This is going to be a long and heavy ramble, you've been warned. I'm having an anxiety attack even typing it. I suppose I'll start by giving a bit of a trigger warning for mental health problems and negative emotions. Also apologies to the Admods if this isn't something they are happy with.
I know that this is not the right place to talk about this really. I had hoped to go to the GP over the last few weeks to try to deal with it but right now you can only see a GP if you want a flu shot or you are basically dying- our town facebook has a lot of messages about people who have been having experiences like being on hold for an hour and then hung up on.
~
The whole thing really started from my first job. I won't get too far into it but I worked far more than I was paid, had things made difficult for me and then ended up, through obnoxious circumstances, being dumped in it when I was forced to be the only member of staff caring for about 250 animals without adequate time, knowledge or experience. I couldn't leave because the animals needed me to keep it afloat- if I'd left a lot of the animals would have died. As it was, a few did anyway. I was spinning a lot of plates and I ended up standing on smashed crockery. Even now, four or five years later, it still sometimes haunts me. Ultimately I knew who was to blame for putting me in that situation, but I made personal mistakes, personal choices, personal actions for which I can and should blame myself.
As soon as the situation was somewhat rectified (after about three months that nearly broke me) I handed in my notice and legged it. The rescue ended up under new management but survived. I work for a new place now in a better job.
I've had rabbits since 2002. I was lucky to always have easy bonds with my first choices and loved spending time with them. At the time my job was exploding I had Pandora (4th) and Mattie (5th). They were a well matched pair of soulmates. They were together for six years before Mattie's sudden death in Aug 2018 from sudden onset heart failure. Pandora was 8 and had multiple health issues. The rescue I now work for rejected her for bonding on that basis- she had reoccurring nasal infections and they didn't want her on site. The new manager of my old rescue, who I knew from my time there, agreed to rebond her.
Things went south from there. Pandora did rebond easily to a rabbit called Cookie, but the first night home ended in a fight and they were upset with each other. Cookie, who didn't appear to be enjoying my accommodation either, was returned. Pandora rebonded with Bailey, again easily, and was happy with him for a few months but had occasional fights and rebonds. We eventually found out she was water bowl guarding and becoming irrationally aggressive, possibly due to EC in the brain. She was blacklisted for bonding and Bailey stayed next to her for a while before rebonding to Ciara.
Ciara was deceptive in that she was beautiful, she was intelligent and she was very well-mannered and easy-going. She tolerated Bailey being occasionally stroppy and she didn't mind Pandora at all. I say 'deceptive' because I sensed when I first met her that she wasn't healthy but went for it anyway. She was underweight and put on weight with me, but two months later lost it all suddenly and died. I didn't have a pm so I'll never know.
Bailey and Pandora lived side by side for a while. I got away with it for months but I was already struggling with how poorly things were going and blindsided by two deaths in a close period of time. It didn't end there, as Pandora died in Dec 2019 (heart failure from old age) followed in March 2020 by Bailey (megacolon syndrome).
Bailey had been rebonded to Adelaide for two months by the time he died. I knew about his megacolon when I adopted him but it destabilised rapidly after I got him and wondering what I did wrong plus the big vet bills and sleepless nights was taxing too. Four rabbits in a year and a half has been a real kick in the gut. My happy rabbit life just shattered completely.
I had the option to return Adelaide of course. I hadn't had her long, but I was already getting a little fond of her, plus I signed up to adopt her for life and that's a commitment I made when I took her on. I appreciate that didn't happen with Cookie though, but I had him for one day and the bond and accommodation failed. I could also have returned Bailey when he fell out with Pandora and just let Pandora live out the rest of her life alone. I could have ended my time with rabbits several times and maybe should have.
Instead I chose to try to make a fresh start with Adelaide. She was less than a year old and I hoped she'd be the start of a new era where I could love having rabbits again without everything going wrong. I adopted Quinn, also less than a year old. I know that a young rabbit doesn't mean a long lived rabbit, but at least there was a better potential than setting myself up with an old rabbit to start with. They bonded easily and were loving... for a couple of months.
In July I came home to mayhem. There was so much fur everywhere I couldn't believe it. Quinn had a bite to his foot and Adelaide had several bites to the same place on her back- one of which turned out to be full thickness. The vet stapled it shut but although the rabbits had made up by this point Quinn wouldn't stop grooming the staple so the vets said he had to be separated. It made sense. The rescue wasn't happy but it made horrible sense. We suspected that since Quinn hadn't been neutered for long and was spraying that he might have mounted, bitten hard and then things escalated. The vet advised waiting four weeks before rebonding.
