Wednesday, September 26, 2007

It makes me hungry.

Today Readers, we are going to talk about allergies again. This story is mainly for search purposes for other bunny owners. Plus, there is somewhat of an interesting twist. Amusing only to the medical field apparently.

Also somewhat amusing? There is little real data for allergies in rabbits. They test rabbits to see what people are allergic to, but they have no idea what rabbits are allergic to. But, I'm convinced now they do exist.

Here's the story.

Last week.. or maybe it was two weeks ago now, Paisleys' allergy problem flared up. Her dewlap swelled up, she got at large marble sized nodule in it again. She licked all her fur off, and was basically a licking and scratching nightmare. Pictures can be found in these previous blog posts.

The previous times this happened I was always suspicious that a cyst was causing the problem. Because I still didn't believe rabbits could get allergies. The vet was more convinced of allergies. Though admittedly, she'd never had a case in bunnies.

Anyway.. we thought we had narrowed down an allergen trigger, and were keeping her away from those things.

We were wrong. Obviously, or we wouldn't be revisiting this problem. Keeping all petroleum based products from her diet was not the cure. Though we still keep them from her.

So.. nothing like yogurt drops or Petromault. Bunny owners will understand the significance of these.

With no known trigger, the only thing to do it treat the symptoms. Thankfully so far she has been responding to injectable Benadryl. She now seems to be back to normal. Which seems to back up the case she does indeed have some odd allergy, instead of something that would be cured with antibioitcs.

This is the interesting part. The injectable Benadryl seems to be an appetite stimulant. Reproducible 100% of the time. This apparently is an unknown side affect.

About 15 minutes after a shot, she becomes ravenous and will eat a full days kibble and hay in a few hours. This is a bunny who often won't eat all the pellets given in a day.

Interestingly, Baby Benadryl does not cause this side affect. Thankfully. Paisley gained 3 ounces in two weeks. Which is quite a lot for your average rabbit.

5 comments:

  1. It's no wonder that rabbits have to reproduce like crazy. If it's not one thing it's another. Do you have any idea of what the average life span is for a wild rabbit? I'm not sure, but from you bunny adventures I'm guessing it can't be more than a year.

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  2. I'm not sure. Sometimes they can be oddly robust. Remember that rabbit vs. snake vid?

    Then one day they just say "ah.. fuck it", and keel over. Hopefully I've scared everyone off having rabbits for pets though.

    Hey - are you going to make it down to robodev? It's during the week, so I guessing not.

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  3. I'm not sure when RoboDev is, but if it's during the week, then I doubt it. I don't mind taking a day off for a big event, but robots is a really more of a weekend interest for me. Let me know if you are going to any weekend tech events though because I'm always up for checking out cool festivals and what not.

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  4. Thank you! She seems to be doing much better now.

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