Hi everyone. You might have noticed recently that Rachel, the owner of Paws Here, has been absent a lot lately. Unfortunately this is due to long term sickness, and while she will be back more and more frequently, it could be a while before she returns to the full time hours she kept before. During this time we are relying on help from volunteers, several of whom are fairly new to Paws Here. We'd like to remind everyone at this stage that Paws Here is run by volunteers, including Rachel, and exists to help animals in need. Please be considerate and polite when speaking to our volunteers, and bear with us during this difficult time.

In addition, we recently received an anonymous email that, rather hurtfully, called into question our ability to care for the animals at Paws Here. I'd like to assure anyone reading that the volunteers at Paws Here have an enormous wealth of small animal husbandry knowledge, that vet students come to our shelter to learn about small animal care, and that Paws Here takes excellent care of the animals we have. It should be pointed out that Paws Here is an animal rescue, we often have pets brought to us that have been neglected or mistreated, that are old, sick, injured, emaciated, obese etc. They don't look like the "perfect" pet store pets that you see in pet shops that have been torn away from their mothers too young and shipped across the country, usually in mixed sex groups, with the sick or dead ones removed like so much rubbish from the "batch". Each of our pets, though, receives vet treatment as needed, paid for by Paws Here out of our meagre income and by fundraising, and much love, attention and specialist help. Sadly, not all of them make it. Sometimes it seems like a losing battle, paying out thousands of pounds to save a pet and spending weeks or months hand feeding them and warming them only to have them pass away at the end of it all. You might wonder why we do it - after all, we make no money from it, it is difficult, soul destroying work, and people are rude and unsupportive almost daily. Well we do it because if we don't, who will? Will you, reader? Will you, emailer? Where else would these animals go, with all shelters in our area currently full of small pets to the point they are having to turn down new cases? Are you going to take them, could you give them the care they need?

To coin a phrase, it's a difficult job but someone's gotta do it. And that someone is us. So please, if you want to help the animals at Paws Here, try coming in and volunteering. Make a real difference instead of sending a snarky email. I'm sure you'll feel better about yourself.

I'd like to finish by thanking our very many supporters and well wishers who make this job bearable. Thank you so much!

Starting from September the Paws Here opening hours will be changing. This is the result of a lot of "behing-the-scenes" work to determine exactly when our customers visit the shelter, and to organise a more fair system of hours for the volunteers who give up their free time to make sure that the shelter stays open and continues caring for unwanted and mistreated small pets. We're all really excited about the change, I think it's going to make a really positive difference to the atmosphere and to the wellbeing of both our dedicated volunteers and our pets.

Presley seems to be doing well so far. The vet hospital are keeping him over night for observation, but hopefully he will be ok.

Thank you for all you good wishes! We will keep you updated.

EDIT: Presley has recovered fully and was recently adopted. He has gone to a wonderful, loving home where he will have plenty of company and affection. Thank you all for your good wishes and positive thoughts on his behalf!

Many of you know our littlest rabbit, Presley - he may be small, but he makes a big impression! He's a tiny mini-lop cross with a huge personality. Super affectionate, he'll follow you around the shelter and lie down across your feet, insisting on cuddles.

Today something rather scary has happened. While out playing Presley suddenly started making choking noises. Watery mucus appeared from his nose and mouth and he started rocking his head and spasming.

As I'm writing this he is being rushed by one of our volunteer managers, Ros, to the vet hospital, where he will be admitted as an emergency case.

We know how much everyone loves Presley, so we will keep you updated with news as we hear it.

Please, please send your good thoughts/wishes to our little man tonight.

And, much as we hate to have to say it, if anyone feels able to make a donation in his name to help cover his emergency vet bills, please do so here.

Keep your fingers crossed, people!

We had our third anniversary party and fundraiser at the Morningside Glory on Saturday, and we had an absolutely overwhelming response.

James Allan's vocal talents put us all into a party spirit and everyone enjoyed boucing along with him. The Morningside Glory provided their wonderful pub as our venue and provided some delicious nibbles during the evening. We had an auction of the sponsorship of some of our special rabbits, hamsters, guinea pigs, degus and rats, and an exciting raffle.

We are very proud and delighted to announce that we were able to raise £970! This is FANTASTIC and means that we can pay some of our outstanding vet bills as well as going towards the spay and neuter of some of our rabbits.

We'd like to thank Marie, our organiser, James Allan, who kindly agreed to entertain us all, and to the Morningside Glory for letting us have our event! Thank you to everyone who came along as well and supported us, it meant the world to us! We wouldn't be here without your continued support and we and all the rabbits are very grateful.


Andy, Marie and James at the event

Ros, Rachel and Grete enjoying themselves

This Saturday we are having a fabby and exciting event from 8pm at the Morningside Glory, to celebrate 3 years of Paws Here animal shelter and to raise much needed funds for our rescue rabbits.

