Ronnie has head tilt

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We took Ronnie in for a follow up appointment at the vets yesterday. Asked a lot of questions and had a few tests run...hopefully I can remember it all for this post.

We had a urine analysis done because I noticed reddish pee stains on the carpet in Ronnie's cage. These came back negative for blood, and the vet assured us that rabbits can have tinted urine especially if they are on medications or eating new things. She explained that blood in urine would look like a bullseye, with a big red stain in the middle dissipating out towards the ends. She also said blood in urine might come out in little clots. We definitely didn't see that. Ronnie's was just reddish brown stains, all uniform in color with no clots. So his pee is fine, and he's been peeing yellow ever since that one incident.

Ronnie had been off the Pen G shots for 3 days by the time we took him for the follow up appointment, so his tilt was really bad and he was having rolling episodes. We had to roll up some hand towels and squish him in between those in his carrier so he couldn't roll over. The vet said he has to be off Pen G for 3 days after his 7 days worth of shots...that's just the way the prescription works. I asked her why some people do Pen G shots every other day and we are doing on 7 off 3. She got really confused when I asked this and said the only prescription she had ever heard of was on for 7 days and off for 3.

The vet prescribed us Baytril to give .4 cc twice a day every day to Ronnie so that when he comes off the Pen G for 3 days he will still have the Baytril in his system and hopefully not relapse so bad. I told her I heard that Baytril was totally ineffective and I think she got offended! She said that she has seen results with Baytril, so I said okay and we agreed to that prescription.

I also asked the vet about using Zithromax in combination with Pen G, and she said they'd have to special order Zithromax and she doesn't really see the use in it. She said if the Baytril doesn't work well with Ronnie she doesn't mind ordering the Zithromax in the future...but she wanted to try the Baytril + Pen G combo first.

I asked if we should expect Billy to get head tilt in the future since he's been exposed to Ronnie and the vet explained that it doesn't mean Billy will definitely get it. She said that pretty much all rabbits are exposed to this stuff but only some come down with head tilt. She said that some rabbits have antibodies against it so they never come down with tilt.

Ronnie's weight went down very slightly so we were instructed to feed more Critical Care. He's still not too interested in pellets but will gobble down hay, oats, and water. Other than that he checked out fine.

After Ronnie got his Pen G shot and Meclizine for the day he was much improved. He hasn't had any rolling episodes since and still keeps his balance well. Ronnie tilts to so many different degrees within a 1 minute span of time depending on what he's doing or looking at so I can't tell if his head is any better or not. I think it's about the same though, and when he gets really stressed out before meds he tilts to 9 o'clock.

That's all I can think of for now. If I remember anything important I'll come back to add it later.

Robin
 
oh poor sweet little Ronnie. It sounds like this is a tough bug and it might take a while to treat. Good for you for being assertive with the vet! I'm not always sure who or what to believe, so challenging your vet to demonstrate that they know their stuff is good. I don't know if those responses they gave you are good, but I'm sure someone else will. A note on eating: could you mix the oats in with his pellets so that he might eat the pellets more? Good luck to you guys.:pray::pray:
 
That's good news. Keep us posted, I am thinking of him and you.
 
tonyshuman wrote:
A note on eating: could you mix the oats in with his pellets so that he might eat the pellets more?
This made me chuckle, because Ronnie is an expert at pushing around pellets to get to the oats :p. Sometimes he can be pickier than Billy and he's good at finding ways to eat only the "good parts" of what we give him :)

Because I'm filling his food bowl so high it's near impossible for me to tell if he's eating his pellets. I think I saw him eating them the other day (couldn't tell if he was grabbing up the oats from the bowl or the pellets but whatever it was, was very crunchy). So I think he's eating a really small amount of pellets, but I'm not positive.

He's eating so much more hay than ever though. Ronnie used to hate his hay and now he can't get enough of it!
 