After two weeks the wounds were pretty much healed. The stapled wound was shut completely and another close to it was just a tiny scab. The rescue lady, who had previously said she had no bonding availability for months, told me that she had a no-show and could I please bring them in the next day. I wasn't really comfortable with this, but I was and am aware that there is a clause in the adoption contract that if I'm not abiding by the rules of the contract (including having the rabbits bonded) they can be taken away from me. I've already pushed this part of the contract several times over the last few years from anxiety and trauma.
I dropped them off and told the ACA everywhere they'd been bitten. The rabbits rebonded immediately and were cuddling and kissing right away. I was told no fighting at all. Four or five days later I was asked to take them home. When I picked up Adelaide to put her in the carrier I automatically looked at the shaved area of her back and was horrified to see that he'd obviously pulled off the tiny scab and opened the wound worse than it was originally. I took them home and they had a scrap overnight followed by an out of hours trip to the vets, who gave her more antibiotics and said the wound was too wide to stitch up, so keep eye on. They also said... separate them again and actually do it for four weeks this time. The rescue lady wasn't happy they were apart again and I refrained from telling her I wasn't particularly happy that one of my rabbits had chewed a hole in my other rabbit without them noticing. It wasn't like it was hidden, even from fur.
It's been just over four weeks now and both rabbits are well, if a little fat. I, on the other hand, am a mess. I keep having anxiety attacks over it and lately I'm not sleeping well now that crunch time is here. If I think about it as soon as I lie in bed then I have an anxiety attack. Now I'm associating my bed with anxiety and don't want to go to bed.
My anxiety has been spiralling out of control for the last couple of years because of rabbits. One bad habit I've picked up is at my job, which could get me into trouble. I work in the laundry so I have to clean, among other things, dog toys. Since many dog toys are rabbit shaped I inevitably find them when they come through a second time with legs or faces missing or, on one occasion, decapitated in a bin. I now have an anxiety response to rabbit toys and hide them. I've got several hidden in various nooks and I'm sure my supervisor knows something is up from the shelf of them sitting in our cupboard.
[continued in first reply b/c word count]
I know that this is not the right place to talk about this really. I had hoped to go to the GP over the last few weeks to try to deal with it but right now you can only see a GP if you want a flu shot or you are basically dying- our town facebook has a lot of messages about people who have been having experiences like being on hold for an hour and then hung up on.
~
The whole thing really started from my first job. I won't get too far into it but I worked far more than I was paid, had things made difficult for me and then ended up, through obnoxious circumstances, being dumped in it when I was forced to be the only member of staff caring for about 250 animals without adequate time, knowledge or experience. I couldn't leave because the animals needed me to keep it afloat- if I'd left a lot of the animals would have died. As it was, a few did anyway. I was spinning a lot of plates and I ended up standing on smashed crockery. Even now, four or five years later, it still sometimes haunts me. Ultimately I knew who was to blame for putting me in that situation, but I made personal mistakes, personal choices, personal actions for which I can and should blame myself.
As soon as the situation was somewhat rectified (after about three months that nearly broke me) I handed in my notice and legged it. The rescue ended up under new management but survived. I work for a new place now in a better job.
I've had rabbits since 2002. I was lucky to always have easy bonds with my first choices and loved spending time with them. At the time my job was exploding I had Pandora (4th) and Mattie (5th). They were a well matched pair of soulmates. They were together for six years before Mattie's sudden death in Aug 2018 from sudden onset heart failure. Pandora was 8 and had multiple health issues. The rescue I now work for rejected her for bonding on that basis- she had reoccurring nasal infections and they didn't want her on site. The new manager of my old rescue, who I knew from my time there, agreed to rebond her.
Things went south from there. Pandora did rebond easily to a rabbit called Cookie, but the first night home ended in a fight and they were upset with each other. Cookie, who didn't appear to be enjoying my accommodation either, was returned. Pandora rebonded with Bailey, again easily, and was happy with him for a few months but had occasional fights and rebonds. We eventually found out she was water bowl guarding and becoming irrationally aggressive, possibly due to EC in the brain. She was blacklisted for bonding and Bailey stayed next to her for a while before rebonding to Ciara.
