RABBIT CARE IN THE PHILIPPINES: WHY SELF STUDY IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT (21)

A couple of days ago, our smores girl, Elin, hit me up saying that Mochi had an incident and showed me a picture of his wounded paw.

In an ideal scenario, here's what should have happened.  Give first aid by applying a weak betadine solution and then put Neosporin after the wound has been cleaned.  Depending on the time, you may or may not be able to find a rabbit vet.   In this particular case, the first aid should have been enough in the meantime.  Once in the vet, you should expect them to clean the wound and then apply topical antibiotics (like Neosporin).  If it looks worse, the vet might prescribe an oral anti biotic.  Finally, if it looks like the wound will become an abscess, expect instructions for daily flushing with saline solution.

What did happen is that the first vet just scraped the wound and asked her to continue applying betadine.  A day or two late, there was some discharge from the wound already.  She went to another vet, who then prescribed antibiotics and probiotics. To me, that was the more appropriate treatment.

So here's the main point of this article.  We know that there are just a handful of rabbit vets in the Philippines.  This makes it extremely important for us owners to read up constantly on various parts of rabbit care (diet, medication, first aid, etc).  For any scenario, it's important that we have some clue on how to administer first aid and secondly, what to expect from the vet.  By arming ourselves with a lot of knowledge, we will be able to ask better questions when we're getting our kids checked.  We would intuitively know if the vet is carrying the bunny wrong, or is not checking all the angles, or is prescribing the wrong medicine.

I'm not assuming that we'll ever be as knowledgeable as the vets but it's extremey important to have some fighting knowledge.  In Elin's case, it could've have saved her time and money if she had gotten the correct care that she needed on the first vet visit.

I've been meaning to write about this topic for a while now.  Elin's case just helped present it.  Hopefully this encourages us all to read up more (and watch videos).  It could literally be life and death knowledge.

Rabbit First Aid Kit
https://m.facebook.com/SaveRabbitsPH/posts/429342937446940