Sad doggy tale and a warning

Our dear girl was feeling a bit under the weather on Sunday and lacking in appetite - well it was pretty hot and none of us felt like doing or eating much. We thought...
One of her eyes was a bit weepy. I cleaned the eye with some saline of a few bits of debris, just the usual dust/bits of chaff in a dry summer in the country. We thought...
Her brilliant, deep amber eyes have been going a teeny bit cloudy of late, but she is 11 and that’s just natural ageing. We thought...
We were wrong on all three counts. By the evening, the eye had turned milky with a blueish cast, so we rushed her to the vet hospital first thing Monday morning to see the ophthalmologist. Too late! She had suffered total loss of sight in the eye and was rushed into surgery to have the eye removed.
Unknown to us, Glaucoma had been developing, her lens had ‘luxated’ - fallen forward into the front of her eye, with a very painful build up in pressure through blockage of the aqueous fluid drainage channels, a massive doggy headache and irreversible damage to the optic nerve. So she lost her eye in less than 24 hours.
If we had known about and recognised the symptoms and called the hospital on Sunday night, they could have done an emergency operation and saved the eye. She is now on medication for the other eye, which she was, and still is, in danger of losing too.
So just to say, familiarise yourself with canine Glaucoma (classed as a medical emergency in dogs) and be vigilant. Any cloudiness in the eyes, get it checked out immediately!
One of her eyes was a bit weepy. I cleaned the eye with some saline of a few bits of debris, just the usual dust/bits of chaff in a dry summer in the country. We thought...
Her brilliant, deep amber eyes have been going a teeny bit cloudy of late, but she is 11 and that’s just natural ageing. We thought...
We were wrong on all three counts. By the evening, the eye had turned milky with a blueish cast, so we rushed her to the vet hospital first thing Monday morning to see the ophthalmologist. Too late! She had suffered total loss of sight in the eye and was rushed into surgery to have the eye removed.
Unknown to us, Glaucoma had been developing, her lens had ‘luxated’ - fallen forward into the front of her eye, with a very painful build up in pressure through blockage of the aqueous fluid drainage channels, a massive doggy headache and irreversible damage to the optic nerve. So she lost her eye in less than 24 hours.
If we had known about and recognised the symptoms and called the hospital on Sunday night, they could have done an emergency operation and saved the eye. She is now on medication for the other eye, which she was, and still is, in danger of losing too.
So just to say, familiarise yourself with canine Glaucoma (classed as a medical emergency in dogs) and be vigilant. Any cloudiness in the eyes, get it checked out immediately!
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― Terry Pratchett
Sandra is feeling so much better, having lost the headache, recovered from surgery and adapting much better than we are to her eye loss. It was the speed of it all that meant we were in shock a bit. It’s true sight is the third sense for a dog but we are all adjusting to the new reality and being thankful she is now back to her usual pesky self!