I took him to the vet today and he came home sporting this terribly fashionable short collar. When I last had him at the vet I was told to return once his condition had started to improve for blood tests – there wasn’t much point in taking any when he was so terribly unwell with the infected feet etc. The vet also cautioned me that if his tears start to seem milky it may be an eye infection and I’d need to return. I’ve been concerned about his eyes and tears and giving them baths in warm salty water but over the weekend they seemed to get a lot worse so I took him into the vet today.
Gosh, I’m glad I did! It turns out he has ulcers on his eyes! You can’t see them unless you use a stain, apparently he’s probably scratched up his eyes bumping into things (as he’s blind now) and they’ve infected. So now he’s on drops, steroids, antibiotics, and a collar for a week to stop him scratching and clawing at his eyes. Poor little chappie.
His feet have completely healed, his skin is much better and he has dropped 2kg and is now in his ideal weight range which is fantastic. He certainly looks a lot better than when I first got him back in December. His heart condition is still pretty bad, his arthritis is severe, and despite twice daily drops I cannot get rid of his ear infections. Hopefully the new treatment will settle down all the inflammation and give him a chance to get on top of things. He also had various tests down that I will get the results for next week.
I am now painfully in debt and paying back money to cover things. Thankfully I’ve a good tinned and packaged food supply! The vets parting words are what every pensioner pet owner dreads to hear “I think we’ll be seeing rather a lot of you, Charlie”. Oh, I hope not!
On the lighter side of things – I was asked to secure a urine sample and bring it back in, fresh as possible please. So this afternoon saw me walking about the local park, wearing disposable gloves and holding a specimen jar, and optimistically trying to pretend this was perfectly normal. You know how when you’re trying to go for a good brisk walk the darn dog will lift his leg on every single bush, fence post, lamp light, street sign, and tree? Well, follow one with a specimen jar, leading him hopefully to every bush, fence post, lamp light, street sign and tree on the route and he will be completely uninterested in marking his territory. It took me 20 minutes to get 2ml which I hope is an acceptable sample size, and the outside of the container got wet too, so I ended up inverting the glove over it and tying a knot in the wrist to turn it into a handy bag then hotfooting it home. I handed that in to the vet before dashing off to my next appointment, I hope they appreciated it not leaving rings on the counter. 🙂
Sarah K Reece 