Cocoa is sick

Last night was a scary night. It started off pretty normally with Jeff and I coming home from work, making dinner, and heading off to a couple of stores. Later, both of us were in the office where Cocoa’s cage is when we heard a weird sound from Cocoa’s castle. I couldn’t tell what Cocoa was doing in there because his castle wasn’t facing us. When he came out of his castle, he ran over by his water bottle and fell down! It happened so fast I didn’t know what caused it! After falling down Cocoa was clearly upset and ran back into his castle. I didn’t know what was going on with him. I thought maybe he slipped because his nails were getting long. I had been planning to cut his nails so I decided that would be the night to do it. I got him out and cut his nails which of course he was unhappy about. I put him back down in his playpen, rather than his cage, so he could have some play time. His playpen is on the carpet. While in his playpen, Cocoa fell down several times again! It was so scary, I have never seen a bunny do that. He would be hopping around and then fall down out of nowhere and struggle to get up for what seemed like forever. He was rolling all around and I didn’t think there was anything I could do!

Jeff and I planned to take him to the vet in the morning, but I was so scared I decided he needed to go that night! It was nearing midnight but luckily we found a 24 hour emergency animal hospital. We got Cocoa into his carrier and headed off for about a 15 minute drive. The vet at the animal hospital was very nice. He said that Cocoa possibly had an ear infection or some other problem that was causing him to lose his balance. Luckily we took Cocoa in right when we noticed this problem. The vet said he had to put many bunnies to sleep who had this condition so bad that they couldn’t even stand up! We were given some antibiotics (baytril) for Cocoa to give him for the next 10 days. The vet demonstrated how to give it to Cocoa, which I’m sure will be a lot harder when I have to do it. Today Cocoa has been acting pretty normal, eating his hay and drinking water. He hasn’t been moving around as much as normal and mostly just sitting in his litterbox. I hope he is ok, it was very scary to see Cocoa in this condition!