Last Updated: 12/14/16

Photos
Story

I accidently took a short video of Harry. You can see it on my videos page.

Photos

Photos are listed from oldest to newest.

Harry in the bathtub on 2/1/06.
The cat carrier Harry lived in previously taken 2/1/06.
Harry in his new cage on 2/1/06.
Harry's left side on 2/4/06.
Harry's right side on 2/4/06. You can see some of his white patches.
Harry, Sweetie, and Mr. Tiny (left to right) on 3/18/06. There is a video from then too on my video page.
Harry in the bathroom on 12/24/06.
Mr. Tiny and Harry in the bathroom on 12/24/06.

Harry in his hutch on 4/29/07. He is always trying to get away!

Harry in his hutch on 1/13/08.

Harry with Mr. Tiny and Tinkerbelle (cat) on 2/8/09.

Harry with Mr. Tiny on 2/13/10. Harry is on the bottom.

Harry on 7/3/10.

Harry on 4/17/12.

On 1/25/14, I had my two rabbits out together, and cats Emmy and Tinkie showed up to check them out. Harry is the brown rabbit below Mr. Tiny who is on the upper left of all photos.
Mr. Tiny and Harry
Mr. Tiny and Harry
Mr. Tiny, Harry, and Emmy
Mr. Tiny, Harry, Tinkie, and Emmy
Mr. Tiny, Harry, Tinkie, and Emmy

I took these photos on 1/10/15 after I moved the two buns next to each other.
Rabbit cages with Harry on the left side and Mr. Tiny on the right.
Harry

Cages on 5/29/15 - Harry's is on the left.

Harry on 10/11/15.

Story

A relative asked me a few times in early 2006 if I would take in another rabbit. Since I am swamped with animals and work, I referred her to the House Rabbit Society. She never went through with that, and somehow, I ended up with another rabbit. My relative got the rabbit from other relatives of hers who had neglected the rabbit. I named him Harry. Harry was kept in a dark 12" by 21" cat carrier with a broken door for one or two months. He was fed mostly carrots and not a good diet. They were afraid to touch him. I estimate him to be 3 to 5 months old but probably 4 months old, being born in early October, 2005. I got Harry on 2/1/06.

Once I got Harry, I examined him. He is about 3 pounds. Harry is a semi-dwarf rabbit but not a Netherland. He is probably a mixed breed. His fur is a slightly brindled chocolate with white patches on the chest and legs in an uneven pattern. His ears are slightly lopped so he may have some lop in his genes. His coat, ears, eyes, teeth, and anal glands all seem fine. He has a round stomach so I do not know if it is bloating or just a lot of food since my relative was feeding him some pellets and hay the week before I got him so he had to stock up. I gave Harry a bath to remove the yellow stains on his feet and clean him up. I trimmed his nails. They were sharp but not too long since he is still a baby. One dew claw was just starting to become ingrown.

I put him in my largest indoor rabbit cage which is just 35" by 19.5" but still 2.7 times the room than he is used to. The first night, he ate lots and drank 200 mL of water and peed intense orange pee from all the B-carotene in the carrots. I will not feed him carrots for a while as he could be suffering from Vitamin A toxicity which damages the skin and brain. Despite his previous life, Harry's behavior so far seems completely normal. After his first pee on the floor, he now pees in the CareFresh in the litter pan but prefers to scatter his poo around the bare floor of the cage so I have to sweep it up twice a day.

Harry had a vet appointment on 2/3/06. The vet agreed with my assessment. Harry is a healthy buck about 4-months-old. The vet said he is my healthiest rabbit. So, neglected rabbits seem to do better than ones I thought were not. The vet felt his joints which should have been abnormal if he just got carrots but they were not so he must have had some pellets. He is not gassy, just full of food. He is eating and drinking a lot. He was 2.9 pounds on their scale. I gave Harry a few drops of Bene-bac for good bacteria that day.

