# Ty can't hop more then a few steps without falling over...



## Kipcha (Jun 14, 2011)

I suppose this is just me being impatient (Considering that we're heading to a vet as soon as my Mom gets home, so only another half hour or so) but I wanted the opinion of some people on here.

So Ty had been totally fine last night, I came down two hours later for a final check and suddenly he wasn't coming to the front of his cage, which isn't normal for him. So to see if maybe he was just being moody, I took him out of his cage and put him out on the floor to run around. He took about two hops before he fell over and acted like he couldn't get back up, he just sorta flailed around trying to get his feet under him. I helped him back up and let him go again, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. Nope, he fell right back over after a few hops. Since this occured at midnight, I couldn't get him to a vet last night so I brought him into my room to watch him (I put him in his carrier so that way he wouldn't be constantly falling over) and hoped that perhaps when I woke up in the morning.

Nope, no such luck.

So I called in to work and told them I wouldn't be there and we plan to go to the vet. He looks and acts completely normal except for falling and I've been trying to remember anything different that would have happened. The only thing different was that I introduced all the buns to carrot tops yesterday. I washed them thoroughly, but could he be having some sort of reaction to them?

I just really hope it's something simple to fix...

I have a video of him from this morning but it's posted on Facebook... Is there a way I can post it here?


----------



## tonyshuman (Jun 14, 2011)

That's an emergency. I think you can post the video with one of the buttons at the top of the box when you click reply, not sure. It sounds like when Tony had poisoning. I would get him to the vet ASAP. The carrot tops might have had some insecticide or herbicide on them. It's hard to tell and sometimes you can't wash all the things off--many are meant to be more water-resistant so that the rain doesn't wash them away. Any chance he could have gotten into anything? Chocolate, tomato plant (green part), medicine, ant/roach/mouse bait? I notice that he's a Dutch--you didn't give him any meds recently? Dutches often have some drug sensitivities, for instance ivermectin. A lot of people in the rabbit world think it's normal to give that stuff willy-nilly but the caveat that it's not ok for Dutches is not wide-spread--that's what led to my Tony's poisoning.

In any case, motion difficulty, acting drunk, lethargy, etc--these are signs that a vet needs to see the animal ASAP. First step should probably be IV fluids, then blood work and monitoring heart rate, blood oxygenation, and input/output. Also check ears for balance problems. If any of those things are off, then they can get an idea of what's going on. It sounds serious, though. Please feel free to PM me if you find he may have been poisoned because I can help with what we did for Tony in this situation. I ended up contacting the ASPCA poison line, which does charge a fee, and they referred me to a treatment that I can forward on to you.


----------



## Yield (Jun 14, 2011)

I saw the video this morning. :[

I don't know what it could be... hopefully the vet has answers and hopefully it's an easy fix and nothing too bad.. I wish you luck.. <3 That's scary. :[


----------



## Nancy McClelland (Jun 14, 2011)

ray:


----------



## Must_Love_Pets (Jun 14, 2011)

??????? Any word form the Vet?


----------



## MelissaPenguin (Jun 14, 2011)

I am interested in an update as well.


----------



## Kipcha (Jun 14, 2011)

So we brought him to the vet and when we got there she did a good, long check over on him. He had nothing abnormal with his body except that he seemed a little thin (A problem we have always had with Ty) and one of his teeth had a slight point to it. 

She thinks perhaps he has not been eating as much as he should have which contributed to the problem (Which is odd because he is free fed for the weight problem, so it's not like we underfed him) but she thinks that perhaps it was a slight stroke or perhaps a random nuerological occurance since she could find no signs of ear infection or anything else wrong with him and he wasn't showing symptoms of more severe conditions. Other then seeming a little tipsy and thin, she could not find anything amiss as he wasn't even staggering by the time we got there. 

She said that, for now, just try to feed him a lot and keep an eye on him. She sent me home with some Booster Dietary Supplement just to keep his immune system up and hope that maybe it was just a random occurance and not building up to something bigger. She said that we could hold off on bloodwork (We went to a different vet then we did for Peace, but we told her about the $550+ in vet bills we had in the past week) as she doesn't think it will show anything in the report, so we're going to give it a few days to see if he improves. If not, we'll take him back. But for now, he seems normal and happy and energetic, drinking lots. We just have to get him eating more.

Although I wish she could have seen him falling to know what we were talking about (Not that I wanted to see him fall again, I never want to experience that over again, but to show what was happening) I really hope it was nothing too big. But for now, we just keep him fed and hydrated and on constant watch. He's in a small space of x-pen now with "blanket bumpers" so that if he should fall and start flailing, he will not hit himself off of anything.

Is it common to have something like this happen and then 12 hours later, not show hardly any symptoms or signs that it even happened?


----------



## tonyshuman (Jun 15, 2011)

It could have been a stroke, or some poison that got out of his system quickly. It's good to keep him in a safe place for now.


----------



## KimandCocoa (Jun 15, 2011)

When my rabbit was sick recently this is how it started. He would be falling over and couldn't get up. His head wasn't tilted until several days later. Hope this doesn't happen with your bun! Mine has been on antibiotics for 11 days now and doesn't seem to be improving much.

I hope both our rabbits get better soon!


----------



## Kipcha (Jun 16, 2011)

KimandCocoa, I really hope your bun gets better too!

We let Ty out for a hop today and the little booger was having no problem, popcorning all over the place and just the normal, happy fellow he generally is, you would have no idea how terrible he looked just a few days ago! We're still keeping a watch on him to make sure it doesn't repeat, but the vet thinks it was just an isolated incident and that he should fully recover without any problems.


----------



## tonyshuman (Jun 17, 2011)

Wow, that's pretty crazy! Is he elderly? I would guess he could have had a stroke or something.


----------



## Kipcha (Jun 17, 2011)

Well, we don't know much about his history (I know he was a rescue from a family that a breeder took in to find a good home for, the family before bought him at Easter and had him for around a year before getting tired of him and posting somewhere that if someone did not come to pick him up that night, they were releasing him into a park) but he's seen two vets in the past and they both estimate he's in the 4 year range right now. So he's not that old...

I'm just so confused at how something like that can come and go so quickly! I've never heard of something like that before.


----------



## tonyshuman (Jun 21, 2011)

It is really strange that it was so quick. Maybe he got into some toxin that was metabolized out of his system quickly, or there was a short stroke that he recovered from. Not all damage caused by strokes is permanent.


----------