Ciara was deceptive in that she was beautiful, she was intelligent and she was very well-mannered and easy-going. She tolerated Bailey being occasionally stroppy and she didn't mind Pandora at all. I say 'deceptive' because I sensed when I first met her that she wasn't healthy but went for it anyway. She was underweight and put on weight with me, but two months later lost it all suddenly and died. I didn't have a pm so I'll never know.
Bailey and Pandora lived side by side for a while. I got away with it for months but I was already struggling with how poorly things were going and blindsided by two deaths in a close period of time. It didn't end there, as Pandora died in Dec 2019 (heart failure from old age) followed in March 2020 by Bailey (megacolon syndrome).
Bailey had been rebonded to Adelaide for two months by the time he died. I knew about his megacolon when I adopted him but it destabilised rapidly after I got him and wondering what I did wrong plus the big vet bills and sleepless nights was taxing too. Four rabbits in a year and a half has been a real kick in the gut. My happy rabbit life just shattered completely.
I had the option to return Adelaide of course. I hadn't had her long, but I was already getting a little fond of her, plus I signed up to adopt her for life and that's a commitment I made when I took her on. I appreciate that didn't happen with Cookie though, but I had him for one day and the bond and accommodation failed. I could also have returned Bailey when he fell out with Pandora and just let Pandora live out the rest of her life alone. I could have ended my time with rabbits several times and maybe should have.
Instead I chose to try to make a fresh start with Adelaide. She was less than a year old and I hoped she'd be the start of a new era where I could love having rabbits again without everything going wrong. I adopted Quinn, also less than a year old. I know that a young rabbit doesn't mean a long lived rabbit, but at least there was a better potential than setting myself up with an old rabbit to start with. They bonded easily and were loving... for a couple of months.
In July I came home to mayhem. There was so much fur everywhere I couldn't believe it. Quinn had a bite to his foot and Adelaide had several bites to the same place on her back- one of which turned out to be full thickness. The vet stapled it shut but although the rabbits had made up by this point Quinn wouldn't stop grooming the staple so the vets said he had to be separated. It made sense. The rescue wasn't happy but it made horrible sense. We suspected that since Quinn hadn't been neutered for long and was spraying that he might have mounted, bitten hard and then things escalated. The vet advised waiting four weeks before rebonding.
After two weeks the wounds were pretty much healed. The stapled wound was shut completely and another close to it was just a tiny scab. The rescue lady, who had previously said she had no bonding availability for months, told me that she had a no-show and could I please bring them in the next day. I wasn't really comfortable with this, but I was and am aware that there is a clause in the adoption contract that if I'm not abiding by the rules of the contract (including having the rabbits bonded) they can be taken away from me. I've already pushed this part of the contract several times over the last few years from anxiety and trauma.
I dropped them off and told the ACA everywhere they'd been bitten. The rabbits rebonded immediately and were cuddling and kissing right away. I was told no fighting at all. Four or five days later I was asked to take them home. When I picked up Adelaide to put her in the carrier I automatically looked at the shaved area of her back and was horrified to see that he'd obviously pulled off the tiny scab and opened the wound worse than it was originally. I took them home and they had a scrap overnight followed by an out of hours trip to the vets, who gave her more antibiotics and said the wound was too wide to stitch up, so keep eye on. They also said... separate them again and actually do it for four weeks this time. The rescue lady wasn't happy they were apart again and I refrained from telling her I wasn't particularly happy that one of my rabbits had chewed a hole in my other rabbit without them noticing. It wasn't like it was hidden, even from fur.
It's been just over four weeks now and both rabbits are well, if a little fat. I, on the other hand, am a mess. I keep having anxiety attacks over it and lately I'm not sleeping well now that crunch time is here. If I think about it as soon as I lie in bed then I have an anxiety attack. Now I'm associating my bed with anxiety and don't want to go to bed.
My anxiety has been spiralling out of control for the last couple of years because of rabbits. One bad habit I've picked up is at my job, which could get me into trouble. I work in the laundry so I have to clean, among other things, dog toys. Since many dog toys are rabbit shaped I inevitably find them when they come through a second time with legs or faces missing or, on one occasion, decapitated in a bin. I now have an anxiety response to rabbit toys and hide them. I've got several hidden in various nooks and I'm sure my supervisor knows something is up from the shelf of them sitting in our cupboard.
[continued in first reply b/c word count]