A few days ago the team here recieved an emergency call to a situation where a person had sadly died and left behind 18 rabbits. Unfortunately the bunnies were not in a good way, and when we got there 8 of them had passed away. The rest have been brought back to the shelter, checked, paired up, and sent out to foster homes. We are now in quite a desperate situation, with an ever-growing waiting list for places for non-emergency cases.

Our event this Saturday can only go ahead if we can sell a minimum number of tickets. We are currently 12 tickets short of this target! If you think you may be able to come along then please do buy a ticket from our website here http://pawshereedinburgh.co.uk/page_68

And please please please tell everyone you know to come along too!

We need your help. Every ticket can make a difference.

Thank you!

I wake up at quarter to eight and get ready to go to the Dick Vet Small Animal Hospital. We're taking a baby degu in, poor little guy has had an accident and the end of his tail has been cut off leaving a good inch or so of his spine exposed. He needs to go in today for surgery to properly amputate the end of the tail and have some stitches.

The first thing we do is call up the hospital to confirm we're coming in (we arranged this over the weekend with the emergency vets) and to ask if we can bring Stella, the intensive care rabbit, in too, as she has been having diarrhea over the weekend and we're getting worried about her. They tell us to bring them both straight in, so we call a taxi and set off.

Everyone at the vet hospital is lovely, from receptionists to students to nurses to vets. They know us pretty well there. We're there with one animal or another every few days. In the waiting room people passing by in scrubs stop to ask us how such and such an animal is doing, who we've got here today, how the new nebuliser is working out for us, before hurrying on to wherever they were going.

We get admitted to one of the consulting rooms, which contains a vet we know, Elisabetta, and four or five young residents. She lets the residents take the history of each animal in turn, measure their respiration and their heart rates. They don't patronise us like many vets do. It feels like we're working together. They agree that the degu (Diego) needs a simple operation and some antibiotics and painkillers (we've already been giving him metacam, the standard painkiller for rabbits and rodents, as we have bottles of the stuff here at the shelter from previous patients). Stella is a bit more worrying. They think her diarrhea is a mix of a change in diet, as she has just recently started eating on her own again, and pain from her teeth which are starting to grow again. Her two lower front teeth are so diseased that Elisabetta believes they have stopped growing entirely. Stella will need further dental surgery (not a surprise).

Both animals are admitted to the hospital.

While there I ask about getting some extra medication for Milo, a very poorly rat who needs to be nebulised four times daily due to his acute pneumonia. I'm given two dark brown glass bottles and we head home. Back at my home, where several of our sick animals are staying, I nebulise Milo (takes about an hour for this round, another round this evening) while Ros heads in to the shelter to open up and greet the vet students who are on their placement with us currently. I am giving Milo his inhaler (another treatment) and antibiotics (yet another) when I get a call from Ros saying that Kevin, one of the vets, has called to say that Diego the degu is doing very well and we can collect him at about 3pm. So I head back in to the hospital.

Diego is very perky, and his tail is looking much better. Kevin is very reassuring, and says that Stella is also doing ok - she's eating well and should be having her surgery tomorrow. We talk about neutering and spaying for our other rabbits (a constant, necessary demand on our resources).

I bring Diego back to the shelter, with another two brown bottles of medication. He's perky and eating the whole way home.

The cages get cleaned, the animals fed, customers attended to, phone calls returned. Health checks are done, weights taken. It's nearly the end of the day. A busy day, and we're all tired. So very, very tired.

On Saturday, June 19th, Paws Here Small Pet Rescue will be three years old!

To celebrate we are going to have a fundraising event on Saturday, 19th June, in the Morningside Glory on Comiston Road at 8 O'Clock.

The evening will feature music and entertainment, with the vocal talents of James Allan taking us through the decades. There will be a raffle and auction as well as nibbles.

Tickets are £5 each and are available at Paws Here and at the Morningside Glory pub, as well as a handful of other locations and on the website.

We uregently need to raise money as we have spent more than £1350 on vetrinary bills alone so far this year. We have had over thirty rabbits brought in this year, and we have not been able to afford to spay or neuter more than six of these, which has cost us around £300, as we have had so many emergency vet visits. We also have the cost of feeding and looking after these rabbits, which comes to around £46 a week.

The emergency vet treatments include our tiny Netherland Dwarf Stella, whose teeth were severly maloccluded due to poor diet, and who will need extensive vetrinary treatment as well as hand feeding for the rest of her life. Her teeth problems are due to neglect and would have been entirely preventable. She has one serious operation so far, and will need another one in the coming week. Her vet bill currently stands at around £500.

We have also had baby degus who needed to be incubated as they succumbed to an unknown illness, but have recovered. However, their vet costs came to around £100.

