Good evening everybody and welcome to tonight's webinar. My name is Bruce Stevenson and I have the honour and privilege of chairing tonight's webinar with my all-time favourite speaker, I'm pleased to say. And he's joined by a fantastic guest as well.
We're gonna be doing things a little bit differently tonight. There is no actual presentation per se. What has happened is that, John and Coe have accumulated some questions that are commonly asked and require some, elaboration and some discussion.
So it's almost going to be a panel discussion kind of, of evening. Which, obviously, we would love to include the audience. So if you have any questions, just pop them into the Q&A box.
If you don't know where that is, just move your mouse over the screen. The little bar pops up. It's normally at the bottom of the screen, little black bar and you'll see a Q&A box.
Click on that, type them in there, and we will get to as many as we can tonight. No promises that we will get to all of them. But before we move on to that, I'd like to say a huge big thank you as always, to Burgess for, sponsoring this evening.
Without Burgess's kind sponsorship, we would not be able to bring you these fantastic presentations. So, Peter Lancaster, who's on with us, and we'll hear from him later. Peter, to you and your team at Burgess, a huge, big thank you for, the sponsorship for this evening.
So I'm sure that most of you don't need to be introduced to John. John is an RCVS advanced practitioner in zoological medicine. He qualified from the Royal Veterinary College in 1990 and gained his RCVS certificate in zoological medicine in 2000.
Until recently, he was employed as a small animal and exotic practise in Andover, Hampshire, with a 100% avian exotic small animal case load, both referral and first opinion. As well as consulting with various zoos and reintroduction projects. John now provides a consultancy and advisory service for zoos, local authorities, and vets.
He's co-editor of 3 texts on avian medicine, 1 on rabbit surgery, and co-author on a textbook of tortoise medicine. Author of various book chapters and papers on a wide range of species. John was the president of the European Association of Avian Veterinarians 2015 to 2017, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Exotic Pet Medicine, the veterinary record, and the veterinary evidence.
He was the president of the British Small Animal Veterinary Association in 2017 to 2018. And one of John's favourite achievements is that he's a trustee and honorary secretary of Vet Life. So once again, John, welcome.
With John tonight. I'm pleased to introduce Matthew Rendall, who started in veterinary nursing career in 1989. With his experience in nursing care for many species from ants to elephants and most of the things in between those, he has been fortunate to travel extensively across the world as part of his roles.
Matt has been involved in veterinary politics for many years and is currently an elected member of the RCVSVN council. Matt is the chair of the AZEVN which he helped to found in 2016 to provide CPD for nurses working in zoos, exotics and wildlife species. Matt also is a member of the board of the ACOVENE who help promote and support veterinary nursing in in nursing education in Europe.
So guys, welcome to tonight's webinar with a difference. Thanks, Bruce, and, . Tonight is actually we should be saying nice things about you, Bruce, I think you've got the most difficult job tonight.
What, keeping control of you guys. Walk in the park, walk in the park. Right, let's kick it off, guys.
One of the first questions that came in was, how do we approach euthanas and rabbits from a welfare perspective, especially in cases where physical health is borderline, but mental well-being is clearly compromised. Long-term isolation, fear-based behaviours, those kinds of problems. And can you talk us about alternatives, with the remaining bonded rabbits, after the, the one has passed and issues that may arise with single rabbit keeping versus the benefits of small groups.
So Matt, you can kick off. It's a really good question. I'm, I'm, yeah, I'm glad to have the opportunity to discuss it, because I think we don't talk enough about euthanasia rabbits.
It's, weird to start at the end, but I think it's a really important subject. I think the key thing in it is is that. Not one approach will be successful in all cases.
I think the practicalities of euthanasia is something we should talk about as well, if John's happy too. I mean, from the, the how we approach it in veterinary practise, because I think generally there's some gaps in there that can be quite, end up with the rabbit not having a great, end and also being quite difficult for the owners as well. But I think the, the solitary rabbit question comes up a lot, and I feel like we should be looking at, Kind of behavioural cues as to how that rabbit is doing, be considering that rabbit's welfare in the context of is it a geriatric rabbit?
Are we, is bonding that rabbit again actually going to compromise that individual's welfare, you know, is it, is it a rabbit that has advanced osteoarthritis, it's gonna be a problem, and actually probably won't. We have a prolonged period of stress to only have a very short period of time of being potentially bonded. And I think the key thing is with bonding, I'm, I'm pretty sure that most vets and nurses have no idea what it looks like.
Two rabbits living together in the same environment is not bonded. It's just two rabbits living in the same environment. So I think sometimes we see.
And lots of cases where the bonding has not gone particularly well. So I think, I think we need to assess these things really on their own merits and look at them as individuals. I, in my experience, I don't shy away from owners that want to euthanize the second rabbit, if the other, if the second rabbit is compromised and is, is not gonna go through a, you know, a reasonable quality of life during that part.
I think, and this is where quality of life assessments need to be done. Routinely in older rabbits, when we get to a certain stage, then we need to be getting independent people or owners friends or people around them to do those assessments, because the, the, the degradation of rabbits is very slow and very subtle, being a prey species, they hide everything, so. Matt, sorry to jump in there.
Do you think that that is a, an avenue that would best be filled by veterinary professionals? John, maybe I can pull you in there. For assessment.
Yeah, for the quality of life assessments. It's really difficult for, I mean, an outside set of eyes is actually quite useful, but, both man and I'll be used to this in a zoo setting where you'd have a regular keeper assessing the animal all the time, and every now and then you put in an outside person to have a look occasionally and re-score and just recheck. But actually overall it's really difficult for vets and nurses to do that, espe I mean certainly in the clinic it's, it's absolutely hopeless because the animal's frightened, they're not gonna give any right cues and stuff, and you're gonna generally rely on the owner providing videos and and .
Photos and stuff, which are gonna automatically have a little bit of selection about them, which can be difficult. You could maybe argue house visits could be quite good, but again, animals would usually change what they're doing if a stranger comes in, especially one who's done horrid things in the past. So, yeah, we have a role, but I think our role is teaching, and our role is educating people how to do this.
And again with quality of life assessment is what are you looking at? And that's gonna have to vary almost with every case because there may be different things wrong with them. If you're an arthritic rabbit, you may wanna look at how it moves and how winning it is to move and stuff, whereas that may not be appropriate for, for some of the other conditions they can have.
So, it is important to do that. As a tool, a general basic one, there's a website called, Lapalove.com, and I'll talk about that again in a moment with regard to euthanasia.
It's one probably Google carefully. but, it's really good. It's got it's very, very basic, quality life scoring system on it.
And because it's so basic, you can adapt it really easily. And it's dead easy to use. And it, it's really good.
