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Physio on rabbits

BB Mommy

Warren Veteran
Does anyone need to do it for their bun?

Oscars back leg seems to have suddenly deteriorated, and whilst he has always been weaker on his LH side, his leg seems to be seizing up:cry:
His stance has changed, and his leg suddenly seems more akward.

He's going to be checked out properly, but was wondering if physio works in this sort of case?


His history in brief is that he's around 4yr+, was rescued from living in a hutch with a 4" of poo and falling apart, barely 2ft of space to move, and no clearance above his head. When he came to us he could barely hop as he had no muscles in his back legs.
He recouperated at Hopper for a good 6 months, before he came to live with me as a permanent foster, and I've had him for 14months. He now lives with Sea and has a big conservatory to live in, so has plenty of space to build himself up.
 
I've done it on a girl with head tilt. Gray does it with Ginger on her weak back end.

We both make it fun, lots of food motivation, and challenge them whilst offering the food.
 
Ginger has very basic physio, although i've started to slow down a little now, as she seems to be doing a lot more herself now but we may have to start doing it more again if i notice it degrades again. It's quite fun and we make it part of our daily routine.

She has poor muscle development in her rear legs.

We used to softly massage her legs whilst she lay on my lap having something to nom and a good head rub. This was just to stimulate her muscles etc.

She then had basic forced movement placed into her routine, eg. forcing her to periscope to reach up for food, we used a treat ball too, to make her push it around to get food which made her hop about.

Then the stairs came into play.

We started very slowly, with a couple of pieces of parsley on the first 2 steps of our stairs, encouraging her to hop / climb up them. Then slowly increased the number of stairs.

Over the course of about 4 weeks, it was amazing the difference. She can now do the whole flight of stairs, 18 steps and actually RUN up the stairs, not just hop, stop, hop, stop etc.

She can now also jump from floor to sofa, ~1.5feet and has on a couple of occasions, jumped ~2ft out of a pen to a level.

I know thats not probably very helpful, but thought it might give you some ideas?
 
Graham did Ginger have any restrictions in her leg, or was it muscle wastage that was the main problem?

That's amazing that Ginger can now do the stairs! How long did it take for the legs to get strong enough?
I know that Oscar would never recover that well. He's come on amazingly since his rescue, so I'm gutted his joint seems to have seized:cry:
 
I do it with horses and dogs but never tried it on rabbits. Might be worth a shot though. I am also with H'sT - acupuncture can be amazing
 
Acupuncture may be worth looking in to for him - hadn't thought of that.

Luckily he's a really good boy and will lie still on my lap for ages.

Have you used acupuncture for loss of range of movement? What sort of results have you seen?
 
Acupuncture may be worth looking in to for him - hadn't thought of that.

Luckily he's a really good boy and will lie still on my lap for ages.

Have you used acupuncture for loss of range of movement? What sort of results have you seen?

Wesley has it for his splay leg. he got to a point where he wasn't eating or moving due to the pain and we were considering pts. After 3 seesions i swear it was a miracle, he hadn;t been so bouncy and happy in a long time. He hasn't had a session for a month now and has still managed to come off all pain relief :D:D
 
Wesley has it for his splay leg. he got to a point where he wasn't eating or moving due to the pain and we were considering pts. After 3 seesions i swear it was a miracle, he hadn;t been so bouncy and happy in a long time. He hasn't had a session for a month now and has still managed to come off all pain relief :D:D

That does sound really positive:D

Is it through your vet, or did you need a referral?
 
It depends on the condition

We do physio and accupuncture, our vet does the accupunture and I would recomend her to anyone
 
That does sound really positive:D

Is it through your vet, or did you need a referral?

My vet offers it. You need an hour appointment to start with and then it goes down to about 20 minute sessions.

Our acupuncture vet left a couple of weeks ago but they have just found a new acupuncturist so Wesley is going up for an hour long session nest week.

Honestly I have been amazed by the results and couldn't recommend it enough :)
 
Graham did Ginger have any restrictions in her leg, or was it muscle wastage that was the main problem?

That's amazing that Ginger can now do the stairs! How long did it take for the legs to get strong enough?
I know that Oscar would never recover that well. He's come on amazingly since his rescue, so I'm gutted his joint seems to have seized:cry:

Not restrictions no, but she had barely any strength in her back end at all. She could hop fairly normally, but anything that involved using ONLY her back feet (periscoping, jumping, etc) was pretty much a pointless excercise for her, she would constantly fall over and you could see her legs buckle underneath her, this was as soon as she came to me, and i knew nothing about medical conditions then, but i've received some awesome advice from a few members thats helped her and me no end.

I have a video that shows it somewhere if showing it to you would explain better?

Ginger came to me in October 2010, we started physio maybe in mid november i guess (i dont remember the exact date, i'd have to find the thread i put up!) and the stairs excercise started in January (See the thread 'Stairs - Fail'. So i'd say using the stairs to build up both confidence and physical muscle strength has taken around a month.

Additional complications involve the fact that Ginger has been on constant ABX for just over 1.5months now for what we now know is Pasteurella and she does seem to struggle occasionally as shes still on them now. Last night for example was a particularly bad night, but she didnt do the stairs as they were locked away due to a fight (whole different story).

Our vet has been particularly impressed by Ginger's new found strengths and she's put on a significant amount of weight since we've done the physio/stairs training.
 
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