He also has dental disease and needs frequent dental trims, which isn't unusual for dwarf breed buns, but Orville is quite sensitive to his dental issues and will slow down on eating when his teeth are bothering him. His upper respiratory symptoms don't help with this as it's riskier to put him under sedation if he's congested. Orville also gets chronic ear infections which we suspect is connected to or being caused by the same infection as the URI. Antibiotics help to clear it up but ultimately it always comes back - same with his congestion issues. With the combination of the ear and upper respiratory infections and dental disease, we decided to keep Orville as a permanent resident of the rescue so that we could manage his medical care for the rest of his life.

Jasper had a CT scan in January 2022 to see if he'd be a candidate for a PECA-BO surgery, but with his unresolved upper respiratory symptoms, we had concerns he had more issues than we knew about. Sadly we were correct, as the CT scan showed that he had about a dozen different things going on in his body, and we were concerned about his quality of life going forward. He wasn’t a candidate for surgery and his prognosis was poor, and we knew he wasn't a rabbit that was going to be adopted out, so all we could do was try to keep him happy and comfortable for as long as possible. Jasper had been on multiple antibiotics that should have cleared at least SOME of the infection but they didn't help, and as a last ditch effort we tried another one in hopes it would give him some more time. We put him on azithromycin, which is an antibiotic that's better at penetrating the lungs and it made a huge difference with his breathing. He stopped coughing and wheezing, and he was able to do zoomies without breathing so hard afterwards. Despite all of Jasper’s health issues, he’s the HAPPIEST bun. When he gets excited - which is often - he runs laps until he tires himself out (or finds food or starts being petted). He absolutely LOVES pets, and if you’re sitting with him and you stop petting him, he’ll start digging at your pants to let you know he’d like to be petted more. He also loves hanging out with his besties Orville and Scooter, and you can often find him snuggling for naptime with Scooter.

Over time, Scooter started to regain feeling and partial use of his back legs. He was doing weekly physio and acupuncture which seemed to help for a bit, and his foster mom did daily exercises and sling walking with him. Sadly he never did regain full use of his back legs and his body grew to be quite twisted, as he was compensating with his front legs which resulted in them splaying out to the side. He has very limited mobility and receives daily metacam (which is an anti-inflammatory that also helps with pain) to help keep him comfortable. He’s a really happy guy and loves hanging out with his friends Jasper and Orville, and he still loves being petted.