Rolling Dog Farm Blog

I took the blind mare we picked up on Sunday in Wyoming to see our equine vet, Dr. Bill Brown, this afternoon.  Our immediate concern was having Luna’s painful eye condition treated.  Her right eye appeared to be an empty socket, while her left eye was sunken and infected.

In the first photo Bill and his vet tech, Vicky C., are prepping Luna for surgery.  She’s already been sedated and had her face scrubbed; Bill is now injecting a local anesthetic around, behind and in the eye to deaden all nerves.

In the second photo Bill has just begun cutting open her right eye.  It got a lot more gory after this, but because this is a ‘family blog,’ I didn’t photograph the rest of the surgery.  It turns out that her right eye socket wasn’t empty after all … deep inside, buried in orbital fat, was a shrunken eyeball the size of a marble.  (A normal horse eye is about the size of a small lime.)  Bill removed it and set it aside to examine after surgery.

Bill cleaned out that socket and sewed up Luna’s eyelids.  Then he got to work on Luna’s left eye, and before long that eye was out, the socket cleaned and the lids sewed together.  We set the left eye aside for a closer look, too.

Here’s Luna immediately after surgery.  She’s still conked out but beginning to come awake.  You can see the sutures in the eyelid.  Her face is darker than normal because we’ve washed all the blood off and her face is still wet. 

While she was recovering, we went to examine her eyeballs.  Bill took a scalpel to the tiny, marble-size right eye and sliced across the unnaturally thick surface.  Immediately black, old blood squirted into the air.  "Weird!," I said.  "Weird is right," Bill said.  He sliced all the way through and peeled the eyeball open.  It was unlike any eye I had ever seen.  Once all the black blood drained out, we could see the interior surface of the eye was coated with a thick black crust.  The lens of the eye was rock-hard, completely calcified.  It felt like a big salt crystal.

We moved on to Luna’s other eye.  Bill sliced it open.  The same thing happened:  black blood squirted out.  Inside that eye was also a black crust.  "What on earth happened to her?," I asked Bill.  He wasn’t sure.  Yes, it could have been trauma to both eyes at some point in her past.  Yet Bill thought it more likely she could have suffered from years of untreated recurrent uveitis (inflammation of the eye that is a common cause of blindness in horses).  Luna might just be a worst-case example of the end stage of uveitis, where the eyes finally die and blood eventually seeps into the eyeballs and can’t drain out.  It was, to say the least, very bizarre.

Whatever the cause, Luna clearly had been in pain for years.  I can only imagine what those eyes must have felt like.  And yet throughout this ordeal, somehow this sweet old mare maintained a delightful, loving personality. 

We also did complete blood work on Luna this afternoon and everything looks great.  Bill said her heart sounds fine, too.  We gave Luna all her vaccinations, including her first West Nile Virus, and she’ll get the boosters in another few weeks. 

The cost for all of Luna’s medical care today:  $508.35.  Thanks to the donations we receive for the animals, we can provide whatever they need in the way of veterinary medicine.  Luna is a perfect example of a disabled animal who needed help, and we could take care of her because the sanctuary’s supporters make it possible.

I brought Luna home to the ranch late this evening.  Now her new life begins.

(Click on photos for larger images.)