Update on Churchill

Churchill is here with me as I write---he yearns for more attention---having become completely dependent for food and water and even cleaning! His organismic health is impressive despite having lost the movement of his hind quarters weeks ago. I have had to carefully consider his diet and adjust this on a day to day and hour to hour basis. Yesterday I discovered his penchant for onions (full bulb and greens)---moreover having eaten them, his gastrointestinal health improved greatly. Another ingredient in his diet as of late is yogurt---plain yogurt. The probiotics are absolutely required since he has not been able to access his night droppings to re-ingest which ultimately undermines the flora balance in the GI tract, and may lead to stasis.

My admiration for this fine specimen of rabbit has not diminished--he continues to teach me the subtle nuances of a shared lifeworld between two mammal species and the mutual communication and affection which is real. That is to say, he has no other rabbit to socialize with and depending upon me for nourishment and affection finds that I share and participate in his lifeworld as human because the mammal family allows interspecies communication despite what materialistic skeptics write about animals being incapable of such interspecies communication. Which leads me to consider the kind of 'intelligence' that must underly this type of intense interaction! An intelligence which is in 9/10 times denied to all animals upon the blank assumption that only the human species can think. Do you not realize that the rabbit sees this oak tree in the spectral shifting blue light that pours down at sunset the same way that you do? Is this perceiving not thinking? Moreover isn't perception itself the lionshare of whatever intellectual activity any sentient being may hope to enjoy? So now what do you say 'thinking' means?

Perhaps the truncation and exclusion of animals as sentient beings is a convenient manner of alleviating the ethical culpability which all humans share for having diminished the beautiful home which God has prepared for these little beasts and paid no heed to the animal's rights while 'homo sapiens' went about succeeding at the expense of every creature on God's green earth!
Species-ism to the nth degree---hey, animals are great, but the simply don't matter as much as people do! I find this to be a false assertion.Visit: HARM NO LIVING BEING

More Observations on Churchill (yearling lop buck w/hind paralysis

Churchill impresses me with his demeanor despite having been reduced to physical inaction as a result of this paralysis. The daily regimen consists in changing his bed several times per diem, applying Vitamin A and D ointment, and an antiobiotic ointment. The bed sores still bear an infection and are not healing. Keeping the environment aseptic proves difficult.
Oddly enough since he is paralyzed and evidently has no proprioception, he seems to be unaware of the sores. He is taking his final doses of the corticosteroid the veterinarian prescribed. His Spirit is strong but his body is withering.

Reflections on the treatment
I sense that antiobiotics are proliferating---even the baby wipes are antiobiotic--so commonly used in hand washing, all sorts of kitchen cleaners, medicines, hand cleaning gels, water treatment. What is the impact of such antibiotic agents with living beings?  I sense the saturation point may be reached or some other critical threshold whereby the downside of the antibiotics may prove detrimental.

In treating this small mammal I am gaining knowledge concerning the healing and integrity of Churchill's organism, while also gleaning some lessons concerning mammal health overall and hence reflections that bear upon human life.

Have we taken for granted how much of the natural environment that we thrive upon is equally valuable to the life of the other mammal species? For example, clean air, water, beautiful fields, wildflowers---how often have a I been able to wonder at an ill rabbits' reanimation when placed in an open area out of doors with clean sunlight and fresh air, to leap and play along with the pretty birdsongs!

It is nearly axiomatic at Tiptoplops rabbitry that health is a "circle of life"---which begins with eating fresh greens and wildflowers, and then fertilizing new vegetative growth thus generating oxygen which cleans the environing land further. Health extends far beyond the individual and the treatment of symptoms toward an entelechy of harmony in the greater whole organism.