My last guinea pig, Fritz, died unexpectedly on 3/11/06. I put Harry in her Hagen Zoo Zone 2 cage. It has about 10% more surface area than the cage he was in but less height. The dimensions are 20" x 39.25" x 14.5" high. The reason I prefer it though is that it has plastic shielding around the sides so Harry can kick the CareFresh and poo balls but they bounce back in. I took away his favorite ledge (does not work with the Zoo Zone cage) and litter pan. I filled the entire Zoo Zone with CareFresh and left the guinea pigs' wooden box house in there. Harry can squish inside it and squish on top of it with no room to spare. He loves to move it and flip it and dig the plastic cage floor up (he may make his way through yet). I took out the litter pan because he just kept moving it. Although he was pretty good about putting pee in the litter pan in the cage he was in, he put almost all his poo on the bare cage floor. So, I figured I would just layer the entire cage with CareFresh and change it twice a week.

Harry was neutered on 4/11/06 without incidence aside from peeing in the carrier and all over. He is up to about four pounds.

On 4/22/06, I noticed his left incision did not look right, apparently still bleeding, and there was a white patch which could have been an infection. I got him to the vet on 4/24/06 (cannot get a weekend appointment). The vet stuck a Q-tip all around his privates and said the white stuff was fibrous tissue and not pus but that since it was not fully healed, he would give him some liquid Baytril for 10 days. He should have been healed but was not. The vet also noted his right side was open. I told him it was from the beginning. I thought that the wound was open but the vet said no, he used glue so it had come open be accident. That side was really purple at first but was healed by this visit. Harry was up to over 5 pounds! He is taking his bubble gum flavored medication okay once I get him out the cage. I am sure many a wild rabbit has encountered bubble gum in their natural diet.

Harry continued to grow, a lot! He is good at making messes and throwing things. Sweetie has a problem with feces so I have brought her to live inside to keep the flies off her. On 7/9/06, I spent two hours scrubbing, scrapping, and disinfecting her wood floor hutch. I then put Harry in there, instantly having him have 2.5 times the room he had. The hutch room is 12 square feet (4' x 3'). He has enjoyed running and hopping which he could not do in the tiny cage. I used velcro with adhesive to hold down his litter pans which he likes to throw. He does not like the heat (90 degrees F for a high all week). He has been in there for four days now and is barely touching his pellets, water, or hay. He is eating most of the fruits and vegetables. I hope I made the right choice. I installed a perch for him. Mr. Tiny in the right room has one too. If they are both on their perches, they can see and smell each other and maybe even touch whiskers. When I put them together to play inside on Saturdays, they show no interest in each other at all! Mr. Tiny will dig up the rug but Harry will not do much of anything.

My mother started putting Harry and Mr. Tiny together in Harry's room a few times a week when I was not home. I was worried at first but they soon became best buddies.

On 9/22/08, I took Harry to the vet for a checkup. The vet could not find anything wrong. He is in great shape he says! I was worried because a few weeks earlier, Harry went for almost a week without eating much of anything. The week before that, Mr. Tiny did not eat much of anything for a week. The vet thinks they had a cold virus or maybe a pasteurella outbreak but that their immune systems fought it off, and they are totally fine now. Harry was 5.0 pounds.

Harry had a checkup on 9/21/09. He is healthy. His weight is up to 5.3 pounds. I showed the vet the small skin tag in his ear. He said they could remove it if he ever needs surgery for something else. The lump sometimes bleeds.

Harry had his yearly checkup on 9/23/10. He is in good shape and up to 5.5 pounds.

Harry had his yearly checkup on 9/22/11. He is 5.3 pounds. The vet said he is in good condition. Harry has just started his yearly molt.

As of 5/30/12, Harry is doing great.

I finally got the rabbits back to the vet on 6/30/13 after I got a job (I was cutting expenses for 1.5 years while I had no job). Harry is in perfect condition though! He still has the skin tag in his right ear but it is nothing. He had a few sore spots on his back from molting clumps of fur. Harry is still 5.3 pounds. Like Mr. Tiny, Harry no longer keeps his rear clean, and he does not eat all his night feces, instead smearing them all over the floor. This seems to be a common issue with older rabbits. I do my best to keep both his rear and the wood floor clean (I use a putty knife and a bleach solution).

Harry's eye were goopier than the should be on 4/5/14. I found some old eye medication for my cat, an ointment, since the eye drops I had for him did not seem to work. After a week of using the ointment, his eyes seem better. I will keep an eye on his eye and take him to the vet if it does not resolve itself.

