twistedtiggerz69
Mama Doe
Thank you BM and I I rang PDSA and couldn't get through. I rang our usual vets and we discussed options. They said that rabbits are notorious for stopping breathing under anaesthetic and that made me feel nervous her saying that although I already knew this could happen. He is getting old for a frenchie so greater risk.
We spoke also about 3-4 of us doing it together at the vets. So I would basically talk to him and stroke him as he calms down with me. Other people would hold him safely and the vet would do the grooming and/or clipping depending how he is. The positive there is that I am free to comfort him rather than do the grooming. That seemed a better idea to me rather than an anaesthetic just for grooming. However 3-4 people doing this seems a lot. I am worried that will be even more stressed for him. It would cost £30-35 which I thought was reasonable. We can't do this anyway until Tuesday due to money and other commitments helping look after grandkids.
However we have always worked with Chief in the past to get around a problem. We think that grooming him ourselves until Tues would still be beneficial as can help him by getting rid of some fur at least. We won't clip him though unless we are shown how to do it by the vet and can show the vet that we can do it ourselves before we try it at home. Idk whether vets would show us how to do this though.
We have been grooming him since my last post. Yesterday we started with his chest and he was much better and not biting and kicking. I wonder if he could sense our stress atm? Also I have considered that he may have had tummy ache at the time.
I hope not. I did wonder why he had always let us do his chest before. This was the first time for him to make it difficult for us to groom him. We had groomed him so many times before my OH had his hip op. Perhaps it is because my OH sits on the side of our bed instead of on the floor? We had to cover our bed first so we now have a 'grooming' sheet over our usual sheet and take it off when we finish doing buns.There were some clumps of long white fur that came out with the comb. I know from experience that his chest produces those clumps and that his chest is most likely the cause of these strings of poop. We managed to comb most of it so hopefully also most of the loose fur
As he was so good this time we managed to do most of his chest fur but he was starting to fidget so we left it there. I also wanted to do the area at the back of his legs and bottom near his tail soon in case that was also bad. As my OH usually holds him under his bottom it is an area that is hard to get to plus I thought he had had enough.
So we put him down on all four on the bed so I could take a look at that area. There was so much fur there under that 'skirt' I talked about. So we decided to do this next time but I had the idea of placing him so his bottom hangs over the side of the bed and gives me greater access. So we decided to do this the next day which is actually tonight. So this post is up to now. I will post again later as have to groom Chief some more now that kids are are in bed.
so i'm sending hugs too. Your plan sounds good to me. If he is really stressed at the vets maybe a sedative might be an option rather than a full GA. Its great you are putting so much energy & thought in to keeping his fur ingestion down to a minimum. 
