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Breathing Issues, snot, caecals, weight gain

huppie

Mama Doe
Rambi is a lionhead Cross, approx 7-8 years old (rescue foundling, guestimate only). He is very lively, active, happy, binkies lots, jumps on the furniture and generally likes life. Eating, drinking, poos and urine are all good.

Four issues:

1) Before Christmas he had a snotty nose for two days, clear so the vet said do nothing. In February we noticed green snot (wasn't there the day before), we took him immediately to the vets and he was on meds for three weeks. All cleared up. A month ago he sneezed a few times and had clear snot for a day but nothing else. Vet said do nothing.

2) He has breathing issues and the vet can hear something on his lungs. Rambi only has breathing issues when he gets excited (food mainly), scared (picked up, although once he is picked up he is perfectly happy as long as we aren't trimming his nails!), or sometimes when he is sleeping. The vet said he may have asthma and they can X-Ray but the stress may do more harm than good. He has always had funny breathing but the last few months it has become worse.

3) For the last couple of months he has sometimes struggled to eat his caecals. He shuffles backwards to eat them off the floor. He does eat them all though.

4) He has gained weight, from 1.7kg to 1.9kg in the last few months. The vet said his weight is still in the healthy range but needs to be watched in case it continues to rise, we have put him on a diet.

Please help!

Should I push the vet for more intervention or tests? Is it just his age combined with what must have been a terrible life before we had him (no front teeth, awful story)? I don't want him to suffer needlessly, but if we can prevent something terrible happening I would gladly do that.

All advice happily received.

thank you
 
hiya:wave:

not sure what to suggest but didn't want to read and run.

does he seem to struggle to breathe at times; tip his head back or anything or is he more kinda snorty?

as for his cecals, he may not be as flexible as he was (arthritis?) so def keep an eye on his weight.
 
snorty, defo snorty and no head tipping back or anything. No apparent struggle to breathe, more noisy. It doesn't seem to stop him doing anything.

He has always been a noisy rabbit, he grunts for any reason (happy, cross, mumping) and he has a very flat face which doesn't help the breathing.

Arthritis occurred to me when he first started doing the caecal-eating shuffle, but he only seems to get more active, he is just so excitable about things. Great leaps and springs. Maybe his tummy is in the way or something, hopefully the diet will help.

PS Edit, thanks for replying!
 
Poopymoon, quite possibly :oops: He learnt to mump while I was eating fruit. I never give him shop-bought treats but he learnt that if he puts his feet on my legs he gets a little of my fruit. The last few days he started grunting at me because the trick stopped working (he does that when I'm late with his dinner too)! Bullied by a rabbit, utterly ridiculous. :lol:

Amy, honestly I don't know. I wanted tests but the vet said it wasn't necessary. I am wondering whether they made a mistake, hence my concern.
 
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