And you just attach scores and, and people can see where that score starts to deteriorate or if you give, let's say give analgesia, where it starts to improve because it's not just watch the animal decline, it's also. Look at your interventions, have they actually worked? So really, really useful thing to do.
Yeah, and I think what I'm hearing from both of you is the need for a, a joint team. Yeah. Yeah.
It's it's that talk to a client, isn't it, Matt? You know, it's that keep and keep talking, you know, it's no good just giving a one-off lesson. It's gotta be repeat, it's gonna be follow up, there's gonna be interventions, and it does involve the whole team, and, you know, the the nurses are probably usually better at this than we are because they've been taught more about it.
And, you know, it's great, it's a great thing for everybody to do and get really involved with, with the patient with the owners too, and just make them feel backed up. And then I think Matt, you, you said this when we were planning this, this session that . Too often people regard euthanasia as a as a failure, and it's not.
It's a really good welfare tool. And I think people really get it if you can just say, right, OK, we can do all this, we can see what we can do. And I think the single the single, single and left behind animals are a really good one to look at.
I, you know, you can quite class school, how is it doing? Is it doing as well as they think they are? Are they interpreting its behaviours correctly?
And you can support them and say yes, no, and then really start to introduce the idea that, you know, maybe this isn't as good as they think and do they really want their pet to suffer, and they don't. People don't want that. They actually want to, they, they want to invest and if that means saying goodbye, actually, most people are quite amenable if explained.
Yeah, and I think it also comes down to, to guilt, doesn't it, Matthew, that, people feel guilty when, when they start talking about, you know, letting both go together. Yeah. I think, I think having those awkward conversations is something that we're not very good at as vets and nurses.
I think it's just having that ability to just bring it up in the conversation. And you'd be surprised how many owners are very receptive to it. The caregiver's bias thing that John has touched on as well is, is a massive problem in all exotic pets, really, is that you, you really want your animals to be OK, so you kind of tell people it is OK.
But actually, you need to get some, some different perspective on it. But I think, I think the, the key thing underpinning from an educational point of view is educating vets and nurses that euthanasia is not failure. It's not a bad outcome because it's, it's necessarily.
If it's necessary, it's the best outcome for the welfare of that animal. And I feel like we, we, we shy away from having that conversation, and often within the terms of contextualised care, if we're giving out, you see rabbits that are on 8 or 9 different medications, and you're expecting the owner to medicate that animal 3 times a day. Not many people have got time to that, and you're kind of setting the owners up to fail, and often you break that emotional bond they have with the rabbit because they're not able to do that procedure.
And that, that's a whole, yeah, a whole challenge. I think being really honest with the owners and giving them outs and giving them open questions that give them the opportunity to talk about euthanasia and their, their challenges, I think is, you know, absolutely paramount importance. Matt, that's a, that's a really fantastic, point.
And John, I'm sorry to jump in there, but, Matt has really opened the door beautifully to our second question. And it follows on what you were saying there, Matt, was the question says, how can vets effectively educate rabbit owners about recognising signs of chronic stress or poor welfare, especially in environments where rabbits are treated more like ornamental pets than sentimental companions. And again, it comes back to the single versus groups.
Yeah, I think it's like sad, sad things where there's a lot of people we don't get to. And if you look at the PDSA pool report and it comes out, it usually gives a figure for how many rabbit owners say they've actually got a vet. And it's a depressingly low fee.
It's usually about around about just under 50%, isn't it? And so what you've gotta remember is the positive side of that is that the people who come in with surgery, they're the good ones. And you are, you should be preaching to the choir.
So, . You know, that that we should, they should be on side. And it's just a case of really engaging and talking to people about their pets, about what they want, about what that pet's doing, but what it means.
And sometimes, I think one of the good examples that with, with, with, with long term tonic immobility things where people that all kept showing picture of rabbits on their backs for hours at a time, and they weren't enjoying it. They're having a bad time and having to explain delicately. And Bruce Stranger made a brilliant point about not inducing guilt.
They're things where it doesn't matter what you're talking about. An animal in chronic pain or an animal that's obese, that's a big one, that one. Or, a single animal who, who's, who's, who's just freezing and not doing a lot, and that doesn't mean they're, they're happy, that means they're they're frightened.
Just don't make people feel guilty. You can't, you can't say things like, you mustn't do this, and, look at what you've done, and if you do this, this will go wrong and rest of it. It's a way of just saying, look, you know, this is.
You know, these are problems may be associated, this is what we can try and do about it, but it probably won't be successful, but we can try this and try that and and help you through this. But if you can't, you know, we we do have to start looking at this and introduce that subject gradually, so introduce to euthanasia subject just gradually as you can. And it can't be done in 5 minutes and it can't be done, on one visit.
It's gonna be repeated, . With repeated consultations, and that I think is why, why we, we struggle a lot of the time, because the best way in the world, it's difficult in, in a busy veterinary surgery, but maybe that's where we should be going to and looking at and how we, we deal with things more than just the nuts and bolts, medicine and surgery. I think, I think also looking for the flags from the owners.
So if the owners come in and immediately say, oh, we bought it for our daughter, and it's much more trouble than we thought it was gonna be, those people are not going to be invested in that rabbit, and you can send them home with medications and you can explain everything. But lots of the times, those people will not do the medications and not be compliant at all. So, you have to have those conversations.
Whereas if you come in with people that have taken the time to perhaps do a welfare diary for their rabbit, and. Bring in some video clips and these things do take time, and I think nurses, exotic nurses have a really good part to play in this. We can tease out all of the actual information that vets need from the massive amount of information that comes into us, but.
Choosing your choosing the bits of your clinical assessment that you, you get given to to prioritise, I think is really important. And if you've got an owner that's been bounced around veterinary clinics with rabbits, which happens a lot, no pun intended, they, they will often have been seen by lots of different people that not necessarily have come up with an answer for them or have perhaps listened to them. You know, you, I, you see a lot of rabbit owners that are very cued in with their rabbits and will bring it in and just say, you know what, she's just not right.
And I think that's something that we need to think of in the context of, chronic pain. And John touched on it as well about trialling drugs. I mean, vets that are not that keen on it anymore, but in older rabbits that are just showing a kind of malaise and perhaps a reduction in appetite and activity.
You, you have to think about it in the, in the terms of, for me, that becomes palliative care. You know, you're, you're not, you're not gonna fix that animal, but you're gonna give it a better quality of life. And I think just before, handing over to John, you need to think about dental disease in rabbits in that same context.
We don't talk enough about that being palliative care, we talk about, we're gonna have your rabbit in and do a dental, and then we don't necessarily say, you know what, it's gonna get bad again, probably, unless it's an incisor removal, the chances are you're not gonna fix it. So you're, you're gonna, you're setting that owner off on a journey. And it, and it is really important that we have that conversation to begin that journey, saying, you know what, this is gonna take some time, money, effort, and it's, yeah, so you just have to make that assessment.
