The Case of the Folding Rabbit

 I'm sharing with you pics of one of my recent SA project culls because he perfectly demonstrates some of the ugly structural issues I am fighting in my herd, and that I continue to see in many other angora pics shared out there.

If only he had sheen, this is an animal I could have easily posted for sale as having spectacular type when posed in coat. I could have included his shaved pics and they would only strengthen my claims. Go figure I don't actually have pics of him in coat so you will have to imagine that part with the help of my ugly drawing skills. Sorry his imaginary coat is very matted looking.

Sure, he doesn't have the peak and HQ of a Cal, but by angora standards, he looks pretty darn good. Excellent depth when posed in coat, seems to have excellent short shoulders with a nice quick rise. No need to manipulate the angle of the photo to make him appear better than he actually is. The shave reveals thick, well muscled shoulders. He's missing some junk in the trunk for full bragging rights but what's there is still pretty good for an angora. Flipped, you can see that he has almost perfectly parallel hocks of good bone and with good fur coverage. They are set apart with a very good width at the ankles. Even in my herd those are the hocks my dreams are made of. And yet, he did not get to stay.

At a first glance, who wouldn't want this stud muffin. Especially if I told you his coat was in fact very dense, was very well behaved, and let's imagine had fantastic sheen. But this is where the fairy tale ends, the screen flickers in an ominous way, and the eerie sound track begins to play. There is a good chance I could have found him a placement and the breeder who got him would have thought they scored a great buck who will help them out tremendously. Heck, there is also a good chance they could have taken him to a show and the judges would ooh and ahh over his excellent type (don't ask me how I know) only perpetuating in the breeder's mind that this was some little golden nugget they scored. I must have been mad to put this creature on my cull list and it's a good thing I sold him instead. He would then go on to sire many babies and in the grand scheme of things, as I see it, the angora genetic pool would be getting pissed in and the issues that I am about to reveal would only be further perpetuated within our breed.

Let's start with this little nugget of truth. I can manipulate quite easily how he looks in his posed photo with the amount and direction of pressure I apply to his head with my "just holding him steady" hand. Depending on the rabbit's build, flexibility, and willingness to be handled, that can be done to various degrees while their feet technically remain in correct placement, front toes under the eyes while elbows are flat on the table, rear toes under the knee. Here is how his posing actually progressed.

In this kid's case his front toes are never in correct place in any of these photos because his front limbs, no matter how they are placed or angled, are too long. That is one red flag every one should be on the look out for when looking at posed pics of an animal they are considering. Long forelimbs tend to indicate poor shoulders. When these animals are posed with their front toes placed correctly under their eyes, inadvertently their elbows must be pushed back and up off the table. Extremely easy to hide in the angoras when majority of people don't fully shave their animals for posed pics and leave a thick vail of wool from the "waist" down. Not that this would fix the deception (intended or not) as I see this very frequently in pics of Mini Rex that are forced into a pose so tight you would think the objective is to have the animal's elbows touch the back of their hips. Seems that even without the wool to block the view, people who admire these animals are blind to the fact that the elbows are shooting for the stars. These are supposed to be rabbits, not gargoyles.

Ok, so he's built like a limo, low and long. It ain't pretty but am I exaggerating just how egregious of an offense that is? And how did he manage to look so nice with the coat on? A nice angora coat can just about double if not triple the illusion of depth but it won't make a long animal look short.

This is where that ominous soundtrack playing in the background starts to sound more blood curdling. He looked short and deep with his coat on (posed hands off), because before he could be pushed into looking good naked, before he could be posed looking long and flat, he first had to be unsprung, unfolded, and stretched flat from his default, grotesque, literally looking like some one installed a hinge in the middle of his spine and folded him in half pose.

Twisted pelvis, shelf butt (cause it makes their butt look like an unsupported floating shelf), I have all sorts of nick names for these abominations. Ever wonder why it seems to be such an impossible task for angora breeders to put a strong HQ on an angora after they already battled and solved the issue of long and weak shoulders? It's because they never actually solved that issue. They only built an illusion of better shoulders while they threw the entire HQ under the bus, and then buried that bus under a mountain. And while many will want to cull the long and low animals from these lines, those animals are in fact the first necessary step forward to break away from this curse of the folded rabbit. Before you build a rabbit that is truly short and deep and has the necessary framework upon which you can begin to build up the structural depth and fill it with muscle, you must first unfold your folded rabbits.

