Unexpected

Spring, my sweet but giant bunny, suddenly passed away last night. Jerry called as I was getting off work (in STL) to say she was not eating, lethargic, and weak. By the time I got home she was already gone. We found that she had a very small (about the size of my pinky finger or less) hernia in her body wall. She could have lived her whole life with a hernia that small and never had any trouble. But unbelievably intestines went through the hole, got trapped, and died. I'm guessing the toxins released from the dying tissue and the pain is what caused the death. A dog or cat would not likely have died from this, so long as surgery was pursued. But rabbits are so fragile. It's hard to believe it all went downhill so fast. It's hard to know it was something that could have been fixed, if I'd known it was there to fix. It could have been there since she was born for all I know, a birth defect. She would have been 3 late this year.