And that's an awkward conversation, but it's very rewarding and improves animal welfare massively. Yeah, it's, it's that managing expectations. It's really, really important.
I used to set it up, we had a referral consultation for, for rabbit dental disease, and it's really sad because we kind of think, oh, this is a person who's gonna fix it, and my first words were, do you know I'm not gonna make this better? And it's really important to get there and then you go on about what you are gonna do and how you are gonna manage it and what you're actually, you're, you're what you're aiming to achieve, which is not a cured animal, but, but, but one who's actually really happy having a good quality life. And that that's what we're after really is is that quality of life really.
Speaking of quality of life there, and I think that's a fantastic thing is, is, you know, always set the expectations of the client. Navina has, has, popped a question in following on what we were talking about, you know, saying goodbye to one rabbit or both and that, she says, what advice, would you give someone with behavioural management with the rabbit that's being left alone if they don't want to say goodbye to both? It's a a tricky one.
I would, yeah, I, I'm, I think you would have to say, look, these are the problems. You start off with this, this is the issue with that too, and do you want to go on it's always that question to ask and, and, and it's their decision, not yours. And then it's a case of right, what is the rabbit like doing, what's his favourite things, it's a good time for an environmental assessment and again get some pictures, get some videos, if nothing else, to see, now, is that rabbit got a good environment anyway, because if it starts off with, it lives in a hutch with the bottom of the garden to start with, Chance are's having a bad time already.
So, you know, you wanna, you need to improve that a lot to actually get anything good with that. Is it a rabbit that's bonded to them? You know, I mean you don't truly bond to people, that's a bad, bad choice of words for me.
But you know, does it actually get on with this? Is it well socialised to people? Because if it's not, it's gonna have probably have an even worse time because it's well socialised people, sometimes it's not, you're not a substitute for another rabbit, but sometimes it does help, you can do a lot more with them.
So you can start doing things like training and enrichment and things things with you. So it's really a case of finding out about the people, what time they've got, what facilities they've got, what, what facilities and resources a rabbit has. Again, a bit about the character of a rabbit as well.
You know, is it a nervous, nervous animal to start with? An extreme example, but. You know, we, we had, we'd have occasionally have blind rabbits, and the companion rabbit was essential to that blind rabbit and actually would guide them around and do stuff.
Well, that's a rabbit is really very, very unlikely to do well, and most are already switched on before they reached that stage, if anything happened to companion, that really was going to be hard to continue. So again, their expectation was managed or set before the companion died. So all those areas need to be looked at and and then discussed on an individual basis really, rather than if you like a hard and fast rule.
Yeah, I think encouraging owners to let the live rabbit see the dead rabbit is a good idea. I think it's a bit controversial, but some people just really shy away from that and. The rabbit, the, the living rabbit will go through a process of grief and loss.
It's a, it, it's, it's been with that, even if you have a coffee table in your house that you don't like, you still notice it when it's gone. Now, you don't have to be the best friend of that animal forever. So, but you will miss it, and given that opportunity will speed that up.
And explain to the owners that the rabbit is feeling emotional trauma from it, and he's gonna go through stages that they need to support it through. So, as John said, Enrichment is a bit overused, I think. We kind of use it for an excuse to for everything.
This is a terrible environment, but it's OK, I've given it enrichment. But I think this is a really good example where you can use enrichment, and you can use food enrichment, you know, or factory enrichment. You can really change things.
And also in the environment, so making sure there's a chance for the animal to have more hiding holes, more visual barriers and things like that is really important. But it's, it could definitely explain that. There is no way that you can remove that rabbit without remove the dead.
No way you can euthanize one of those rabbits without the other rabbit getting compromised somewhere. It's just not possible. And again, we need to be honest about that.
We can't just, we don't have a magic wand that means that we can prevent that from happening. So, talking to the owners about that is really important. Yeah, I think you also, you have triggered a real soapbox there out with the enrichment.
I think you're absolutely correct there, that enrichment very often becomes almost like a stick to prod things with and make them do something. And that's not the idea with enrichment. Enrichment is to basically enhance the experience.
And make their lives richer. This is what it says. And so, you know, if they need to forage, give them some foraging, it's, it's, it's looking at a specific need they haven't got and providing a bit more, more of that, rather than just making him do something.
Obviously there's pictures, don't you, of you know, male antelope beating everything out, out of, out of a bag of male antelope dung, and I'm not altogether sure they want to do that. But it's, it's, so it's basically providing that, you know, the right thing. So again, it's, you know, you can identify that right thing before you you you you you put it in there.
And by understanding what was going on before, you can't come in as a stranger and and start dishing out advice when you don't know what environment the two bunnies together were kept in before, before the decision or getting close to it. And Matt, it comes back to what you were saying earlier. It's about You know, understanding the process.
John, you also said, be open and explain the road and the path that you're gonna be going down. Yeah, I also think it's a good thing too, and again I hope Matt will come in on this one too, again it's back to his teamwork between vet and nurse. There are things that people will tell the nurses they won't tell the vets and vice versa.
And it's really interesting how people treat different, different professionals they're working with and what they, what they, they're happy disclosing. I wonder if it's come born of what you will tell the doctor or the nurse when, when you go for your own consultations. But that's why it's so valuable to have those not true safari system, but you know, where you actually have those those consult times where you do have a nurse around, you do have a veteran, and they can spend time alone with either of those.
Because when we sit down together, you've got a lot of information you put together, some sometimes contradictory, but very often, you know, adding, adding to it. I think, I think that's a really good point. I think, yeah, that, that synergy between pets and nurses is really good for animal welfare generally, I mean across the piece, but I think particularly in rabbits.
And we just need to make sure that we're not setting the owners up to fail by saying, OK, going, coming back to the single rabbit, go to a rescue centre and get yourself another rabbit. That's what you want to do. 2 rabbits, I've read it in the book, must be good.
2 rabbits, 2 rabbits, 2 rabbits. But you need to make sure that they've got the environment that, as John said, they're not just in a hut down the bottom of the garden in a dank kind of area. And also, you have to accept that the first, the rabbit you've, you've had all that time, you're quite bonded with.
You might not like the new one, and it might not be so bonded, and you might kind of resent it a bit because it's trying to replace the one that you've had to have put to sleep. So, the bond is definitely slightly broken with that. And then if the first rabbit dies, you're then stuck with a rabbit that you don't really like, and then you have to go through the whole process again and We, we are very lucky that, that, in my experience, the best rabbit nurses and vets are vets and nurses that have kept rabbits and have gone through that bonding process and know that it's not a linear pathway.
