is there such a thing as a seeing eye person?

It's what we get for invoking the name of Mary ingalls, I guess.

For the past few months, more or less since the fall, our beloved dog Slick, not even ten years old, has been having trouble. It started with difficulty getting up on our bed, his preferred spot in the house. Then he seemed to have a hard time on the stairs, mostly going down. He put on a huge amount of weight, becoming a fat, lethargic dog. It got worse. We went to the vet. Arthritis was diagnosed, a result of age, and expensive anti-inflammatory drugs were prescribed.

But things didn't get better.

He started bumping into things, not getting out of the way when we walked past him. Then he couldn't find the piece of turkey that I was trying to feed him. I practically had to smack him in the nose with it. If you knew Slick, and you knew what a Food Hound he is, you would know how totally bloody wrong that was.

So it was time to go to a second vet. I went today, and we have a tentative diagnosis: Sudden Acquired Retinal Degeneration. Slick has gone blind.

Next up is a trip to the veterinary ophthalmologist to confirm the diagnosis. If SARDS is, in fact, correct, it's permanent and irreversible. But it's not a brain tumor.

I'll post more details as I have them.

Posted by volfie at December 16, 2004 09:11 PM