Rolling Dog Farm Blog

On Thursday morning, as I was still absorbing the news about Wobbles, we had yet more medical issues to cope with.  The evening before, as I was heading back to Missoula from Orlando, Alayne had called our equine vet, Dr. Erin Taylor, to tell her that our old mule Roy needed some attention.  He’s had ventral edema, in which fluid seeps into the body tissue and stays there, turning the flesh into the consistency of playdough.  This happens because of a circulatory problem, but the underlying cause can be hard to pinpoint.  This has been going on for a couple of weeks, and Erin had looked at him several days ago.  But the edema was growing in size, and his prepuce — the sack around his sheath, where his penis comes out — was swelling even more noticeably.  This is what it looked like on Thursday morning, and you can see the ‘shelf’ that is the edema:

So Erin came out Thursday morning to examine Roy again and get some medications on board.  That’s what she’s doing in the photo at the top of this post.  While she was here, Erin also did a physical exam on new arrival Bo, the blind Appaloosa.  You can see how skinny the poor guy is in this photo we took that morning:

And, while Erin was here, we also asked her to look at blind Allie the Lab, whose right eye had just turned red the day before.  It suddenly looked like a red plum.  Erin examined her and then spoke by phone with our small animal vet and ‘eye goddess,’ Dr. Brenda Culver in Helena, about her findings.  Here’s what that eye looked like:

Brenda suspected Allie’s retina had detached in the back of the eye, causing the bleeding that turned the eye red.  So after Erin left, I bundled Allie into the truck and headed to Helena.

Here’s a shot of Brenda examining Allie at the clinic, using her slit lamp — essentially a microscope for the eye.  Brenda’s vet tech Rick R. is holding Allie.  Brenda also took pressure readings in both eyes, and found Allie’s left eye — the "okay" looking one — had suddenly zoomed to 50 units of mercury.  This indicates a very painful glaucoma.  Her red eye was about 30, not as bad but uncomfortable anyway, even aside from the pain of the detached retina.  So Brenda recommended we go ahead and enucleate, or remove, both eyes.

I think I’ve mentioned this before, but a common misconception about blindness is that it is the ‘end stage’ of the disease process … and nothing could be further from the truth.  Over and over again, our blind animals continue to have their eyes deteriorate to painful states from ongoing disease processes — long after they’ve lost vision.  If you look at the photos of Allie on her original Web page, you’ll see her eyes were nice and clear … but blind from progressive retinal atrophy.  Contrast those photos with the one above, and you can see that since then — in just two years — cataracts developed, then glaucoma, and finally a detached if atrophied retina.

Brenda did Allie’s surgery on Friday and called to let me know that she came through the operation just fine.  We’ll pick her up early this week.

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A note about Wobbles:  We’re still waiting on necropsy and pathology results, but in the meantime Alayne and I wanted to let you know how much we appreciated all of the wonderful, heartfelt messages folks have posted on the blog and/or emailed us.  We are very grateful for your thoughts about the loss of our little wobbler.