There's a lot of subtle behaviours in it. It's not necessarily, you know, kind of unicorns and rainbows. Sometimes it doesn't go well, and sometimes you end up with two rabbits, as I say, just living in the same environment.
Sometimes it goes more smoothly and. John and I chatted as our kind of preamble to this about whether we should encourage owners to be having quads and more than 2 rabbits. And again, that comes down to resources, don't want to compromise them by having 4 rabbits in an area with not enough resources for 2.
But it's definitely an interesting, conundrum as to whether that's gonna be better longevity as regards for the owners keeping rabbits and and the and the rabbit's welfare for sure. Yeah, I think that's always key, isn't it, that, I, I, I do like group keeping, rodents rabbs everybody's heard these things, all know. But you have got to have enough space and you've got to have enough hiding places, enough food bowls, enough water bowls, and, and just like, you know, any group of animals, you can't have competition sites.
Otherwise you will end up with aggression or problems. But, you know, it does get away from that, always the issue of always cycling through a new one and a new one and a new one and a new one, which gets really difficult. Yeah, and I think that, that leads into the next question with a slight variation.
You were talking about, you know, pressure points and that. One of the other questions is, what about integration with predator species in the home? We're talking about new rabbits, but also existing rabbits, and then You know, we sight smells, those sorts of things, but also in the vet clinic, how do we make the vet clinic less of a, you know, a, a predation threat to these, these furry children, and also pertaining to rescue centres.
Go on Matt you've done loads on this. Well, I think, I think it's . I, I think we just need to be honest with ourselves what we can achieve in practise.
So we, we need to have our prey and predator wards or we need to have our bunny wards, and they need to be away, but they need to be fit for purpose, and we need to be very honest about what we're achieving. And we need to be aware of ourselves. So if you're covered in the hair of a cat and you stink of a tomcat and then you're going in with your rabbit, not really thinking about that through.
And we probably ought to call each other out on that a bit more and say, actually, do you know what, do you want to just go and change the top, or do you want to Kind of work your way around with that. I mean, it's important that we're honest. I was at a practise in, in, in Ireland recently where they recovered their sick rabbits in their staff room and I was like, doesn't make any sense.
She makes loads of sense because it's away from all of the other animals. And they get constantly monitored. So they're watched like, like, you know, I don't want to say like a hawk, there's the kind of contradiction there, but they're watched very carefully while they recover.
And I think that's super important. I think use of things like pet remedy is important. I think also really timing your interventions properly, so prioritising to nurse your, look after your, your rabbits before you go into, to look after your cats and dogs, and really kind of think about a service order, so you're doing that properly.
But just watch out for those cues. I mean, in an ideal rabbit, in an ideal world, you wouldn't have ferrets and rabbits in the same postcode. I mean, ferrets stink, and rabbits have got very good smells.
So managing that can be really, really challenging. But again, be really honest with yourself. And The use of pet remedy, I think Pet Remedy has a part to play in this, and I've seen it had good effects.
I know the pet remedy people are gathering data to publish some stuff, but it's definitely, if it's available, it's definitely worth considering. So I don't think. I don't think one size fits all, but the days of it being OK to have rabbits, next, to, to cats and things is just not acceptable.
And I think space comes into this as well. And I know John's previous practise had really nice runs so that rabbits could actually move around and it's frustrating when you people ask for advice and they're trying to treat gastric stasis rabbits, and they're Keeping them in a cat basket. They're, they're not really, they're like, you know, I think about those horses with colic when I was a youth that we used to have to walk around to try and get them to do whatever they needed to do to get rid of that colic.
So I think just, just be really, really try and evidence base what you're doing, but also be very honest about the, the, the resources that you have available to you. And that becomes complicated when you've got numerous rabbits. Yeah, I think it's also a thing too, and several things bear in mind.
One is, don't forget, especially with the home environment, we are technically a predator as well. So if rabbits are not socialised when they're young, to being with people, that's quite a traumatic thing for them as well. Moving to the clinic, .
I think also familiarity's that big thing, isn't it? So you admit, obviously the easy one is always admit the companion as well. That should be just automatic.
The companion comes in. And if you're saying like has gone and drip or saying, well, yeah, OK, fine, no reason why the why the companion can't be within sight, and, and sound if necessary, of, of the, of the one being treated. But if possible, we have them been together, that's really important.
But get people bring in their favourite toys, their bowls, their drinkers, all the stuff that smells of them because it can be pretty bad otherwise. And even down to silly things, so if you haven't got a mass number of cases, for if it's a house rabbit, I would lay a bet the owner has a radio or television on all day. Think of all the senses, so, you know, if it's used to a low level of usually like test match special I found, certainly soothe the bet, and you have something like that in the background to just playing, just making another distract or another familiarity thing.
But full way for hospitalisation is just start with the five freedoms. And I just don't think we, we ever really, I say in my day we ever really did that properly because, you know, you've got 5 freedoms, you got, you can work through them and say this is what a rabbit needs. And you know, you want to provide the environment or teach your own about the environment.
So you've gotta start doing it yourself, like, like Matt said, you know, it helps you have them have them themselves, but actually keeping them a clinic like you want the owners to keep them is not a bad way to go. So you can go through a diet, you can go through the living environment, but what's ideal. You can go through you know, preventing fear and distress and stuff and what's ideal.
Now then you. You're probably not as much as you're not going to achieve that in every single practise, it's damn difficult. We were lucky we had space and we can have several different wards, but not everybody can do that, because we're a new, we're a new build, we could design it from scratch and you just don't always have that available.
But you can at least then build in mitigators, so you could think I want to do this, I can't do that. So I can compromise using this and and this this will help hopefully mitigate those those problems I can't fully, fully conquer. So, and that might be the sky kennel in the staff room, which I've never felt was as bad as it is one thing that doesn't necessarily look lovely, but it can be really, really effective.
And certainly for something like . You know, a dwarf rabbit, that may be enough space anyway. If you've got a walking kennel for dogs, they're fantastic for, for the giant rabbits, or any rabbit really, so, you know, you can, you can adapt and use and, and, and, and steal facilities from, from dog and cat colleagues.
That's what you do. Yeah, I think also when it comes to owners kind of wanting to have a cat and a dog and a rabbit, it's really important to just be very honest with them. They should never be, have the possibility of being in the same space.
Whenever owners say to me, oh, but the dog loves the rabbit, he spends loads of time licking the rabbit, and you're thinking, the rabbit is not having a nice time there. This is not gonna be a mutually enjoyable experience. But if the owners are gonna have to, if they've decided that they're getting a rabbit and they already have a cat or a dog, they need to make sure that that rabbit gets habituated in a very safe way to that environment.