That means letting things look ugly before they can get better. That means ignoring the praises of the judges who do not recognize this issue on their tables. That means breeding the animals that possibly took last place and culling the Grand Champions. That means actually shaving your angoras completely, down to the skin, nose to tail to ankles, in order to begin to see the full picture. It means learning about what proper compact or commercial structure actually looks like so you can begin to recognize the issues. If you can't see it on a naked rabbit, you stand zero chances of seeing it on one with any amount of wool. It also means... gasp... recognizing that breeding for correct structure is important even in the wool breeds.

It's not something you should do in order to do better on the show tables. It's something you should do in order to breed animals who's bodies are not disintegrating in front of your eyes due to bad structure and who have to be culled or given never ending veterinary attention due to the rapidly degrading quality of life. Even if you are a wool purist who believes that the angora's value lies predominantly in the animal's ability to produce an abundant high quality coat, capable of meeting personal or commercial needs for wool. So what that an angora can give you 6yrs of that high quality wool production when their bodies give up by the time they are 2yrs old and you have an animal with bleeding sore hocks or hip dysplasia who is constantly going off feed due to pain and discomfort.

Those shelf butts aren't ugly only because they make ugly show rabbits. They represent a series of structural flaws which reduce the rabbit's ability to function as it should. Here is a picture of how this boy prefers to stand. This is what he defaults to when given a break from taking posed pics and allowed to relax. Next to it is a picture of a Cal doing the same.

I would love to see Xrays of both these rabbits while in these positions. I would love to hear an actual veterinary diagnosis of the issues responsible for making the rabbit on the left prefer to stand the way he does. Another breeder once referred to this phenomena as the rabbit having a twisted pelvis. That made sense and it has stuck for me as a valid label for this issue. However the more of these animals I handle, the more I wonder if the pelvic angle is the source of the issues seen in this rabbit or if it in itself is a symptom of something else being incorrectly assembled. Is the pelvis attached to the spine at an incorrect angle, causing the spine to alter it's shape to compensate, or is the pelvis attached to the spine just as it should be and it is the spine's shape that is initiating this cascade of poor angles starting with the pelvis. I continue to label these rabbits as having a twisted pelvis but it is entirely possible for this label to be factually incorrect. Here is my artistic interpretation of the skeletal structures we are looking at. Followed by an actual rabbit skeleton. Put an imaginary paper bag over that skeleton's front end and look only at the rear.

The rabbits that I see with this issue are forced to place their back legs forward of where they actually should be. As they do that, instead of the entire length of the hock supporting the rabbit's weight, the weight is held up primarily by the heel. When he places his foot where he wants to have it, I can easily lift up his toes. When I move his leg further back to where it should be, those toes become difficult to lift as they are now playing their part in supporting his weight.

On rabbits with poor fur coverage, this can lead to sore hocks. That part of the foot is not designed to uphold all that weight at a stand or in motion. The knee joints experience more forces in different direction as what they are designed to, which makes them susceptible to wearing out early. You can some times see these rabbits shifting weight around in their cage as if they had sore hocks, but never see sore hocks when you check for them. As joint pain increases, you might see more obvious favoring of one limb over another.

But things don't end with sore hocks or premature arthritis. Imagine having your pelvis twisted forward to the point that your pelvic floor is now more of a pelvic upright wall. Here is a close up of what that looks like on this rabbit.

Rabbits that have poor width between the hocks or are cow hocked are prone to urine burn on the insides and the back of their legs. Add to that the wool's ability to wick moisture away from it's original source and you end up with angoras that are prone to urine staining in their entire crotch as well as the base of the tail and upwards from there. Enter incorrect pelvic angulation and you end up with angoras who have pee stained bellies. Overall, the worse the rear structure of the angora gets, the more prone it becomes to ongoing urine stain and urine burn issues.

From my observations of these rabbits I can also tell you that both bucks and does with this incorrect angulation do experience trouble breeding. It is easier for bucks to overcome. You might see this manifest as an otherwise experienced buck who keeps trying his hardest but is failing to breed a doe who is executing a perfect lift. A doe with exceptionally incorrect rear angulation will be near impossible for even a correctly built buck to breed no matter how much she lifts or cooperates.

This rabbit was also an example of another pelvic issue I have been seeing. This one being of a more horizontal and lateral nature, but more on that at another time. 

