Sleep tight Thumper - my little star!

Sadly we lost Thumper in the early hours of Wednesday morning (the 6th). I've been too distraught to even mention it to anyone. Had to call in sick at work and everything, I couldn't even make it through the bus journey into work without blubbing.

Thumper lying chilled out on top of the hutch after a brush.

He was such an affectionate little sweetheart who was so well behaved. I'm going to miss him so much. Such a little character, he didn't even appear very sick - I just took him to the vets "just in case" on Sunday then back for a follow up the next morning at the regular vets just to check. He was back at the emergency vets 4hours later when he didn't eat or drink anything or poop and he'd had  no noticable improvement despite the fact he'd been taking his meds. They kept him in overnight and were optimistic when he was eating his recovery liquid food and had made it through the monday night but sadly he didn't make it another night and died in the early hours of the Weds morning. He was really given everything we (and the vets) had, and he was so good when they were taking his temperature and doing all these horrible things with him like syringe feeding and putting him on a drip. He never ran away or bit anyone (although he did hide his head in the crook of my arm and start licking me like mad when we took him in for more medicine). I just can't believe he's gone. He went downhill so fast, even though he was taking his medicine well before he started to "act" sick. Then when the vets said he'd made it through the night and was a little livelier and was actually eating the recovery food - I really never expected him to die the following night.

Morning - thumper just waking up in his bed!

I've had my day of grieving where I cleaned (bleach, rinse, disinfectant & rinse) hoovered and scrubbed everything in sight. Boil washed all his washing machine proof toys and blankets - and binned the ones that couldn't be washed. Poor tilly has even been dragged in for a precautionary check up (which she hated - she launched herself out of the carry box in the waiting room, then attempted to hurdle over my husbands head when she was on the table at the vets). She's absolutely fine but is on some pro-biotics and getting wormed early just incase it was EC that caused Thumper's infection.


Reaching up to have his nose rubbed.


Solves my problem of whether to bond them. I wonder if he did just go downhill after Treacle died and just missed her too much to battle on afterall I know other people who's buns have had snuffles and much worse things and survived? I just keep wondering if there was anything else I could have done.

Despite his name he never actually thumped his feet......he was never a grumpy bunny. He was also a bit of a wuss too - he'd wander over to new stuff and if it moved he'd run a mile in the opposite direction. He was the only one of our bunnies who never ever bit or kicked or squirmed and he was the only one that didn't spit out his pancur all over his own face/or all over me.

Nodding off on my lap after i'd brushed him

When he was all sickly and sorry looking in the vets I was hoping he'd pull round and even thought that if he wasn't going to get better that it'd be better if he just passed away - how awful is that. My other half was saying if there wasn't going to be any improvement and that he'd never be 100% and would get recurring bad bouts of illness that it would be kinder to put him to sleep. But I snapped back at him saying not to be so mean and we at least had to give the medicine a chance to work. Plus I couldn't have done it, I couldn't even say it...I could never ask the vets to do that. My parents just had to have the family dog (who was 12) PTS and it broke my heart - I went to see him the day before and couldn't go to the vets with them or see the dog afterwards, I knew i'd not be able to cope. I prayed he'd get better because I knew if there was no improvement it would just send me to pieces having to make the decision to do the right thing. And now that he did actually die, I feel awful....like I wished it on him. I miss the little cheeky monkey so much. Tilly is lovely, very cute and full of character, but Thumper was a proper cuddle monster and so well behaved. He just was the perfect rabbit! :0(

Got your Number

OH MY GOD.......the race packs have arrived, i'm right at the back in the pink section with the fun runners (but i'm in the front block of runners and michelle is in the back of the green section and she's faster so I dont feel so bad). My number is 47361 and lovely hubby is 47360 eeeek!

