After his illness and horrendous moult Henry made a good recovery as the following posts on the Happy Hopper Rabbit Forum at the end of September 2015 shows.

It's been a dull but muggy day. I did a stint in the garden this afternoon; tidying the hedge and cutting back a couple of spring flowering shrubs (big ones). I was all hot and sticky and crazed by flies when I finally packed up and came inside for a bath. And guess who joined me ... IN THE BATH?

I had run a tepid bath, not very deep, because I wanted to cool off and get that tingling fresh feeling that cool baths give. I was semi reclined and relaxed, with my eyes half shut, when .... WHAM! He landed right on my tum. I screamed and he was scrabbling and struggling. He instantly realised he had made a whopping great boo-boo and was trying to jump out. I THINK I picked him up and lifted him out.... I hope I did, but it was all very confusing and happened so fast; I may have hurled him out! No, somehow I managed to pop him out over the side of the bath and he vanished, with wheels spinning and water flying.

I grabbed a towel and struggled after him (I'm not as nimble at getting in and out of the bath as I used to be). I found him in his litter tray, madly grooming himself. I bundled him in the towel and spent ten minutes drying him. It was lucky I was having a pre-bath cool off and hadn't put anything in the water; so it was just plain water he had on him and he didn't smell of "old lady" bath foam.

When he was reasonably dry and after I had slicked his fur with a soft brush, he raced off and hid under my desk. It was two hours before he came out and another hour before he acknowledged my existence .... he blamed me of course.

And me? Well, I'm very sore tonight, I have a number of scratches, some quite nasty, across my midriff and tum and four very painfull tender ones on my right boob. I stink of Savlon, which he doesn't approve of either.

Oh, the joys of rabbit ownership.

Henry finds a HOLE!

It's been a lovely weekend and I've taken advantage of it to do some clearing up in the garden. This morning, soon after breakfast, when Henner's had (apparently) got over his morning rampage, I headed out to trim the yew trees, leaving him at full stretch behind the old media cabinet I have in the sitting room. He was quite comfortable, quite content.

I spent a good four hours with hedge trimmer and shears and then headed in for a drink. I thought it time I said "Hi!" to his sod-ship so took my smoothie into the sitting room.

As soon as I entered the room I heard the distinctive sound of rabbit teeth on wood!

It was coming from behind the media cabinet and I went into deep panic mode, imagining that he had finally discovered skirting.

Peering over the cabinet I looked into an upraised bunny face ... with a few wood chips hanging off its whiskers!

The skirting was okay, intact and clean. So what the hell was he chewing?

Well, as I said it was/is a media cabinet; quite nice with three drawers and a two shelved, two doored section where the video equipment had once been kept, where I now keep my collection of large "coffee table" books; so there is a hole in the back to allow for cables. It was a smallish hole, about half an inch across when I went into the garden after breakfast, but now it was almost big enough to ram his flipping head through!

That cabinet has been one of his favourite napping spots and run behinds since he took to free roaming last December. It is just the right size, height, width, depth to stand under my west facing sitting room window so I like it as much as he does. That hole as been there, unmolested, all the time he's been scooting and kipping behind the cabinet ....  and this morning he finally found it.

I finished gluing and stapling a patch over his handiwork (or should that read tooth-work?) about eight o'clock this evening .... I'm still cussing him, and he still couldn't care less .... Wonderful bun!

Ever since his "near death experience" during his moult, he has been a right bunkey! Into every nook and cranny and going into places he never bothered about previously.

He loves getting into the utility room and dragging shoes and boots off their shelves and his big ambition seems to be to chew every bristle off my new deck scrubber! He's been in the dining room magazine rack and I got up to chewed magazines scattered from the rack throughout the dining room, through the passage and into the sitting room. He's ripped open a sack of waste paper that I had put down for laying fires; got himself shut in the cupboard under the sink (don't ask how) and ripped the bottom out of my favourite canvas shopping bag which I had put down by the door ready to go shopping .

And that was just Monday to Friday last week!

He's a SWINE! But SOOOOO wonderful!

A few days later I posted this...

Since he was at deaths door a few weeks ago Henry seems to have developed a heightened sense of adventure and mischief, like that brush with death has increased his zest for life. So this morning when I discovered this new interest I was quite relieved for a while, then I began to have concerns. This new passion involves no mad chasing, no foot attacks, no hole enlarging. It is a gentle, peaceful pass time; very relaxing and innocent .... BUT (there's always a But with rabbits) it makes me wonder about the degree of intelligence required and the levels of sanity involved.

So what is he doing?

He's Washing watching!

Yes, he spent almost half an hour sitting glued to the front of the washing machine this morning, watching a load of bed linen tumbling round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round .... well, you see why I'm concerned for his sanity?

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Shortly after those posts Henry celebrated his first Gotch Day... the first anniversary of his coming to live with me. It had been an eventful year with lots of mischief, lots of love and few vet visits. I had found him to be a charming, gentle and affectionate companion and I was distressed that this special day was marred by his being ill again.

This time it was a "proper illness" not moulting problems, mites or tooth problems. This time he was proper poorly with a bacterial infection called puesdonomas in his nose. It was making him very miserable. The sneezing bouts were quite horrendous and he hated the Septrim antibiotic his vet had prescribed. I was inserting it into bite sized Shredded Wheat but Henry hated the peppermint smell of it (so did I). He would eventually eat the cereal but not until the Septrim smell had disappeared. I was dreading how we would cope because this particular, very common, bacteria can take months to kill. It looked like we were in for a tough time.

I had no idea how rough......

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