Prince Dirk's neuter
Well, our bunny Dirk made it through his neuter but we have a few more grey hairs as a result. Here's the story. The shelter we adopted Dirk from has a contract with the same vets that our cat and dog rescue/adoption group uses for low cost neuters and spays. I asked our director who the best vets there were and she recommended 2 for his neuter.
I knew this was not going to be a good experience when we literally begged for pain meds in case Dirk had pain afterwards and the vet refused. We got Dirk home and though he ate some he was obviously in pain. The next morning we checked his surgical site and the scrotum was extremely swollen. My wife Karen took him up to the vet to be checked. Karen called me and asked about the Keflex that was being prescribed. I know form past experience that you have to be very careful with antibiotics as some can cause severe diarrhea and death. It didn't make me feel confident about this vet's choices after Karen told me that she blamed the swelling on Dirk's moving around in the cage a lot. I looked up the antibiotic on the House Rabbit website and found out it was one of the bad ones and was recommended at all for rabbits except in injectible form. I double checked it on several rabbit vet's websites and they all said the same thing, don't use this drug orally on rabbits.
I spoke with the vet, a young girl probably a year or two out of vet school. I tried to explain that this antibiotic would almost certainly cause severe problems and that I had checked several websites and confirmed that this was a dangerous drug for rabbits. I also informed her that I had spent practically all night next to Dirk and he rarely moved at all because of the pain. She began talking rapidly about how all antibiotics have their risks. She ignored my statement about Dirk not moving. I went into "teacher mode" and calmly kept stating that this was not a safe antibiotic and that I wanted her to choose another one from a list I gave her that would be safer to use. It was funny she wanted to use one at all since she stated that Dirk's surgical site was not infected. She wanted it as a preventative. I agreed to the logic behind this, with some reservations, but kept insisting that he would either get no antibiotic or he would get one from the approved list for rabbits. This vet's voice kept rising as we talked until she was practically screaming at me. She finally said sarcastically that I was making a huge mistake but she would prescribe a different antibiotic. She then abruptly cut me off.
All of this unpleasantness gave me grave doubts about her ability so I asked my wife to make an emergency appointment with our excellent bunny vet in Jacksonville. They went immediately up there where the vet explained to Karen that the other vet had mistakenly used a technique for neutering that was only used on a few dogs. This technique causes much more extensive trauma to the area and this was why the scrotum was so swollen. Rabbits are normally neutered the same way as cat and there is usually very little swelling and a brief recovery period. She gave a pain killer, a safe antibiotic, and the probiotic Benebac to help maintain a normal intestinal flora. All of this is current medicine for bunnies which the local vet should have known about.
Dirk is much improved today. He is eating better and is in less discomfort. His swelling has gone down a little but this will probably take a week or so to resolve.
I am mad as hell that this vet who supposedly has worked on hundreds of rabbits made so many horrible decisions. Her surgical approach caused needless pain and suffering. Her failure to give pain meds showed a lack of knowledge about how pain can make a bunny's G.I. system shut down. She then tried to give him an antibiotic that might have killed him and had no regard for my years of specific knowledge and research about bunnies. I think we might have lost Dirk if we had not immediately taken Dirk to our regular vet for treatment.
I am not going to name this vet on the blog. Suffice it to say that if anyone has a bunny who needs medical treatment take them to a reputable vet and not one here in St. Augustine. I also warned our rescue group's director about this vet and told her not to ever recommend that anyone with a rabbit go to this office.
The moral of this story is that many vets are almost totally ignorant about rabbits. Look on the House Rabbit Society website or talk to someone on the Pet Bunny email group about approved, knowledgeable bunny vets. We only used this vet because the shelter demands that all adopted animals be spayed/neutered or they will reclaim them. With hindsight I would have chosen to spend the extra money and had it done by our vet but at the time I figured that it was a simple procedure and since this office had supposedly a lot of experience neutering bunnies that it should go well. That was my only real mistake. This vet made a whole string of poor and dangerous decisions. Don't ever assume that any vet can do simple procedures successfully on a rabbit. They usually have a lack of expertise concerning rabbits and may very well kill them.
Labels: bunny, dangerous, incompetent, neuter, pain, pet, rabbit, rude, vet
