Rocket

Rocket was with us only a short time.  We bought him from a pet store (which was our first mistake).  Shortly after I got him home, I thought he was not in good health.

His situation at the pet shop was not good.  He had been displayed for months right out front where the bunns were constantly being handled by people shopping the mall.  He had been bitten all over from other bunns in the same display tank because they were all reaching sexual maturity and fighting for dominance.  I also noticed he had a reddish tint to his urine but when we brought him back they assured us he was fine and it was probably just discoloured from chewing on coloured wooden chew toys.  Pet stores are concerned with making a sale, their staff are usually not very educated in animal care and they're reluctant to take an animal back.  This pet shop was particularly bad.  They gave us every excuse, including saying "but he looks like a pet now, we can't take him back, he's not like one of our bunnies now."

We didn't like the answers from the pet shop so we also called a vet but without running a lot of tests they couldn't tell us much.  The vet didn't seem overly concerned with the symptoms he had, and we certainly didn't think he was seriously ill.  But shortly after that we found he'd passed away during the night.  We had been devastated by the loss of our first rabbit, Benny, earlier in the year so this really shook our confidence.  If we didn't already have Bigglesworth then, we probably wouldn't have tried again.