I had my physio massage last night and she said my legs were coping quite well but I had a bad knot in the middle of my back (which has been giving me bother). Its sore today where she's worked the knot out but its making me more conscious of my posture which is a good thing. I've had all sorts of conflicting advice and although I feel totally under-prepared loads of people have told me I can do it, and that they've ran with much less training or never having done a distance as far as I've covered in my training so i'm feeling slightly better - ish. So long as I enjoy it and dont injure myself it will be fine. So long as I dont finish in the position of my race number i'll be happy. Although on the positive side, the charity cheering squads positioned all the way along the route are at really motivational parts and our charity (Guide Dogs for the blind) are at the 10-11mile mark - right where I imagine i'll start to flag so that'll really give us a boost. The shower sprays are from 8mile onwards and there are basically drinks points every mile or so. Phew

On the cake front i've got the leaving cake to do this Saturday night, but i'm off work during the day so should manage it.

Here's my Mam's cake...I had no idea what to get her and ended up buying a cinema voucher cos she said she hasn't been in ages - thought it would be a nice treat as its something she would never think to spend money on herself for. I struggled for a cake design then realised that the main thing that makes me think of her was the 2 dogs following her round stuck to her leg. So I made a round chocolate sponge, filled and coated in buttercream, chopped the bottom off to make it look paw- shaped and used the left-over mix to make 3 muffins. I coated the muffins and the main cake in buttercream and covered in chocolate roll out icing to make it look like a brown paw. The alterior motive for chopping off the bottom was also because the only cake base I had was too small and the round shape was overhanging by loads!

I made the 2 dogs out of leftover pale brown & yellow roll out icing then smudged the black all over it to make dog shapes. They were quite tricky to do, especially the fat one (Amber) getting the barrel shape to accurately resemble the dog was tricky and I had to make her a lighter colour by putting more white in the brown colour and mixing grey round the edges rather than black. I'm a bit dissapointed that they dont look more like her dogs - but you can tell they're dogs so I didn't do too badly.

We went for a Japanese meal (where they throw the egg and cook it all infront of you on a hotplate) and they cooked all the food in the shape of her age...and set fire to the hotplate so it was kind of like a big candle to blow out. Then at the end of the meal they brought out the dog cake, and it survived quite well......one of the ears fell off the dog but that's not so bad really. She text me the next day to say thank you and how lovely it was.....so at least I know it tastes ok!!!

Tonight i'm going to pop to the supermarket to stock up on pet things, then go for a run either on my own or with Michelle. She's going to bunnysit Tilly for me when we go to centre parks the week before the run, Tilly's a proper attention seeker so would be great with her kids and she's really entertaining to watch - plus she's litter trained and has been an indoor bunny before so that should work fine. Just have to warn them that she growls & charges if you try to take her food or toys off her. My other friend Ann is going to pop over to check on Thumper let him run round and feed him. He's started making his own way out of the hutch (bottom door obviously) and if you go to pick him up he usually runs straight back into the hutch so he can be herded back in. He'll be fine to be left and checked on and let out for a few little hop-arounds but Tilly will eat her way out of the hutch, she loves to chew and trash the place if she's left to her own devices too long. Hopefully i've managed to upload the video of her. Its her in the run, she was snuffling for treats (or attention) she comes running upto you when you approach her - she's lush!

And this is Thumper sniffing the air to see what's on offer (he also must think the camera is a treat). Then when he realises there's nothing in it for him he goes back to what he enjoys most.....scoffing grass. He's such a handsome chap!

Awww pants - they're all sideways, oh well everybody lean to your left!!!! :0)

Dating for Bunnies

Well our grumpy bunny Treacle took ill on Saturday. I say took ill - she sat in the tube in the run all day and wouldn't eat. Now she's usually grumpy and will sit in a huff on her todd all day, and we thought it might have just been the noise from the planes on their way to the local airshow that she was unimpressed with. But a few hours later still the same. We decided to inspect her for clues as to why she was being even more anti-social than usual. Now Treacle for a porky bunny couldn't half shift when it came to trying to pick her up. I think the record "laps" of the run before she was grabbed was probably 3, with 10-12 being the norm. On Saturday however it was done in one foul swoop. We couldnt find anything wrong with her. No runny eyes or nose, heartbeat and breathing sounded fine. No cuts/bites/stings or snapped claws, no chipped teeth, no messy bum nothing. Then as she was allowing us to fuss her (which was not normally to the liking of such an independent diva of a bunny) I heard this clicking noise. Then she made it again, no-one had heard her do this before and i'm sure it sounded like teeth grinding, which I knew meant pain. So we booked her straight into the emergency vets.