What about getting a tiny jar of newborn baby food bananas, and then when you give him his pellets, put a teeny amount of warm water and just a nip of the bananas in there to make a fluffy mix? That's how we fed Clover in her first few weeks of solid food. She LOVED it. You can also get baby food oatmeal with applesauce and bananas. A jar would/could last a long time. I'm talking just about 1/8 tsp or so in the feed to get it interesting :)
 
Bo B Bunny wrote:
What about getting a tiny jar of newborn baby food bananas, and then when you give him his pellets, put a teeny amount of warm water and just a nip of the bananas in there to make a fluffy mix? That's how we fed Clover in her first few weeks of solid food. She LOVED it. You can also get baby food oatmeal with applesauce and bananas. A jar would/could last a long time. I'm talking just about 1/8 tsp or so in the feed to get it interesting :)
It's worth a shot. I'll keep an eye out next time I'm at the grocery store and see if I can find a jar that Ronnie might like. I know he likes apples and oatmeal.
 
SnowyShiloh wrote:
Any Ronnie updates?
Sorry I haven't been updating much. Everything is about the same with Ronnie. I think this is going to be a really lengthy process and I'm not sure how much improvement to expect when everything is said and done. At this point, Ronnie's head doesn't look like it's going back to normal (of course I don't know what to expect because this is my first time dealing with head tilt.) I'm thinking even though we started treatment the first day he went tilty, there was already damage.

One thing I noticed about the Pen G shots is that they kill Ronnie's appetite. When he's off the shots he starts eating a lot, but he also goes more tilty and is prone to rolling after a few days without the Pen G. We have to give him Critical Care for a while because his appetite is bad, and even though we bought a new bag of pellets, going back on the shots made him lose interest. He still eats hay every day though, which is good. Off the shots he's a hay eating machine, on the shots he doesn't eat too much hay but still eats more hay than he did before he got sick. Ronnie used to be a hay snob and turn his nose up at it :p

Before he got sick, Ronnie used to do three things. He'd run up to me every time he thought I was coming in to see him, he'd run furious circles around my legs to keep me in the room, and if I stayed long enough he'd inevitably try to hump my arm. Well, the humping is gone now but Ronnie still likes to run circles as fast as he can around my legs. He also gets really excited when he sees me approaching and runs up to greet me. This actually worked against him yesterday, because he got so excited that he forgot to be careful with his balance. Ronnie saw me coming through the kitchen and jumped up to run over to me. Only thing is, he got up too fast and immediately lost his balance. Poor guy rolled over three times and landed upside-down against the plastic barrier! :shock:

I went over right away to set him upright, and he started running around like nothing had happened. Then he flopped down next to me and begged me for pets. When I stopped, he ran mad circles around me until I started petting him again. Ronnie loves the attention and gets upset when I stop petting him and have to attend to other things. He seems to be his happy old self, just more wobbly and less horny ;)


 
This picture is making my eyes water :sad:,

DSC_2244.jpg



Ronnie is such a heart breaker!

I winced when I read about how he got excited and rolled when he saw you, but it's so good that he's still so happy to see you! He's obviously still madly in love with you, minus the humping bit (I'm sure you don't miss that too much :p).

:hug:
 
Aww my poor little Ronnie bear :( I know tilty bunnies can live happy lives, but it breaks my heart to think of him being tilted forever. I reeeeeally hope he gets better and untilts! The thought of him rolling is so sad, I nearly cried when I saw video of Ringo rolling.
 
One thing I should point out is that just because the tilt remains doesn't mean the rolling will.

I hope that it goes away and never comes back. If not I hope, I know that he will learn to adapt and be his spunky little self.
 
My poor baby! that picture made me sad too :(

I'm happy he's feeling a bit better tho. Poor thing - that's got to be one of the worst things to have them go through....


 
Ronnie had a lot of rolling episodes today. I don't know exactly how many, but I witnessed somewhere between 5 and 10. He is incapable of staying in his cage tonight because he gets extremely disoriented in there, so he is spending the night loafing and running around his play area, with access to his cage when he wants it.

Ronnie is okay if he's running at moderate speeds or sitting perfectly still. It is when he walks around slowly that he gets in trouble. For some reason, when moving slowly and investigating things, Ronnie's head will advance to a 90 degree angle (9 o'clock) and he is at a heightened chance for rolling. A sure sign is when I see his head go so tilted that his eye will start to roll back to expose the whites, and then he loses balance and falls over.

