Well, first of all she's grown a lot more hair. Compare the pictures...on August 13:
And then when I returned from Europe on September 6:
Perhaps those pictures don't quite capture the difference. How about this?
Is she sleeping? Can't even see the eyes! Or how about this?
She's got so much fur. I keep thinking I might just clip it and keep it short. She's still really cute cut short, and it's easier to groom her that way.Besides growing fur, Joelle has been outside on a leash.
This was quite a traumatic experience for her on a Saturday morning in early September. Joelle is not really a very cuddly bunny - she would much rather sit in a corner than on my lap. But when I set her down on the grass - which was a little dewy - she freaked out at her new surroundings and pawed at my pants leg. When I bent down to pet and reassure her, she jumped into my lap. It was so funny.She did the same thing after her visit to the veterinarian a few days later. After the vet poked and prodded, Joelle was set on the floor and ran over into my lap. I guess if there's something or somebody scarier than me, she realizes I'm "safe." Such a funny bunny.
Joelle has also had a rather humorous mishap. With the restart of hockey practice, I left my hockey gear sitting in the living room for a few days. I picked up Joelle one day and noticed something was wrong with her foot. Upon further investigation, I discovered this:
this is joelle on her back, with her head lolled to the side because she's in a "trance" - this crazy thing that happens to bunnies when you rub their heads when they're belly-up; they basically pass out
It's hockey tape! There was hocky tape stuck to her belly, her leg fur, and along her paw. That sticky tape combined with monstrous amounts of hair makes for a very, very pathetic bunny. The removal of this required much careful trimming of fur. But eventually she was free. Poor thing.And then...and then Saturday night happened. I picked up the Joelle, who was mad at me because she'd been cooped up in the cage for 14 hours because I had been gone all day (she had rearranged all of her "furniture," announcing she was really upset), and I found...a big lump on the side of her nose. Not good. She has been having trouble with that side of her head anyhow - her eye is runny, and it makes the hair all matted because of the accumulation of mucus around the eye. She didn't need anything more!
Yesterday she and I went to the vet, and that's when really bad things started happening. The vet first thought it was probably Pasteurella multocida bacteria and that Joelle is a carrier and would get these abscesses over and over again. The vet opened up the abscess, revealing a very gross thick white pus, and decided to keep Joelle for a few hours to sedate her, shave her face, clean out the abscess, and check for dental disease, which is a likely source of the problem in cases like this.
A few hours later I came back and collected Joelle. She survived the anaesthesia and was quite calm, but was missing the fur on half her face (it actually had to be clipped with scissors - the shaver blades couldn't get through her massive amounts of hair!) and had a big area oozing with bloody gook. We went home with some antibiotics and instructions to wash out the area a couple times a day. The vet said it might not be chronic pasteurellosis, because the abscess area appeared to be a big wound (a scratch?) that got infected. We're waiting for a culture to come back, to see if there was any Pasteurella in the abscess.
This morning I sat down with the poor dear to compress the wound. And I found another abscess. It's small, but the one we got treated yesterday started out small and had become about the size of a dollar coin by Tuesday afternoon. We have to head back to the vet tomorrow. In the meantime, I've been looking into internet information about abscesses and Pasteurella, and all in all things don't look good. For one thing, the abscesses appear to recur (as evidenced by the second one already showing up!). There isn't a very good cure for the bacteria. The best treatments involve surgery and aren't 100% effective.
I'm sad. My poor Joelle. Not only is she pathetic-looking with her half-naked face, but she's also really tired, looking more and more like she's sleeping when she's laying around, and she's extremely hot - the vet said she certainly had a fever. Please send her your good thoughts and prayers.
It's tough dealing with a sick pet; I can't imagine what it's like with a sick child!!
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