers she is smearing all over the bottom. My bun, Harry, will go out into her hutch room once I scrape it down which may take a few weeks of hard labor since it is so filthy. So, I have created more work for myself but at least the maggots will not eat Sweetie again.

Her cage arrived on 7/12/06. I have begun to put it together. It is huge!

Sweetie went into the new cage on 7/15/06 after her shower. She seems to enjoy it. I have put photos up above. The cage is 56" x 27" which is 10.5 square feet. Her hutch was 12 square feet so this is almost as big. I have to us almost an entire $20 bag of CareFresh to fill up the cage so I am only changing it once a week but it is still a lot of work. She is litter trained and would pee in a litter pan but I have to put down litter because she smears messy feces all over everything. When I bathe her on Saturdays, usually it is like someone stuck something the size of a plum down there.

When I bathed Sweetie on 12/9/06, I discovered a tumor on her abdomen. I took her to the vet on 12/11/06. The vet took a needle aspirate and looked at the cells. She says it is not a fatty tumor. She sent out the cells to cystology to see if the cells might be malignant. I am guessing she will need to have it removed. We are waiting for the results. She weighed 10 pounds.

The results came back on 12/15/06. They did not know for sure; that is really helpful for $100+! It may not be related to the mammary glands and is some kind of epithelial (skin) cancer. To reduce the likelihood that the surgery would kill her, the vet suggested blood work so she had blood removed on 12/16/06. Those test results came back fine, "better than last time." She had surgery on 12/20/06. She came through it okay except they shaved her privates (which had a little poo as always) and cut them! I almost had a heart attack though when they told me the bill was over $500?! How could that be? I have never had to pay more than $200 for a simple animal surgery before. Well, first, they charged me $100 something for a biopsy; I got them to remove that. It does not change her outcome to know if it was cancer or not; I just assume it was. It was $80 for the blood work (I had not paid yet). That still left a lot of money. It was $100 for the surgery, then they charged me for buprenex (pain killer), lidocaine (local pain killer), gloves (huh?), knife blade (huh?), and so on, each of those not much alone. The big cost was $150 for some new anesthesia (something fluorane) which is better than the much cheaper isofluorane. It made her wake up faster. I think I will go back to the old vet for future small mammal surgeries. I switched because the last surgery he did was on a guinea pig, and she died the next day (could not breathe; the anesthesia killed her). But, he has done probably a dozen surgeries on my animals, and the others were fine. Sweetie is now the most expensive rabbit I have ever had as far as vet bills go! Her stitches will dissolve. She is too fat to reach them to play with them which is good. Her eyes are a little weepy the first day but it seems she will pull through.

My brother watched me bathe Sweetie on 9/28/07. It was the first time my brother watched so he was going "ew" a lot. He asked me "what's that thing." That is when I realized that Sweetie has a little bit of papilloma on her anus. Isabella had it bad. Perhaps Sweetie caught the virus from her years ago. There is not much I can do about that. Sweetie's overall condition has not otherwise changed in the last year.

I had to bring Mr. Tiny to the vet on 12/6/07 to have a tumor checked out so I brought Sweetie in as well as she has many problems. This vet (her original vet not the expensive one) thinks that diet is an issue. He wants me to try another diet (he is looking into it). I left her rear dirty for him to see so he had to bathe her. It is getting more raw down there, perhaps urine scald from all the poop so he gave us some Animax ointment (nystatin, neomycin sulfate, thiostrepton, and triamcinolone acetomide) to treat the area twice a day. He wants me to clean her rear twice a day but it is a ton of work. I will try. There is nothing that can be done for her minor papilloma. She has been rubbing her left eye on the water bottle. Although the vet did not see an infection, he decided we should give her some Tobramycin antibiotic in that eye twice a day for a week to prevent infection. He did not think the little sore on her tail (where she keeps biting herself) was significant enough to treat. Her weight was up to 11 pounds. She does not groom her fur or her rear (she cannot reach it). She gets the same foods and amounts as my two small rabbits. She just does not metabolize much.

The vet called on 12/7/07. He could not find the names of the other foods but he thinks he has found out why Sweetie has the poo problem. He says it may be cecal dispanosis (I know I spelled that wrong! I tried searching for the word on the internet and cannot find it. Does anyone know the correct spelling?). Basically, this problem is when the night feces stay in the cecum for too long. They start to ferment and, by the time they come out, they are more gooey and smelly than normal night feces. This makes sense because she does not make the feces every night like a healthy rabbit would. Treatment is basically what we already have know/tried - more hay, less fruits/vegetables/treats, and giving her good bacteria. I have gone back to giving her acidophilous (she used to get it but it did not seem to help) and also some ProZyme I had (and will get some more). I have also cut back her non-hay/non-pellet foods more. She still gets a few because they are her "raison d'etre." I hope these things help.

As of 1/17/08, she seems to be better as far as making fewer messy poos. She eats an acidophilous pill every day and gets some powder on her pellets too. It seems to help.

Return to the main rabbit page.
See the master index for the rabbit pages.