Living With A Blind Dog [Part One]
So, what's it like living with a completely blind dog? Well, there are there 'ups and downs' and...'bumps in the road', I guess you could say! As many of you who've known or followed us for a while, will know that 'little Bear', also known as 'Teddy', or 'Ted', wasn't always blind, but he unfortunately had to have the first eye removed a couple of Christmases ago, and the second just before the last Christmas-not the best presents, but for the best. This poor little son of mine has been through the wars. He's a cross between a Chihuahua and a Jack Russell, and both of these breeds can be prone to eye issues. Bear had a partially luxating lense in the first, along with high pressure, so to prevent it becoming a real emergency, we whipped it out, and in the second, he had really high pressure which the strong drops weren't helping, and like in humans, high pressure is associated with migraines, so the poor boy was suffering, so again, it was best it came out.
We had a fair few expensive trips to the specialist eye Vet, as most regular vets don't have the equipment required to diagnose. There is even the option to have prosthetic eyes, which, quite frankly, seems a little bizarre and selfish to me, as it wouldn't have been of any benefit to Bear, it would've been purely aesthetic and for our purpose. Plus, even without both eyes, he's still the most handsome and brave man I know!
We were able to have the operations at our regular vets, which made the cost slightly cheaper than if we'd had them at the specialist vets, and there was no need to have the referral vets perform them as, although it sounds pretty awful, removing the entire eyes it's relatively simple. Following the op's, he was of course a little woozy with after the anaesthetic he'd had, but he was very quickly back on his feet. The wounds were quite neat. I will admit, it did look slightly gruesome with the way he'd had the area shaved and how it swelled up, but it soon goes down and clears up. It's quite interesting as although they take the whole eye out, they still have the muscles which would have been behind, so he still kind of blinks!
So...that's basically covered how and why Bear lost his eyes and therefore his sight. In the next post, I'll talk a bit about how he copes, and how we've adapted things. Over and out.