Harry had his yearly check up on 7/3/14. He was down to 4.7 pounds and lost some weight so the vet was worried about that. He had conjunctivitis in his left eye. The vet gave me ofloxacin drops to put in his eye three times a day but I can only do it two times a day as I am gone 9 hours a day. His eye cleared up pretty quick on it.

Harry's left eye become scuzzy again so I started using more of the same medication on 11/8/14 and plan to use it for about 10 days to clear it up again.

I brought Harry in on 1/7/15 because it was going down to 7 degrees F that night. His eyes were in bad shape so I started his eye medication again. He had a lot of poop on his rear. He was very grumpy (grunting a lot). He is not in great shape. Even though the cage is about a third of the size of the hutch, I decided to keep him indoors permanently. On 1/10/15, I gave both boys butt baths and cleaned both of the buns' cages and moved them next to each other with the full spectrum lamp that Mr. Tiny has been under. So, they are sort of together. I did not want to make a larger cage and put them together in case they hurt each other. Plus, I could not tell who did what and ate what if together all of the time. With their poopy butts, they have to have the entire cage covered in CareFresh which is messy and expensive.

Harry's yearly appointment was on 7/24/15, and aside from the usual (goopy eyes, poopy butt, shedding), the vet found nothing really wrong with him. His weight was 5.4 pounds. I got some more ofloxacin for his eyes. The vet said to use the drops for two weeks, and if the eye goopiness still comes back after, then it does not make sense to keep using it.

By the spring of 2016, Harry has shown some signs of partial leg paralysis. After his baths, when put on the bathroom floor which has poor footing, he started falling to the side before getting up. On 4/19/16, when I went to feed Harry, he was on his side kicking and could not get up. I put him upright. I do not know if this is E. cuniculi, stroke damage, or the beginning of the end. I know from experience that our vet would not know either.

Harry had his check up on 8/4/16. He was down to 4.9 pounds. The vet said the problem with his back legs is most likely a delayed response of signal down his spinal cord due to age. The legs themselves are fine. I treated Harry for two weeks in June with oflaxacin because his eyes were goopy. When I stopped, it came back. The vet said he does have pretty bad conjunctivitis. For another approach, I will be giving him tobramycin eye drops for a week (or two if a week does not clear it up). His ears have what looks almost like dandruff but the vet says it is a mild infection. He did not want to treat it but he did clean out his ears. The entire time we were at the vet, the vet tech plucked Harry's coat which was a disaster due to molting and him not grooming himself. That was worth the price of admission.

Harry had problems with his back legs off and on. I found him on his side a few times in early September but, once I sat him up, he was able to stay upright. When I came home on 9/22/16, he was laying on his side, and when I righted him, he fell right back down. I repeated this a few times. He also seemed to be breathing too fast. I thought that was the end of Harry but he recovered enough that within a few days, he was able to sit upright again. He still ate food every single day. His coat is in bad shape as are his eyes. I don't think he's going to make it much longer.

So, Harry had times when he could not get up for a few hours or half a day but things changed on 11/4/16 when I got home. Again, he could not get up even with my help. He seemed like he was going to die. I did not expect him to make the night. In the morning, he was still unable to get up, and again I thought he was not going to make it but then he wanted to eat. I knew then that he was paralyzed but was not going to die right away, at least if I kept him hydrated since he could not drink from his bowl because he could not move to it. I had two bags of lactated ringers left over from my poor cat Barney who died a few months earlier from kidney lymphoma (he was in acute kidney failure and needed fluids). Beginning on 11/5/16, I started giving Harry about 50 mL of subcutaneous fluids each night. He did not seem to even feel the needle. He continued to want to eat. I tried my best to keep his rear clean which is hard when he does not move. I had a rabbit, Isabella, who was paralyzed for 14 months! Unlike Harry, her health otherwise was better, she was a few years younger, and she stayed in an upright position while Harry slumps to lay on his right side. He is not showing any signs of pain such as grinding his teeth. My life is so out of control right now that I do not have time to take him to the vet who would just want to kill him anyway. I do not believe in being the one to make that choice. I have had hundreds of animals but Barney was the only one that I have had "euthanized." It is very expensive too which I do not understand.

Harry died on 12/13/16. He was 11 years and 2 months old and the second oldest rabbit that I have ever had. Mr. Tiny is the oldest and still healthy at 11 years and 11 months old.

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

E-mail Robyn Copyright © 1997-2024 Robyn Rhudy