So, you know, just suddenly, if that rabbit gets exposed to that cat or dog by mistake once, and it's never seen that cat or dog before, that's gonna be absolutely terrifying. And that, in my experience, John might have experienced this too. That's where the rabbit, the owner finds the dog running around.
The, the rabbit's run, the rabbit has died and it's just had a heart attack and it's just done it because it's been so stressful for it. Whereas if actually if there's a very, very controlled exposure, if that's what the owners want, then that needs to be discussed as well, and I think we, again, you, you cannot. There is, there is never a safe time to have any kind of carnivore in with a rabbit, and people do it.
The same as dogs with tortoises, tortoises are walking dog chews. I mean, they, they, you can't really ever expect that to not go wrong. And again, I don't think we're particularly honest with that with owners.
I think it's that tortoise and rabbit thing is how many times do you heard? I've been fined for ages and then suddenly, and it's something that happens with Q, and I mean, I know I've I've had, yans in the past. And you know, any pet you had could just amble about in front of it, not even the least bit interested.
If it turned and ran away, that that trigger that hardwired response to chase. Yeah. And there's not a lot a dog can do about it either.
And it's just what the cues are given, from, from each one, and it may not be advertently given, may be totally inadvertent, and that can be a big problem. But yeah, it's as Matt says it's about socialisation is about mixing properly and supervision because it will go wrong someday. I think also, just a final point in practise.
We've all worked with vets and nurses that get scratched and bitten by rabbits. And in my experience, they've normally made that happen. They've normally just walked in, been a little bit fed up that they're being made to interact with the rabbit, and they, they interact in a way that the rabbit is not prepared for, and the rabbit reacts in a way, in the only way it knows how.
And having been bitten by rabbits before, sometimes it can be a, a big surprise cos you're not expecting it. But when, when those things happen. we need to make sure that we're discussing them because psychologically that vet on nurse will be much rougher with a rabbit next time.
I've seen this in bats in, in India, weirdly, that people that have had a negative interaction with a bat, arrow, or any bird of prey, it makes them much rougher with it next time because they really don't want to get bitten again. So we need to just. Look for that queue.
OK, what did you do? OK, it just arrived, it's been on a busy car, you know, you see rabbits that arrived where they've been on the bus. And they, they're having a terrible time.
So giving that rabbit some time to just chill out in a dark, kind of cool environment, subdued lighting before you kind of go in. You can walk away and discuss the clinical history with the owner, get all your notes kind of taken down and things before you do that. But just watch for those things.
They, they're, they're not evil animals. I mean, we've all met those unspayed rabbits that, are slightly evil and trying to turn into the devil's rabbit that run around trying to bite you and growl at you all the time. But most of the time that you will instigate that will happen, you know, you will have made that happen.
I think the more we talk about that, it's a nice way of getting a conversation about rabbit behaviour with vets and nurses that are not particularly familiar with their care. I totally agree with that, Matt. I mean, and it's that thing where it's that thing about reflection, isn't it?
I know, I know vets and nurses, we now don't like that term reflection, but it's a brilliant term and it is what we should be doing. I mean you look back at what you did and you know deep down you triggered that, you caused that, you're in too much of a hurry or you just did it wrong or you're in bad, as you say, bad mood or whatever. It, it's what happens.
That goes for almost any mistake, isn't it, even if it's down to talking to the owner in a bad way. You deep down know that fundamentally it could have gone better, and, and that's the thing of accepting it, moving on, understanding it and not doing it the next time you, otherwise, you say you get a vicious circle, but these things always bite, therefore I must scruff it. I must do whatever else there, I must do all the bad things.
But it's about having a time. It's about having an advocate to point that out and I, you know. An interesting couple of questions that have come through, guys, on this topic of, of integrating and handling and, and welfare and that is the question of rehoming from, one question was from a laboratory, and the other one is, you know, if a, if a rabbit has been in a rescue centre for a long time, is it fair to take it away from all those other rabbits and try and bond it to a new one?
Do you want me to go first? Yeah. I think, the laboratory rabbits I saw pop up was New Zealand whites.
New Zealand whites are about, they're as kind of familiar to rabbits as chickens are to birds. They're, they're kind of their own thing. They're not really, they're not really like rabbits at all.
If you've ever worked with them, they, they are given such a baptism of fire that they, they kind of thrive or die. So they, the, the situations they find themselves in because they're meat rabbits, they, if they survive that, they're normally pretty tough. I mean, I dealt with one a few years ago that was.
Had conditions that another abscesses and things that another rabbit would have not survived, but the New Zealand whites just, they're just very different, and they're often very quiet, they're often not, they're just, they're just completely different rabbits, so I feel like you need to just be really. Mindful of that when you're examining them and when you're looking at them, their behaviour to stress is very different, they're, they're, they're habituated to a negative impact with humans, they've been dragged around quite a lot when they're small. And so I think it's important that we look at them with a slightly different lens, like chickens.
Chicks are not. Really that familiar as birds. They're kind of slightly weird.
And if you apply all of your bird knowledge to your chicken, you're gonna go home scratching your head and very disappointed. And I think the New Zealand white is the same. I think it's a very different rabbit.
And just, just a heads up, watch this in the literature. Because New Zealand whites are often using experiments, and it means that the literature that comes out from that needs to be, you need to make your own assessment as to how valid and how robust that piece of research is because they are very different. I don't know how many Johns, I'm sure you've dealt with lots over the years, but they are odd.
Yeah, I, I, I actually, I find, I always found lovely patients. I always love, love, love the New Zealand ones, they are very different. But I think yeah, a really great point about stuff coming from a lab data and stuff because you think, oh, there should be so much data about rabbits and pharma pharmaceuticals and things like that too, and it's actually irrelevant because it just is, you've got these very, very individual populations.
And if you look at sedative doses when they first come out, they're really quite high. And that's because they babies where these young lab rabbits are used on. And then as you see me using pet medicine, you usually see the save rates fall and fall and fall.
There's always a good reason for actually always making sure you use the latest dose rate. Don't memorise anything, don't write down your your set protocol, but keep reviewing it and keep checking it because things like that tend to fall and change as they get used more in the pet situation rather than lab situation. It's interesting that what you're saying about the different species and that sort of thing, or the different breeds within the species, shall I say, because it's not that different to, to owning cats and dogs.
That, that, that's exactly it. I mean, I live in a flat, therefore I got a border collie. No.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, you, you, and we switched on to that, you know, you, cats and dogs, you know, different breeds of totally different animals and to different situations. And when it comes to, you know, rabbits, and we won't go into other exotics where we change species, but when it comes to rabbits, you know.
