Tewkesbury based Vet, Brad Cooper of Folly Gardens Veterinary Clinic provides some answers to commonly asked questions about pet behaviours and ailments:

My rabbit’s eyes keep weeping is this normal?

The answer is no.Tears are constantly produced by the tear glands in the eyes helping them to remain lubricated. To help drain the tears all mammals have tear ducts which are very fine tubes connecting the eye to the back of the nose. Unfortunately it sounds as though your rabbit has something wrong with these tear ducts. Rabbits very commonly develop dental disease where the roots of their teeth become overgrown. This puts pressure on the tear duct as it travels closely past the tooth roots causing it to become blocked and often as a result, becoming infected. The treatment is for your rabbit to be examined by a vet, probably for the ducts to be flushed and possibly a course of antibiotics to be administered. As the underlying cause is likely to be dental disease, your vet should be able to give you some advice on the most appropriate diet for your bunny which can help enormously to keep your rabbits teeth in the best condition.


My dog hates being left alone in the house when I go to work. He barks all day and wrecks the house. What can I do??


Dogs are social animals and enjoy being part of a family. When left alone for periods they can develop separation anxiety and one expression of their frustration can be to chew things and bark a lot. The way to treat this is to train your dog into being used to be left alone and this can be done by leaving him alone for a few moments with something to entertain him with such as his favourite dog chew or toy. By slowly increasing the time you leave him you can very gradually get him used to his own company. Another technique to try to get him less focussed on you as an individual is to ignore him for the first 15 minutes after you get back and praise him when he has calmed down. This can help to reduce his dependence on you and help him to gain some inner confidence in himself.  There are medications, available through your vet, which can also help switch his brain from, “anxious mode” to, “learning mode” and they really can reduce the stress response and help him to be more accepting of behavioural training techniques. My advice is to speak to your vet as there is a lot that can be done to help.

Our old cat appears to have gone suddenly blind. Is there anything that can be done??

There are quite a few causes of older cats suddenly loosing their vision but it’s not unusual for their sense of vision to gradually deteriorate until a point when they suddenly appear to go blind. Some owners notice that their cat’s vision is impaired only after they move the furniture around and find that their cat starts bumping into the new furniture. One common cause of sudden vision loss in older cats is as a result of high blood pressure. The retinas which are the light sensitive inner lining of the back of the eye can become detached as a result of high blood pressure resulting in a lack of vision. The high blood pressure can be as a result of many conditions but kidney disease and a hormonal imbalance called Hyperthyroidism are the two main causes. My advice is getting your cats eyes checked over by a vet as soon as possible. The earlier the underlying cause of vision loss is detected the more likely that something can be done about it.

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