When blind Louie first came to us, we had written in his welcoming blog post that the folks at Altanta Beagle Rescue had taken him to "an ophthalmologist in Atlanta, who determined Louie was blind from a combination of PRA (progressive retinal atrophy) and cataracts. Though completely blind, his eyes are comfortable and need no further medical attention."
Well, that was then. As so often happens with eye diseases, time marches on … and so does disease. We just hate eye diseases. In our experience, it's rare to have a dog go blind from one simple thing — say, something non-painful like PRA — and not have anything else develop over the rest of his or her life. We've had some, but it definitely seems more common to have a cascade of diseases occur over many years. Eye diseases just like to have company.
In Louie's case, we recently noticed his eyes had started appearing uncomfortable, and so we used our Tono-Pen diagnostic device to check Louie's eye pressures. Sure enough, he had developed glaucoma, which is a very painful condition. The only way to provide permanent relief from the pain is to remove the eyes, or enucleate them. Longtime blog readers know this is a surgery we have had to do dozens of times over the years.
So yesterday morning I drove Louie to our veterinary clinic in Whitefield for surgery, and Alayne picked him up yesterday evening. I took the photo of Louie in the dog room this morning. He may not look that great right now, but he will soon be feeling so much better.
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New Shelter Challenge Contest — Please Vote for the Farm!
The latest Shelter Challenge started Monday, January 7 and ends on April 28. Grand prize in this round is $10,000, $3,000 for second place and $1,000 for third place, plus $1,000 for weekly winners and $1,000 for state winners. There are also other categories … please see the Shelter Challenge website for details.
*** You will find us listed as Rolling Dog Farm. The state is NH for New Hampshire. ***
Please remember, you can vote every day … consider bookmarking the voting page to make it easy.
We just won $1,000 as a weekly winner in the last contest, and thousands more in the previous contests. The Shelter Challenge really does bring in a lot of money for the animals here!
You can vote in the Shelter Challenge here.
Thank you for your votes!
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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