Glaucoma in Young Pup

16676 Views 43 Replies 15 Participants Last post by mhvonalmen8908, Jul 26, 2011

BassetHoundHank

Discussion Starter · Jun 13, 2011 (Edited)

Hello! I am new to this forum board. Please excuse me if I post something in the wrong topic.

So my pup, Hank, is nearing 13 weeks old, I purchased him at nearly 7 weeks... ( I know, very young to purchase him. I bought him from a man off Craiglist who lives in the same town as me..)

4 days after living at the house with me, his left I was covered by a white film so I took him to the vet the next day and he thought it was just some sort of irritation.. about a week after, his right began looking the same as the left. after a few visits with different vets and after a lot of different medications, we were finally referred to an opthamologist.. He determined it is primary glaucoma. Other than his eyes, he is a completely happy and healthy pup with tons of energy!
Both eyes are bupthalmic and the Doctor told us his Haab/s striae are scattered in his corneas and both his eyes are cloudy. There's a lot of information, really.. I let the man who bought him from know what has been going on and that he should tell the other buyers about my pup, just incase something may happen to their precious bassets.. I don't know if he has or not, but we have been able to keep some what in contact.
Anyways, the doctor has perscribed poor Hank with Glycerin and he's taking two different eye drops currently. I've ran out of his other medications..

I've looked through other threads and haven't seen very much about pups with glaucoma, but I was really wondering, has anyone else experienced their pups developing glaucoma at such a young age?

If so, can you share your experience with it? How did you cope?
How has anyone with a young or old basset learned to cope with their baby(s) having glaucoma?

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· #6 · Jun 15, 2011

Mikey T said:
The biggest concern going forward is pain. Often times the eye need to be removed.

I haven't had to deal with glaucoma, but based on discussions I've had with owners of dogs with the problem it is better to simply remove the eyes right away rather than try to save them. Everyone I've discussed this with said they never realized how much pain their dogs were in until the eyes were removed and their attitudes improved markedly.

I also have never heard of it in such a young puppy.

I did have a dog who went blind later in life (nearly 12 years of age) and she adpated remarkably well.

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· #8 · Jun 15, 2011 (Edited)

BassetHoundHank said:
What caused your dog to become blind?

She started with dry eye, plus some infections, both eyes eventually ulcerated and ruptured. The opthamologist preferred to treat them medically, I wished later we had simply taken them out at the beginning - by the time that he recommended it she was diagnosed with a cardiac tumor and surgery was out of the question.

Check around with vets in your area - apparently eye removal is an operation that any vet should be able to do, it doesn't require a specialist. The vet that was going to do it for me would have charged half the price of the opthamologist. Rural vets tend to be less expensive than city vets, and vets in affluent areas tend to charge a lot more. Big hospitals will tend to charge more than small clinics.

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· #14 · Jun 16, 2011 (Edited)

I *think* the quote was for around $1600 CDN - this was a fairly reasonable city vet, probably a rural vet would have charged less. This also included the x-rays they took before the surgery to make sure there were no problems we were unaware of (which is how we found the tumor, resulting in the surgery being called off). She had already had a blood workup, but due to her age we wanted to make sure we weren't going to put her through the surgery if she was not well enough to withstand it, or have a reasonable length and quality of life afterward.

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· #34 · Jul 22, 2011

Ginger just figured out how to pull it off.

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