It's exactly the same deal, you know, and we should be again looking at, do we want a very highly strung little dwarf rabbit, or do we want, a more laid back dwarf or a really laid back giant rabbit, which is better in that situation and stuff, and we should be looking more at almost that that breed basis. And again, extremities within that breeding as well, we should be worried about as well, which we haven't touched on. I think when it comes to rescue centres, I think if you're a really, really good animal rescue centre, you shouldn't have any animals, i.e., you should be rehoming them or getting rid of them.
And that place is a bit of a kind of strange comment, but, but it's true because you will have your ones that you are comfortable or not comfortable to rehome. So you've decided that actually their best place to live out their life is in that rescue centre. And I comes back to what we were saying about caregivers biassed.
I feel like we really need to make sure that we're. We're educating ourselves on what that looks like, cos zoos are similar to rescue centres and they're really good places to magnify disease. I mean, if you've got, if you want to get a disease through a through an environment, then put loads and loads of people that are really, really busy looking after lots of rabbits.
So I feel like we need to be really kind of, honest with ourselves with that. And also making sure that we do descriptors for that rabbit, because some rabbit owners will really like grumpy rabbits. They quite like the rabbit that they will rescue that actually doesn't particularly want human contact, actually quite likes to just do its own thing and catches with another, and, but having those open conversations and, and using descriptors that we're familiar with.
That do give the, the, the person that's gonna take them on some insight into what it's gonna be like to own that rabbit is really important because they are real, they do have real characters and different kind of behaviours and a lot of that will depend on, on. Yeah, what they've experienced so far. But having lots of rabbits in rescue centre is, is not ideal, and we've, I'm sure John has experienced it as well, where VHD and other and other highly infectious pathogens get into that environment, and then it's very hard to deal with.
Even fleas getting into that environment can be a massive problem. It's really difficult at rescue centres because there are some really, really good ones around, really good ones. And people go into it because they really love the species, they really love the animals and they really care.
And they nurse some often them through some really bad diseases. And if you nurse things, you can't help but get really close to them, so it's very hard to make decisions. And so the best way in the world, all of them end up with some slight sanctuary aspect.
Which is draining emotionally, it's draining financially, it's draining physically very often, and it can be a problem, and it's, it, it's a problem we always with saying, with, with rescue places. I think back to the question was about, you know, where we're used to living over rabbits and things. I think if you come across a, a rescue place where they are genuinely like group keeping rabbits and they're genuinely living with other rabbits.
Then, you know, personally I would say, look, just don't take the rabbit away from there. Give the rescue place some, some, some money to look after them and go and see them once we can watch and really enjoy rabbits being rabbits interacting with other rabbits, it's fantastic. But usually when they have lots of rabbits together, those rabbits like Matt said with the bonding, they're not actually living together, they might see a lot of rabbits, but, .
They're they're they're actually just rabbits in different, maybe a couple of rabbits together, seeing a couple of other rabbits across the room type of thing. So we're not really living. Yeah, that's opened the door really nicely.
We've had a whole range of questions coming in, about housing standards and everything else, and John, you mentioned just now about the five freedoms. There's one question that I think encapsulates everything that, that's been asked in all the others. I'm gonna read it out to you.
It says, what are the minimum housing standards we should be advocating for in companion rabbits, particularly regarding space, enrichment, and social interaction. Are the current RCVS and AVA guidelines sufficient or do we need stronger recommendations in clinical practise? Exclamation mark usable space.
I'm happy to start that way because I mean I've been working on RWA standards with it recently. And yeah, it's really difficult to say what . Minima are because it's not really very scientifically founded all the time, and some of you do just have to do your best.
We, we can set some and we're using whatever background knowledge we can get and whatever evidence we can find to set those, but it's not easy to find always. Very often there's a bit of opinion based in there as well. So it's difficult.
What I would stress, whenever you talk about minimum standards is it is the minimum standard, it is not a target. So the idea is you exceed it. And I think that's always the best, you know, if you can exceed it a minimum standard, way better than than than than than than just hitting that.
But what do you reckon. I think also we have to be careful in welfare, how we weight the metrics that we use. So we decide that size is a really good thing for welfare.
So right, so let's give this rabbit a football pitch. But actually there's only some refugia and hives at one end, and it's food bowl and water bowler at the other end. Well, it it, it, it's, it's far.
Really. But we, we need to just back it up with watching that animal's behaviour, and just seeing what it does and what it's using, and, rabbits that have lived indoors and then are put outside often are really kind of not keen to not have anything above them. This is something that John and I talked about the other day as well.
So we've decided, because it suits the narrative, that actually a giant enclosure is really good for a rabbit. And as John says, we are talking about minimum things here. We should be providing the best we can.
But that doesn't want to be a sterile environment that's not. Behaviour, rabbits like to hide, they like visual barriers, they like to dig, they like to graze. They like to get on top of things.
They see that as vantage points are really interesting for them. So all of those things need to be taken into taken into account and not just be thinking it's a massive enclosure. I'm giving some enrichment, therefore, I'm, I'm providing a good rabbit environment.
So we really need to take the time to look at what the rabbit does in that environment. I think that's super important, and different rabbits will do different things depending on what they've done and how their kind of physical condition is. Yeah, Matt making a great point there about the things like drinkers and bowls and stuff.
It's been one of my again, another soapbox. There are so many soapboxes. It's it's joy of getting old.
But, you know, where do we put water bottles and drink water drinkers especially, we put them on the outside of a cage right where it's easy for us to change it. And then, so when we're dealing with things that involve lack of drinking like, you know, urinary sludge and and and and and and calculi and stuff, we say, oh yeah, guinea pig or the rabbit isn't, isn't drinking enough. Well, it's got to step into the light to get that.
And it's gonna be pretty thirsty to come out from this nice little hidden refuge into the middle of nowhere to come right to the front, very, very front of that hutch of that cage. And, and, and, and, and, and get some water, and I think it's one of the reasons why one of the triggers I often saw for, gut stasis was when you had a rabbit whose hutch was moved. And sitting with one they got a different view anyway, it's a bit scared, so they're gonna go to the back anyway and sort of kind of look out, look out from there, from a safer place they can do.
And that's gonna make much as like to come forward and start drinking, and a really good trigger for, for gutsa is is being slightly dehydrated. So I think that's part of the reason why we got that. Yeah, and I think it comes back to the five freedoms that you were talking about, John.
And I think I just want to point out here, folks, for those of you that are interested in these wonderful little creatures called rabbits, John has actually done loads and loads of webinars, on all sorts of exotic species, but go onto the webinar vet website. And go and have a look. You can either search by John's name or you can search by Rabbit's, and you'll see there's loads and loads of information and a lot of the questions are coming in there are whole webinars already that John, has already covered.
Matthew, open to higher if you want another one of these. Matthew, talk to us about the Grimace scale. Yeah, I, I was pleased to see a question pop up about that.
