my dog went completely blind between lunch and dinner (vet, basenji, sheltie)

[texan2yankee]

she is 11 years old, a sheltie, a healthy weight and only on prozac generic for anxiety and a thyroid med for hypothyroidism. she got a vet check up and full blood tests every 6 months due to her age. the latest full battery of blood tests were normal two months ago. one week ago she went totally blind. she was fine, happy, seeing, went for a walk earlier in the day and after her afternoon nap woke up for dinner and was walking into walls. we rushed her to the emergency vet clinic. after numerous tests, ultrasounds, etc. the only thing found abnormal was high blood pressure. it was high!

we took her to a vet opthamologist two days later and after more tests, the vet opthamologist said both of her retinas were detached. she will be blind forever.

my regular vet confirmed she had never tested her blood pressure. they never take blood pressure for any of their patients.

just a warning, folks. ask the vet to take your dog's blood pressure. her blindness could have been prevented with blood pressure medication. she will never recover her sight. we are waiting to learn if she will recover her will to live. so far, she is so depressed.....all she does is sleep, but has begun to eat the last three days.

we are so sad for her, so sad, and hope she will accept her disability and regain some of her joy of life.

[luv4horses]

Thanks for this warning. I’m assuming it’s particularly important if they’re on regular medication. Poor little one.

[Diana Holbrook]

Never heard of that happening, especially that fast.

Sorry. I do hope he figures out how to get around.

Helpful tip, maybe... that I learned from having a cat who went blind. He learned to navigate by sounds. The TV - which is always on in the living room, a radio in the back room, the sound of fans and the refrigerator and our furnace and us typing at our computers. Lots of things make a little noise he can navigate around. He even learned to get around outside by following the edge of the grass and listening to the sounds outside and orienting himself.

We realized how important these sounds were when the power went out. He was completely disoriented again without the electronics, bumping into things. As soon as it came back on... he was fine again.

An idea.... give him a few things that make a little constant white noise he can triangulate around.

[Gemini1963]

I am SO sorry that your dog has now gone blind. I wonder if one retina had detached some time ago - it seems odd that they'd both detach at once. Looking back, were there any indications of one-sided impairment of her sight? Anyway, I hope and believe that she will learn ways to cope quickly. Dogs are so resilient.

Our "primary care" vets have never taken blood pressure that I can recall. We had one dog who saw an oncologist vet for long-term care of multiple myeloma, and they took her blood pressure -- putting the cuff on her tail, which makes sense but still made me laugh a little whenever I saw it.

[Threerun]

I had a Basenji that all of a sudden- and I mean sudden both retinas detached. Luckily we were in Longmont CO where a national expert canine ophthalmologist/eye surgeon practice is. He saw her immediately. He was able to reattach one, but she lost the other. Her remaining vision was less than 50% in the saved eye.

She was young too. 4 years old. After a lot of testing she was diagnosed with a auto-immune issue, presumably triggered by environmental factors with our move to MT. Further study by the vet also revealed this was more common with dogs that are historically from the ring of fire area (Congo being close enough).

She lived quite well- dog's see the world a little differently. They have a nose and she figured that out pretty quick. OP- cover any window wells and obvious traps, but don't rearrange the house. She'll figure it out.

Dogs are adaptable. It sucks it happened but make games using the dogs nose. I still miss that old one eyed Basenji- she was fun even more than 1/2 blind.

[Mikala43]

I'm so sorry for you and your pet, and thank you for sharing this information.

[pathrunner]

I'm so sorry this happened to your doggo. Thank you for this important information. I have older dogs, as many here on C-D do, and it is good to know. I've bee monitoring one of my dog's eyes as they are kind of cloudy. Next time I take her to the vet I will ask for her blood pressure reading.