Mr Jingles was a gorgeous Agouti Berkshire buck who came to me as a re-home from almost 150 miles away .

In September of 2002, at the approximate age of 20 months, Mr Jingles suddenly fell ill.

The symptoms he was showing didn’t really point to anything in particular, he was just very wobbly, very lethargic, wasn’t eating and had lost a lot of weight seemingly overnight.

At the time, the vet I was using back then was pretty hopeless with rats and I decided that I had enough medications here to treat him myself, as after all, the vet would most likely just send me away with Baytril anyway.

I put Mr Jingles on a course of Baytril, .2ml twice a day. It was difficult at first to get him to take it, I was having to syringe it straight into his mouth which I never have to do with my rats, but as he wasn’t eating or drinking, it was the only way.

After a few days, his strength came back up and he started eating, so I boosted him up with baby food and a human meal replacement drink called Build-Up, on top of his usual dinner, and after about a week, he was back to normal, so I kept him on Baytril for a few days after the symptoms subsided, then took him off of it completely.

Things were fine until the end of October when I noticed that he’d developed a small lump on the left side of his face, it was very hard, but my experience at the time was with tumours, although not with bucks.

I decided to take him to my vet who is just a short distance away from me.

The vet felt around as much as he could with Mr Jingles squirming around, and even tried to aspirate something from the lump with a syringe and needle, but only small chunks of white stuff came out. The vet decided that it was a tumour, but wanted a second opinion while Mr Jingles was under anaesthetic, so he was booked in for the following day.

While he was asleep, another vet had a look and a feel around, and yet again, aspirated the lump, but again I was told when I came to pick him up, that it was a tumour, and furthermore it was completely inoperable due to it’s position and closeness to the jugular vein as it had probably grown around it. They told me that there would come a time when it would get too much for him and that I’d have to have him put to sleep, so I went away in tears.

A few weeks passed, the lump was growing slowly, but I noticed a change in both the skin and in the feel of the lump itself, it had suddenly become soft in the centre and the skin on the outside of it was so tight that it was dying and going black. I took him back to the vet, who once again told me no different, it was a tumour and was inoperable.

I was unconvinced, and happened to ask a friend of mine what she thought. From my description, she thought it could be an abscess, and suggested that I take Mr Jingles to see her vet.

I agreed and took Mr Jingles a round trip of over 70 miles to get another opinion from this vet, straight away he said that he did think it could be a tumour but that he could take it off straight away, then and there, which was amazing, so I left Mr Jingles in his hands, and went back to my friend’s house for a cup of tea.

Later on, we went to pick him up and we were told that in fact it wasn’t a tumour at all, but a very hard and nasty abscess that had been growing for a time inside his head as well as outside. The vet had had to remove Mr Jingles’ inner ear as well, in order to get all of the infection out.

We were sent home with Synulox liquid (clavulanate potentiated Amoxycillin) of which I was to give Mr Jingles 4 drops twice a day. Within no time at all, he was healed up, the stitches came out, and we enjoyed a Christmas together, which would end up to be his last, but without the abscess being removed, we doubt that he would have been alive then. It would seem that his illness in September was in fact some kind of inner ear infection that didn’t manifest itself as one usually does, and went on to produce this nasty abscess within the ear canal.

The lesson that I learned from this experience was that if you're ever in any doubt, get a second opinion.