So, I think sometimes we may be overusing grimace scales now. Now this may be not a popular thing to say, but if something you, if in your experience as a veteran nurse, something looks painful, it's probably painful. So, you know, we know from other species what is painful, and rabbits don't really deal with pain very well at all, so.
If in doubt, in my honest opinion, give painkillers. If your grimmest scale is not particularly indicating that that's the case, maybe it is just that rabbit is showing that stress that distress differently. I feel like they've not all, not all rabbits have read the grimacescow and know exactly what they're supposed to do.
And also, all of the grimacescowls, I don't know why, always seem to be on white animals, which makes it really hard for you to do, and, and. I know some are done on New Zealand whites as well, which again react very differently. So I think it should be in our toolkit, it should be part of our kind of associated things.
Yeah, let's do that quantifiable grimace scale, that's a really nice thing to do. But also just, just. Do clinical discussions around these cases.
So if John and I have got a rabbit in that we're not sure, let's look at it without each other, and then let's come together and talk about it. What did you think? Well, well, I thought, actually, you know what, it was dribbling a bit, and it was looking and it's, it didn't look comfortable at all, and it was hiding at the back and, you know, it was the.
Look for those cues, and each person will see that differently, but try not to just, just use, it doesn't start and end with the Grimace scale. The Grimace scale is not a get out of jail card that you can just use. Well, on the Grimace scale, it was fine, so I didn't give it painkillers.
Really, really do think about that. And that's for me, that's particularly interesting and important with gastric stasis cases. I think they often are in a lot of pain, and if you get that pain under control.
You'll often see really, really good results. That and fluid therapy, I think, is key. But yeah, just wanted to just make sure that people are really thinking about how they're using that scale.
I can agree more it's like every other tool you have in the box, whether physical or, or, or mental tool. If you don't use it correctly, you're gonna get some very dodgy results. Same as doing latino lab tests.
Don't treat the numbers, just treat that whole animal, look at the whole animal. Really, really important there. And yeah, I, I think the example I was using, I think I told you when we were warming up, Matt, was, most extreme one I saw was we had, two people do grimace scores on the same rabbit, and they got really wildly different, and we looked at it and had facial palsy.
So one side of his face was paralysed, and of course he gave a very different score to the other side of his face, but wasn't. So, you know, you've got to be really careful to pick your cases of these too. Some of the physical illness will will change it too.
And I think this, we're, we're talking about acute pain here as well, and I think. The chronic pain stuff, we're just scratching the surface. There's a pet nurse on this webinar called Cassie Morrison, who, if you're not aware of, is doing loads of chronic pain stuff in rabbits.
Cause like most other species, we're quite good at acute pain, but we're really lacking in our kind of dealing with, with chronic pain. So, I'm sure she won't mind saying, but that's driven by her being a rabbit owner and not necessarily getting people understanding how important it is. We're looking at that.
Kind of quality of life, trying to maintain an acceptable quality of life in older rabbits, I think is really important, and getting owners involved in that process. Mm That brings us into the next question. Matt, you're opening up the door to all of these questions for me.
Thank you so much. In terms of preventative health, how does inadequate diet and environment contribute to the common rabbit welfare issues such as dental disease and GI stasis? And what role can the vets and nurses play in trying to educate and change owners' behaviour?
Do you want me to go first? Go on, mate. I think, I think it's education.
The, the education all the way and having good communication with owners. So often they've bought the rabbit by the time you get to speak to them. So that's difficult, and try not to beat them up too much, cos obviously they just won't come back to you.
You, if you just tell them that they're an idiot for buying a giant breed rabbit and they've got a small thing, you're, you're, you're, you're missing that, that opportunity to educate them. So try and gather them in. Tell rabbit owners if you own a rabbit, be completely open and say, oh, I've got some rabbits at home.
Same as with snakes and birds, those people will immediately bond with you better. And just really just focus on the things that are of paramount importance. So diet, exercise, for me, is key.
We're very lucky that we work in an environment now where we have decent rabbit foods, and we understand much more about rabbit nutrition, and we understand much more about. Metabolic bone disorder being probably underlying a lot of dental disease, and it probably starts from the get go. But as an educational tool, we just need to educate our own professions so that we're in a good position to educate the public.
And I always talk about this thing called the velvet mallet. So you kind of beat owners up a little bit, but not so much that they kind of realise it. So you kind of say, oh.
You've decided to buy a giant breed rabbit. Do you live in a castle or what, what, you know, how are we gonna kind of deal with this? But actually kind of get them involved and make them, realise that you can make the best of that situation by supporting them.
And I, and I think, I think that's really important. Don't, don't attack the clients, try and educate them from the start, and I think. As John said earlier about having those safari consultations for vaccinations, I think is really useful.
So Bet does their clinical examination, does the vaccination, does the card, and then, right, OK, if you wait here a second, one of our rabbit friendly nurses is gonna come in and just chat to you about the other stuff. There's lots of opportunities for people then to, to air any concerns. Another really good conversation and bond with your practise and with that vet nurse and the vet, and, and feel that they're getting value for money and You you will engage with you, and as John said, we, we see such a low number of rabbits that are kept in captivity in vet practise, people just don't take them to the vets.
And that's because we're, we've not got that balance of education, and we're not seen as being particularly helpful. I mean, we still have a lot of vets that don't understand rabbits at all and just give them bait, regardless of what's wrong with them. And, and build owners' expectations before referring them.
And this is a big problem in referral is they send you rabbits that you just can't fix and they've been promised things that are not achievable. And again, that's all down to us educating the people around us, and then in, in turn, educating the owners. John, yeah, I think that's absolutely correct, and also that thing about don't forget to reach out to the pet shops.
There's a good bit of record a few weeks ago about how these are the places where they do have to implement all the rules, and it makes sense to support them anyway, because that's where. You'd like to give a higher standards, some of the higher standards of welfare for any of the animals sold rather than regulated sales places. But for us, that's where a lot of our patients are gonna come from.
So reach out to them. That's when we're gonna get to the people who wouldn't necessarily come to a vet or might go to a vet who knows less about rabbits than them than we do. So it's all about liaising and talking and again try to not to, it's just rich after, after I've been banging on for half an hour, but try not to preach.
I really should do that myself. But you don't preach to them, you know, you, you engage and and talk and discuss, and you do find out a lot. And actually a good example, that's bonding, you know, some of these people do a lot of rabbit bonding, and they're very good at it.
And it's just to get, you know, get some tips, get some ideas, get to get what they feel as well. There's a lot we can learn too by by by talking to people who have who've lived and worked rabbits all their lives. So it is just, just engage, just talk, communicate, listen, and, yeah, and try and get to as many people as you can.