8pm - Quiet bunny, stressed owner & bunny ambulance husband all arrive at vets.
The vet checked her over while we explained that she just "was not right". Teeth were fine, rabbit upto date with injections etc, spayed, temperature fine. But stomach felt lumpy. So poor Treacle had some fluids injected (since she wasn't drinking), some painkiller, an injection to stimulate her appetite and get her eating again, some laxative paste to try get things moving again. We were told to keep an eye on her, bring her in the house and try get her to eat/drink anything. We were sent away with some medicine to give her every 6 hours, some liquid recovery food, an assortment of syringes and advised to get her some pineapple juice to see if that would help get things moving again. £125 worth of treatment - thank goodness I had the sense to get out the pet insurance. We left the forms with the vets and my cashcard took the brunt of the damage.

10pm - Animal Hospital set up, nursing starts
The cage bed set up under the stairs for poorly bunny and her husbun is keeping them contained but seperated so we can see who's eating & drinking what and who's been to the toilet. Managed to syringe feed 5mls of pineapple juice and she even nibbled a couple of bits of celery which looked promising.

12pm - Two are better than 1
I'd been and collected hubby from the pub and he attempted syringe feeding too, to see if she was any more keen to eat when he's holding her. Well we managed a couple of mls of liquid food but most of it just dribbled down her chin as she wasn't too keen on swallowing it. To be honest I dont blame her for not drinking the liquid feed, it smelled like cuppa soup and looked like pondwater. She started to get really lethargic and shuffled in hubby's lap like she couldn't get comfy. He went to bed and I stopped up waiting for 3am medicine time to come round and try encourage her to eat.

1pm - Bunny tries where humans failed
Treacle still hadn't eaten much and was just lying down looking groggy. I let Thumper into her part of the enclosure to see if he could encourage her to eat (or just the presence of a greedy food-hoover might make her think if I dont eat now i'll not eat at all). He hopped round her in circles checking out the new enclosure, cleaned her face, scoffed her food then just kept out of her way. We think he knew what was going on as he was right next to her the whole time. Her breathing became really shallow so I went and woke up hubby and we rang the emergency vet who said to bring her straight down. As hubby stroked her she twitched a little so we knew she was still with us but only just, then I picked her up to go to the vet and she gave a little squeaky sigh and went all limp. We think now this is when she passed away.

1.30 - We arrive home without bunny
Hubby had a drink so he held a blanket-wrapped treacle as I drove as fast as I could (without breaking any traffic rules, it was early in the morning and I didn't want to get pulled over) eyes streaming. I asked hubby if we'd had any movement and he said he thought we'd lost her. I had to know for sure she had gone and wasn't passed out in pain, I had to check it wasn't contagious and Thumper was going to go the same way, I needed to know we'd done everything for her. We got to the vets and explained what had happened in the 5hours since we last were there. The vets were lovely and seemed ever so sorry to hear that we'd not managed to save her. It was definately GI stasis as Treacles belly was all swollen and gassy, she had definately and only just passed away and wouldn't have been in any pain as the earlier painkiller was a pretty hefty dose (to go with the pretty hefty bunny). Thumper was in no danger of catching it but we should keep an eye on him just in case. We left her with the vets as I couldn't face digging and burying her in the wee hours of the morning - what would the neighbours think. Plus I didn't want any chance of her being dug up by something else. Even though Thumper still hasn't sussed out how to dig. The whole house was up when we got home and were all equally as gutted.

 

Thumper's been a bit lonely and pitiful looking without his forever companion. He just looks so lost without his partner in crime. We're not used to seeing just 1 rabbit without the other in the background, they were always side by side or not far from each other. So we've contacted the rescue to arrang for another rabbit to come over for a meeting and see if they like each other and would make good companions. The bunny dating begins!

Strangely enough i've kind of been off my chocolate since this all happened. Although as soon as the first bunny date is over - i'm treating myself to a big bag of chocolate eclair sweets. nom nom nom