Allen Heights Veterinary Hospital

Here is her story.

One day last spring the Animal Control Officer brought us a paralyzed rabbit, she was found in some ones yard, no one knew how she got there, or what happened to her. On her exam we found that she had severe rear limb weakness, almost fully paralyzed really, but no fracture or dislocation was found on exam or xray. Despite her presumably painful state she seemed perky, alert and well cared for. We decided to give her 24 hours, but if she was no better we'd put her down. She got pain meds and anti-inflammatories and cage rest. The next day she had slightly increased reflexes in her legs, her spirits were still good but she could not voluntarily urinate yet. On day two her ability to urinate returned, this is a significant improvement and lead us to feel we were on the right track. Every day she showed some improvement and thus she she went from 24 hours, to three days to a week, and so on. We ran every blood test and treated her for every potential cause of rear limb paresis. We began to do some rudimentary physical therapy. We massaged her legs and back, did range of motion exercises and incorporated her daily neurological exam into her rehab routine. She also got Reiki. One day during her work she gave us a hard kick, as if she was saying "Hey, quit pinching my toes!" We were encouraged to see such strong deliberate action from her rear legs and knew we had a good chance of recovering some degree of function in her legs. We know the nervous system takes time to heal, it takes a lot of patience and support to encourage healing. We re-committed to working with her for the long haul, our inspired goal was tempered with the knowledge that if she was suffering or had a poor quality of life we would have to put her down. We began to ask more of her during her exercise periods. Eventually we began taking her outside for 'walks'. Maybellines version of a walk was being held up and allowed to run around the yard, usually with Dr. Tullett holding her up. As she was running around the yard her back and rear legs would go through the hopping motions. She got to a point of being able to roll over on her own, she could balance momentarily on both her back legs and she could step each foot forward as if she was walking. However her right leg was weaker and still knuckled under all the time. Dr. Tullett took her to an veterinary acupuncturist/chiropractor. He seemed to feel her injury was in the right sacro iliac joint--which makes sence since it is this joint to transfers weight bearing and motion from the back legs to the rest of the body. The adjustment and acupuncture seemed to make her feel brighter and more energetic, but it didn't change her rear leg function. We tried various sling contraptions to make it easier on us to walk her, but these just slid off her body. We looked into getting her a cart and found theycan't design one for a rabbit that has partial use of her back legs. At seven months her progress has plateaued. Of course we'd love to have restored more mobility but we are happy with what we were able to do for her. She seems content with her life style. She likes to hang out on a table in the back of the clinic watching all that is going on. She's very social and still loves her stretches and exercize. Her absolute favorite thing is to have her head and face rubbed, she solicites head rubs from anyone coming close enough to her.