And you're not gonna do that by, by, by hacking them off on the first concert, as Matt just said. Yeah. I think that's really important, you know, work with the clients and talk with the clients, not at the clients.
And as vets and nurses, if we feel our knowledge is lacking, attend CPD as I said just now, on the webinar vet, there's loads of stuff, John, that you've done for us that is invaluable and you know, also that, of course, the other thing that people can search for, which is gonna bring them huge value is on the webinar vet website, Burges. Burgess sponsors a lot of the, the good stuff that's happening, and Matt mentioned it, about, you know, knowledge on nutrition and everything else and I think I'd like to take this in this opportunity now to bring Peter in from Burgess. And, Peter, if you can share your screen with us, and just run through some of the exciting stuff that, Burgess is doing for us at the moment.
Firstly, just to say thank you to Matt and John, and I think 99% of the, what I'm gonna say is actually been covered, so I can consider my Thunder duly, duly stirling, but in a, in a, in a really good way because it does show that we have some, some alignment. And some shared themes, and these are not my opinions, you know, I think as a, as a company, at Burgess, everything that John and, Matt have said around not preaching, and not beating people up and trying to get people to do the right thing in a positive way is what we're trying to do. With Rabbit Awareness Week, which is kind of started, yesterday, today's the 2nd day.
We've been running Rabbit Awareness Week for 19 years and we kind of covered over those years lots of different themes, and you can see some of those here, I won't go go through them all, . But we, we kind of rotate and and and go through those five welfare needs. Trying to, to, to educate people, and get them to do the right thing in a, in a positive way.
I think, I can't remember if it's John or Matt, so forgive me, talked about the PDSAO report and actually that being a useful source of information. And when I look at some of the numbers, that we get from from them, I think we've made some good progress in, in terms of certain areas. So in terms of getting people to, getting the owners to feed their, their rabbits you know fair.
We, we've made good progress there, and you can see just how I means are 15% last year were, were not feeding, kind of enough air. And in terms of muesli, again, we've made good progress over the years, so that's down to about 17% I think it was last year, slightly up, but in terms of the true number, it's declined. There's a kind of margin of error in that.
What I will just say is that I think there's a risk of us plateauing, certainly on some of these measures, and again if you look at that muesli one as it's gone down, it, you know, the, the gains have got less and less. So that's, that's one thing that we need to look at. In other areas, we've still got some work to do and the number of rabbits in inadequate housing, .
That hasn't really, we haven't made such good progress on that. There's a, there's a link there, and I think they'll put it in the chat, which is, Rebecca will put that in the chat, which is a paper just published last month, and I think it's, it's, by, Lauren Fenton, and that said that it was a survey of mostly UK vets and specialists and inadequate housing was the number one welfare concern for those people, so we've still got a lot of work to do there. And also in terms of the percentages of rabbits living alone, which we've talked about earlier, again, the progress hasn't been as significant, so we, we do have some, some, some work to do.
And we continue to, to do that. So this year's theme was happy, happy homes, and that gave us an opportunity to talk about and, sorry, Ron, day two of Rabbit Awareness Week, we will talk about the environment, companionship, health, diet and behaviour, because all of those go into making happy homes, healthy homes for the, for these animals. And I, I know, .
A a conversation I had a number of years ago with John about Rabbit Awareness Week, and we should be aware every week, but Rabbit Awareness Week does give us an opportunity to reach out to the media and get some focus and some, some coverage that we wouldn't actually get otherwise. And one of the things that I would ask people to do is outreach, and again, as John mentioned this, we need to. People who are coming into practise are the good earners, both Matt and, and John said that, so we need to, we need to get to the people who are not coming into, into, into practise.
So, you know, we have the local community, social media, get run events. Back in the start, we used to encourage people to do free clinics and we don't want to really do that, we don't do that so much now because it kind of devalues the work that you guys are doing, but it's still an option. And reach out to your local news.
There's more and more local news websites, there's local radio, and then there are, you know, partnerships and again, John mentioned this, work with your local retailers and look with your, your local rescues cause that those are the people who are going to see more pet owners, more rabbit owners than than potentially you're going to see in clinic. And again, just in terms of some of the things that you can do, don't want to get into the debate about size and, and, and all that that we talked about the, the right amount of space. But this is, a, you know, a really interesting post that was from a couple of years ago, just doing something a little bit strange just to highlight the.
What we're trying to do and the messaging around Rabbit Awareness Week, so, so a local practise to us in Yorkshire in Brigg House. That kind of thing will help get engagement and help get these messages across, and reach those people that we don't reach, because they don't come into practise. And if it's not enough just to do good work, because we like to do good work, there is an Excel vet award for the Rabbit Awareness campaign of the year.
So if you need an incentive, to get involved, there is a prize for the best campaign, and I would encourage people to enter that, and, and then we, we, we can recognise the great work that you, that you're doing and, and celebrate that. And then I saw one of the questions earlier on was, well, is there something about guinea pigs? So a quick pivot, just in terms of guinea pigs, we have the Guinea Pig Welfare Forum in the 10th of September, which is going to be chaired by John, following from a, a fantastic first event last year.
If you scan that QR code there, that will take you through to the link to to be able to purchase a ticket. We are charging £10 for the tickets this year, but that money will be donated to, to Guinea Pig welfare charity. So it, it's not going to Burgess.
And as always, if you need any literature or support material, you can see our email address there, vet support at Burgess petcare.co.uk.
And we'll happily send you out as much information as you need to help educate your clients to look after their rabbits, and better. Thank you. Thanks, Peter.
Please leave that slide up so people can get the benefit from it. Much appreciated. A huge thank you to Peter and to Burgess for their sponsorship for tonight.
We really, really do appreciate it. And I know we've worked together a lot, with John over the years and Burgess, and it really is a fantastic organisation. Loads and loads of CPD that John has done with Burgess, and, Peter, thank you so much for your generous sponsorship.
John, Matt, thank you. It's been lovely having you on. It's been a great debate and there's been some really interesting points raised and, just remind the folks, we have recorded this webinar and it will be up on the webinar vet website in the next day or two.
So if there is something that you want to go back to and listen again, the recording is there and you can do that. And while you're there, have a look at all the other Burgess and John Chitty CPD, it really is fantastic stuff. Matt, welcome to the team.
This is a, a, a very high bar that you've joined up and and you've more than met it, so thank you for your participation tonight. John, as always, thank you for being so amazing. I, I really do love listening to you.
To everybody who attended the webinar tonight, thank you for your time. We really do appreciate it. And to Beck, the controller in the background who made everything run smoothly, thank you very much.
Thank you to Bruce, please, because Bruce chaired tonight and, really, really did a great job. Thank you so much. Thanks, John.
From myself, Bruce Stevenson, it's good.