We also have our French Lop Basil who had teeth problems, and feet which had been scorched with urine due to being kept in a tiny hutch with not enough space and constantly wet bedding. He has also developed pneumonia due to the dampness and will need to be nebulised for the next six weeks. As with Stella, his problems were entirely preventable and occured because of severe neglect. His vet bill currently stands at around £400.

We desperately need to raise money to help cover the costs not only for our ill animals but for all the rabbits who desperately need to be spayed and neutered. Unspayed female rabbits have an 80% chance of developing uterine cancer, and males have a high risk of developing testicular cancer, as well as having behaivoural problems. We urgently need your help.

Please consider buying a ticker to our fundraiser in the Morningside Glory, which looks set to be great fun, and will help us out a lot.

Overnight Stella passes one or two small sticky faeces and urinates. I've never been more excited about poop! The fact that her gut is beginning to move is really good news.

I give Stella metacam (pain killer) first thing at around 8.30 because I think that if you have your teeth roots growing into your chin and eye socket you deserve to start you day with a pain killer. A quarter of an hour later I start her on some of her oxbow critical care. She fights me over every mouthful and tries to bite me, but she's too small to make much of an impression and down it goes. The fact that she's feeling feisty enough to fight me is a good thing: a very placid rabbits is a worrying thing. I give her other two medications over the course of the morning, as well as some more of her critical care. This process takes around an hour and a half.


Sage

Sage, Stella's cage-mate, arrived yesterday afternoon. Overnight, Sage has eaten all the broccoli and green leaves from the salad I gave her as well as some hay, but little to none of her carrot, which makes me worried about her teeth too, as carrot is harder than the green stuff and I'm worried that she may not be able to chew it up properly. Sage is very bright and perky though, and feels much rounder than Stella.

I let Stella and Sage have a run around in the morning. They bounce around quite a bit and seem to enjoy my living room. They hide under chairs and tables and groom each other.


Stella explores.

Over the course of the day I give Stella her next two feeds as well as her medication. I can easily tempt Sage with salad leaves and bits of cabbage but Stella ignores food. The most she does is play with her hay a little. She does not pass any more faeces which worries me, but rabbits are more inclinded to poo in the evening so I hope she will produce some later in the day.

I have a small breakthrough: when I actually put cabbage or carrot in Stella's mouth, she will eat it fairly willingly. However, I notice that she spits out the carrot a few times: it seems slightly chewen but has not broken down much. She obviously can't chew very well at all, and needs it to be even more finely grated.

Stella is very bright and active. She and Sage doze on and off during the day, but they are alert and bright eyed and groom themselves and each other. These, at least, are all good signs.

The vet calls us at 10pm and suggests I come in to pick Stella up at 12pm.

Stella has been at the vet since Monday. On Sunday we noticed her extremely overgrown and malformed teeth. I took her to Dick Vet to see wonderful rabbit vet Brigitte Lord on Monday, who took her in to stay overnight.

X-rays revealed her teeth to be extremely overgrown both front and back. The roots on her back teeth are so overgrown that they have pierced her eyesocket and grown into her lower jaw. Her chest is clear, so they decide to go ahead with anesthetic to burr the spurs on her back teeth.

After procedure on Tuesday, she stops eating and is syringe fed by vets. She chews drip out of her leg. She is bright and lively but does not pass any droppings. She is kept in on Wednesday in intensive care in vetrinary hospital. By Thursday she still has not eaten off her own bat or passed any droppings, but she is bright and alert and she is discharged to my care.

Marie, who helps is at lot at Paws Here, drives me to Dick Vet. Brigitte sees us soon after we arrive and we discuss Stella and her care. Stella requires three different kinds of medicine, two she requires three times a day, and the pain killer, which she may be on for the rest of her life, she requires twice a day.

Once we get home, I get Stella settled on some nice hay. After about half an hour, I give her her first feed of critical care, which she will require five times a day until she eats by herself and passes normal droppings. I do not do this at adeptly as the vet, and I give her half of it over the course of 15 minutes, take a 15 minute break, and then do the other half.

Then I give her her two mid-day doses of medication, which are both to stimulate her gut movement. She is a well-behaved bunny and while she fights with me a little bit she doesn't try to bite or scratch. She is very small which makes her easier to feed and handle.

I settle her back into her cage as comfortably as possible and give her a bowl of vedge cut up very small as well as some critical care made thick and rolled into balls and a bowl of water. She starts drinking from the bowl of water a few minutes after I put it down which can only be a good thing.

She came to the rescue with her cage mate Sage, who we will bring back to be with Stella, as her friend will hopefully calm Stella down and encourage her to eat. Sage seems pretty miserable without Stella too.

Stella is due her next feed at 4.30. If Stella does not pass any droppings before 4pm tomorrow I have to call Brigitte and maybe bring her back into hospital. So let's all hope that Stella poops soon.

I'm not sure how often I'll update but I think it will be helpful for me and for Stella to have a record. This is a record of the care a rabbit needs if its teeth are neglected like this.