The good news is that the shelf butt issue is relatively easy to spot if you look for the signs. You don't even have to handle the rabbit to see this is present and in fact it might be easier if you don't handle the rabbit. These rabbits, when ever allowed to, will prefer to stand with their rear ends shooting forward. You might not see what that rear end is doing under a full coat of wool but what you will often see are the rear feet forward of where they should be. They will either be tucked into the rabbit's arm pits, or sticking out of it's coat some where by the elbows or forearms. If you look for this and you see it, you will not be able to unsee it. There are lots of pics out there of angoras doing just that either while being poorly posed or in various casual photos. If you do attempt to pose one of these rabbits correctly, they will either fight you and be near impossible to put and keep in a correct pose, or when given the chance they will want to revert to shooting their rear legs forward. It is important to note that some animals refuse to pose because they are refusing to be handled. You will have to decide if the rabbit is fighting you because they don't want you touching them, or because being placed in a correct pose is physically uncomfortable or even impossible for them. Regardless, the more the rabbit deviates from being correctly built, the less will their relaxed or default position resemble that of a properly posed rabbit.

This brings me to another red flag to watch out for, the pop ups, aka the prairie dogs. The more your angora wants to pose as if it was a Holland Lop, the more you should worry. What does that look like? Let me introduce you to the foundation buck behind my original line of Satin Angoras. Here is Bruno posing as he felt most comfortable to and the closest he ever managed to holding an actual pose.

Bruno was a prairie dog. The more you tried to put him in a pose, the harder his front end popped up. If you hear yourself saying to your rabbits, stop acting as if you were a prairie dog, what you're dealing with is poor frontal structure. Bruno was a very special rabbit not just for being my foundational boy, but for being a poster child for an extreme case of the folding rabbit. He wasn't a basketball. He was an octagon.

Can you see where those invisible hinges go? Poor guy was so badly contorted that it was impossible for him to remain in a proper pose for any amount of time.

While Bruno's tendency to pop up in the front during posing illustrates an extreme, the other sign of poor frontal structure to watch out for is the rabbit who thinks it is a Sphinx. Here is a baby French demonstrating the Sphinx pose. Notice this baby is also kind enough to demonstrate how it can shove it's rear toes into it's armpits.

Sphinx rabbits have un-proportionally long forelimbs which they like to stick forward so that their toes end up placed well ahead of their eyes or even nose. Some times their upper arms appear to be shorter than normal. Their shoulders are weak, long, and flat, some times even concave. They feel splatty when handled. Splatty meaning they are so weak that the front limbs splay sideways under the most minute amount of pressure from above. On some, you can see those front limbs splatting sideways without any pressure required. Those get called chicken wings around here. Angoras spreading their wings like they are getting ready for lift off, no bueno. Mucho no bueno.

Here is one of Bruno's sons. What happens when you begin to untangle an octagon? You end up with a Sphinx! Coincidentally this is also the great great grandfather to the boy at the top of this page.

Very much how the Sphinx likes to look straight ahead, you will notice the upright head set on these Sphinx wannabes. On some, the heads will look like they are tilting backwards as if the rabbit was trying to look up at the sky. The same type of head set is present on the pop up prairie dog rabbits. The same type of head set is still lingering on the boy at the top of this page. Don't bother scrolling back up. Here he is.

Consider how this Sphinx head mount differs from what you see on the Cal. There is no way, no how, no universe in existence in which the Sphinx wannabe rabbit will ever develop a strong shoulder. There simply is no room for that to happen within the constraints of how that frame is arranged. Those angles must first be unfolded and corrected in order to make way for a stronger shoulder. The head mount must change to a more downward angle, bringing the base of the skull forward, and creating more space behind the head and neck. The shoulder blades can then move back and up into that space. This will also open up the front limb angles, which in turn will create the space for bigger muscles on the limbs themselves. The spine can move upwards from there, which is one reason why you actually need the longer rabbits in order to build deeper rabbits. Finally, as the spine's curve moves up, that makes room to correct and open up the angles on the HQ, and then eventually grow better muscling into those spaces.

I could go on but I think this is a good place to stop as we have at least somewhat made the full circle back to where we started. Looking at that folded up rabbit. So to my dear friends who care about building angoras with better and stronger bodies, be mindful of and be on the look out for all the toes in all the wrong places. I leave you with a few more pics of shelf butts, prairie dogs, and Sphinxes.