How to create a rabbit friendly practice and run a successful rabbit clinic
Abstract
The development of rabbit clinics ensures that when rabbits are taken to a veterinary practice, they receive a high level of service and their owners are given good quality information. This increases the clients' confidence in the veterinary practice, as well as their ability to look after their pet rabbit — a practice can soon become known for its ability to look after rabbits well.
It is time for veterinary practices to move away from, ‘it's only a rabbit!’, and to deliver the same high standards of care and treatment that are given to cats and dogs.
This article provides a step by step guide on how to run a successful rabbit clinic.
There are now approximately 1.6 million pet rabbits in the UK (PDSA,2011), making them the third most popular mammalian pet after dogs and cats (Sayers, 2010). Unfortunately most owners still do not go to their local veterinary practice for routine advice or for medical attention for their rabbit. Furthermore, the level of owners' knowledge and their understanding, or lack of it, about how to look after their rabbit properly is considered to be an important contribution to the cause of the poor health of these animals (Edgar and Mullan, 2011). Many rabbits are still kept traditionally as children's pets, in a hutch in the garden, fed on concentrate food. These hutch conditions are often woefully inadequate and fail to provide for the animal's mental and physical needs. However, in the authors' opinion even this trend is changing as more and more pets are kept as house rabbits by adults.
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