Since he cannot maintain moderate running speeds in his cage, and he is prone to wandering slowly and investigating, he cannot feasibly stay in there. It's strange how drastically he improves from being able to run around the room, and how quickly he deteriorates in his cage.

We tried giving him Meclizine in hopes that it would reduce his dizziness, but it did not help. Tomorrow we'll be calling the vets to see what they think we should do.

Tomorrow is also the day that he goes off his Pen G shots for three days :?
 
I just got off the phone with Chris and wanted to type a quick update. He said when he looked in on Ronnie this afternoon, he noticed that Ronnie had pooped everywhere! This is good because he had been producing small amounts of really small poops, and today he made a lot of various sized black poops (which makes me think he was constipated before). They are approaching more normal size now and were round and hard.

Chris also said that Ronnie is running around fine and his head looks like it was on the second day of treatment. I guess the night out of his cage did him some good. I also did a little bit of reading and learned that head tilt bunnies do have bad days here and there...so yesterday must have been a bad day for Ronnie.

We'll continue to keep an eye on him to make sure he's okay. I'm thinking about buying rolls of carpet and a layer of plastic to put underneath the carpet so that if Ronnie needs to spend any nights outside the cage, Chris's apartment won't be ruined. That was one thing about last night...it was pretty difficult to convince Chris to let Ronnie stay outside the cage because he didn't want his carpet to get more pee stained. It ended up that Ronnie peed on the newspaper we laid out for him so it was all good :)
 
slavetoabunny wrote:
I hope you know how lucky you are to have a great guy like Chris to help you with Ronnie!! He sounds like a gem.

Have you tried doing neck massages for him. I remember reading somewhere that this is beneficial in relieving neck tilt.
We were thinking about waiting until after the infection is gone to start neck massages. I haven't really done any reading about it, but Chris briefly mentioned that he had read something about the neck massages. When I have more time I'll have to see if I can find any more information about that and when we can start.

This head tilt recovery is so weird. Just yesterday Ronnie was all kinds of messed up with rolling etc., and today he's been running circles around my legs, grooming me, and he even started eating his pellets again! :)
 
Little Bay Poo wrote:
I also did a little bit of reading and learned that head tilt bunnies do have bad days here and there...so yesterday must have been a bad day for Ronnie.
Having a head tilt bunny is a bit of an emotional roller coaster ride. They may have a week or more (even a month or more) of good days -then have a day - or even a week - of bad days and you wonder, "Is it time to let them go?"

Then suddenly - they seem to perk up and start having good days again and you wonder why you even thought that it was time to let them go.

He's young and he's strong and he's got a fighting spirit - so when you hit those bad days - repeat to yourself, "This too shall pass..." and wait it out till you get some good days. They will come.

I have lost several bunnies that had wry neck - sometimes to other issues than the wry neck. In each case...they let me know when it was time to pass. It wasn't just that they had some bad days...its that their whole attitude towards life changed.

Honestly - I think this is a bad bump in the road for y'all - but even if he has a tilt the rest of his life - he could have years and years ahead of him...and once he adjusts to the tilt....he can do just fine.

Give him a hug for me - or an extra treat. After my recent ear infections when I was getting vertigo - I understand a bit about how he must feel...I'm a lot more sympathetic now (and I was pretty darn sympathetic before to my wry neck bunnies)....because I understand how hard it can be to chew when your ear feels so horrible.


 
I would start now, and try it whenever you have a chance.
Little Bay Poo wrote:
We were thinking about waiting until after the infection is gone to start neck massages. I haven't really done any reading about it, but Chris briefly mentioned that he had read something about the neck massages. When I have more time I'll have to see if I can find any more information about that and when we can start.
 
kherrmann3 wrote:
How is little disapproving Ronnie doing?

I hope he's doing well! :brownbunny
Sorry I've been so bad about updating this thread! Things have been hectic around here, and while I come on to read posts I haven't had the time to sit down and write anything. All I can say for now is that Ronnie is doing the same and hasn't had any really bad days since the one I mentioned in my previous post. I'll have to update more later when I can sit down and think of more specifics of what is going on. Hopefully I can take some photos this weekend if I have the time.
 

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