He sits like that sometimes but not all the time, and does walk around in the limited space room I have him in with me (particularly after his pain meds). It's a small room with mostly furniture.
He has seen a vet 1 week ago; they palpated all his bones and he didn't flinch. He also didn't have a clear limp at that time. Later that day he started limping and putting less or no weight on the right foot. I do have a follow up appt with our regular vet in 10 days. It was supposed to be a couple days ago but they were out sick and had to cancel.
I put him on meloxicam (as per vet's advice) as he was losing his appetite and was about to go into stasis. I had to hand feed him lots of hay very early in the morning to get his GI tract going again. He is now eating properly and has healthy poops.
However it's been 1 week. Should he still need painkillers after this amount of time if it's just a soft tissue injury? If I back off the dose more than I have, or reduce the dosing frequency he ends up sitting still a lot and not being his joyful self. I have him on ~0.85 mg/kg meloxicam daily divided into two 12-hr apart doses (so, 0.5 mg/kg in the evening and 0.35 mg/kg in the morning; I'm doing the higher dose in the evening to achieve a more effective pain relief then as he eats most of his hay at night as long as he's feeling well). This seems acceptable as I'm worried about giving him the medication for so long and would rather figure out the minimum accepted dose to keep his appetite and spirits up. Also if I give him 1.0 mg/kg daily (which is the default my vet prescribes, but she did also tell me I could do less in the past for a different issue) he just feels so much better that he moves around too much.
Questions for people who have been through sth similar or are generally knowledgeable:
- if he had broken a tiny bone in his foot for example, would this have been evident from a palpation exam, or can rabbits hide their pain so much that they wouldn't flinch?
- if this is a soft tissue injury, is it normal that he still requires painkiller after 1 week, or does that suggest a bone injury? When should I start seeing improvement, i.e., needing less painkiller?
- given that he does bear weight on it sometimes, and even stands up (meerkats) and surprisingly JUMPED onto the guest bed here from the floor one day (which caused me to restore the pet steps, since that is a smaller increment climb), does that rule out a bone injury in any way?
- would a vet splint or cast a small bone break or just prescribe rest and pain meds like what I'm doing?
- at what point do you think an x-ray is warranted? I don't want to stress him out but also don't want him to have longterm issues.
Cause of injury (in case anyone is wondering):
He got spooked by a paper bag handle getting caught on him and ran in a frenzy around the house trying to get rid of it. Then he thumped nonstop every 2 seconds for >1 hr. Either could have been the cause of his injury.
by eieio2021