Goose R3/17

Goose R3/17

Goose with us 2017=22

Goose was a grey dwarf lop buck who is extremely friendly and good natured. He was born in 2016. He came to us in April 2017 with his ill companion a very fluffy lionhead Anka with lots of health problems. She eventually became paralyzed after what must have been a back injury worsened that had already caused her to self multilate both her bottom and back feet and we were forced to make the difficult decision to put her to sleep as her quality of life was just not good enough. We rebonded Goose with another very fluffy lionhead Mariposa and he was tasked with being as happy as possible on Anka’s behalf as well as his own. Sadly Mariposa also died so then lived with Bilberry and Filbert where he acted as a referee to stop them getting out of hand. He was dominant in the nicest possible way, ideally suited to keeping old unneutered Filbert from taking too many liberties.

Sadly Filbert took to bullying Bilberry and Goose wouldn’t tolerate it and a serious fight happened and we had to separate them. So Goose lived with just Bilberry until he passed away. He was a very sedate rabbit with the dubious talent of doing very convincing dead rabbit impressions. He was probably completely deaf. He doesn’t seem to notice anything. This didn’t bode well for his future. Lops always get ear infections but he was still a bit young for it to be so extreme already:(

After Filbert passed away Goose was bonded with Butter a very feisty ginger and white doe. He still spent most of his time just sitting only coming out when dinnertime approached. He liked dinnertime. He was content to let Butter get on with whatever Butter wanted to do. He even let her dive on dinner first but he didn’t give her much of a headstart.

I always knew Goose wasn’t quite right but it still came as a shock when he suddenly passed away. Because he was always so quiet and lethargic there were no warning signs to alert me to the fact that anything extra was up with him. I had been paying close attention to Butter because she had recently slowed down a lot but entirely missed any change in Goose. It was only his final night that he didn’t want to eat and I gave him the usual gut stimulants and pain killers that 99% of the time pick a rabbit reluctant to eat back up by morning but it didn’t work and he passed in the night. He was the result of very poor breeding, prioritising looks over health. I am just glad we were able to give him 5 years of being a rabbit rather than a sham life as an animated toy that he would otherwise have had.