Runny Nose / Sneezing

Question
My rabbit Holly has sufferd from runny nose / sneezing off and on all her life. (she is three)Usually the vet prescribes her SMZ TMP ELIXER 1.4 CC TWICE A DAY.Usually this works and her symptoms go away in a few days. However this time she has had it for three weeks. she is still eating, still pooping (although a little less)When it did not clear up in a few days the doctor did a nose swab and it came back normal.
he began to think this was allergies and he prescibed her benadryl 4.5 every twelve hours along with the antibiotic..............but still its not clearing up. I'm very worried at this point and am loosing sleep and what little sleep i do get is full of nightmares about this. Please doctor............please help me, i've already lost my wife..............i cant lose Holly.

Frank Maddalone Jr.
Sunday May 28 2006

Answer
Dear Frank,

When you say your vet did a "nose swab," do you mean a culture and sensitivity test?  That's this:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/culture.html

If that was *not* done, then that's certainly the thing to do now.  Unless your vet has special culturette swabs that are small enough for a deep nasal culture on a rabbit (ferret size works well), the swab he already did might not yield accurate results.  And when he said it came back "normal," what did that mean?  Some vets who don't see many rabbits might be unaware that some bacteria can be opportunistic pathogens in rabbits, and need to be treated with antibiotics.

Please also read:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/sneezing.html

for some other very important potential causes of apparent upper respiratory infection.  In some cases a small foreign body may be lodge deep in the nose (a bit of hay!  We've seen that many times!), but might not be detectable without endoscopy.  Another possibility is intrusion of a molar root into the nasal cavity due to bone loss in the maxilla.  This is all covered in the article.

If you don't feel your present vet is very familiar with rabbits, you might want to find another vet for a second opinion here:

www.rabbit.org/vets

And be closely aware of the state of your bunny's poops. If they are smaller and fewer, you might be looking at incipient ileus, caused by the constant stress of her URI.  Please see:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/ileus.html

and share this one with your vet:

www.bio.miami.edu/hare/ileus.pdf

I hope this helps.  I'm sure with a little bit of detective work you can get to the bottom of this.  I've never known a bunny to die from a URI, so if you get her onto the proper antibiotics (a good second choice might be Baytril, although you really can't tell for sure without a good, accurate culture and sensitivity test), so maybe ask the vet about that.  Lots of bacteria are resistant to TMZ, but fewer are resistant to Baytril/ciprofloxacin.

Dana