Sometime near the end of August three things hit Tyler all at once. First, after being allergy-free for a year and a half, the allergies returned with a vengeance. He was biting, scratching, chewing, and pawing at his face constantly - he was miserable.
I wasn't sure what caused it, as I've never been sure what caused it. He is apparently uber sensitive to fleas - more than just the average annoyance, he has like a violent reaction to them. But I hadn't seen any fleas on him or in the house, and he hadn't had any since we left the old place.
The second thing that happened is he began having trouble with his eyes. They were super itchy, and this icky discharge was gumming them up. I figured it was because of the allergies.
The third thing was more disturbing. This seemed to happen abruptly, just like, he woke up like this one morning. He became completely unable to navigate around the house. He couldn't move anywhere without walking into something - the walls, the furniture, everything in his path. It was as if you'd taken a dog with sight, made him blind, then put him in an unfamiliar environment.
He's had cataracts for some years, and I knew his sight was pretty bad. Initially I thought maybe his eyes had finally totally bitten the dust - that he went from 'mostly' blind to 'totally' blind.
But he'd always navigated around the house more or less fine, even with the cataracts worsening over time. Also, everything I'd read or been told said that when dogs lose their sight, it's not really that traumatic to them, and if they are in a familiar environment, they adapt very well. Nothing in Tyler's environment had changed (we especially hadn't moved any walls!) so if it was just his eyesight finally going out completely, that wouldn't explain his sudden confusion and loss of navigation skills.
I still thought it was a sight problem, though, so initially I went to the pet store and got some sterile eye rinse to help with the itchiness and discharge in his eyes. I also had some antibiotic ointment for his eyes, as he'd had a brief round of this back in the summer, which had cleared up quickly. So I used that again.
But none of that worked, and last weekend he'd gotten worse, so Monday I took him to the vet. The vet said it was an eye infection and to keep using the ointment. But as for the loss of navigation skills, the vet thought he might have CDS - Cognitive Dysfunction Syndrome, or "Doggy Alzheimer's." Well, that kind of sucked.
But he said there's a good medicine for it that has proven to work well, called Anipryl. He said we'd try it for a month, and see how he did.
The odd thing was, the very next morning he was better - he navigated through the house just as he has been doing for the past year and a half, without any real problems. I wondered if it even was CDS, since the medication shouldn't have worked that fast - he'd only had the one dose - and it should take up to two weeks to see any improvement.
Unfortunately, in exchange for that, his eyes got much worse. By Thursday night he had just stopped opening them at all. He simply refused to open them, no matter what he was doing - which made him go back to walking into everything constantly. He was practically squinting them shut, he reminded me a little of Mr. Magoo.
When he still wouldn't even open his eyes on Friday morning, I decided he had to go back to the vet.
This time they told me to continue the antibiotic ointment, but also prescribed an oral antibiotic too, and some artificial tears to help keep his eyes lubricated.
The change has been remarkable. In just one day his eyes have really cleared up, and he'll now keep them mostly open most of the time. He's been trotting around the house with almost no issues at all (a beautiful thing!). We've gone for walks, during which he trotted the whole time, as if he felt fine. His navigation problems appear to be gone, or mostly gone.
So, finally, I think he's on the mend. He's still itchy, though, and the vet did find a flea on him - just one, but there's rarely 'just one.' He said this is a particularly bad year for them. That particularly sucks, because I've always tried to avoid inundating Tyler with chemical flea treatments, as I don't think putting chemicals in his body is good for him. But if fleas have finally invaded our new yard and home, I may have to resort to that stuff - because he's miserable with the constant itching.
One other piece of news: I've always tried to treat Tyler holistically and very healthily - home cooked food, no chemicals, etc. The vets I've taken him to have ranged from not really minding that I do it but not really understanding it, to downright against it. Now that he's starting to have more problems, I've decided that this holistic thing - especially nutrition and his diet - is starting to get beyond my skill. So I scheduled him an appointment with a holistic vet over in Beaver, PA next month.
Hopefully this vet can help me get Tyler back on track and keep him as healthy as possible with his current issues, and can also advise me on the flea problem. I'm also going to talk to him about the CDS ... as I said, it's supposed to take up to 2 weeks for that medicine to have any effect, and the fact that Tyler instantly got better when his eyes cleared up makes me wonder if it's CDS, or just that his eyes were so screwed up, and he was too miserable to open them or think clearly. I'm not going to just arbitrarily take him off of it - seeing him like that was awful, and I know he was stressed and unhappy about it as well - but I am going to talk to the new vet about whether there might be a way to test-wean him off of it, and see whether he really needs it. Not only do I not like giving Tyler any medication he doesn't need, but it's also ungodly expensive (a month's worth was $85!). If he needs it, I have no problem getting it for him - but I sure don't want to keep him on it if not.
I'm glad Tyler's feeling better, because next weekend we're OFF TO THE BEACH!!!! A thousand times yay! Tyler goes with us on this trip, and I hoped he'd be able to enjoy it - to feel okay, and have his eyes cleared up, and not be walking into everything or confused. It will be somewhat challenging for him anyway, with his cataracts - adjusting to the new home for a week has always had its moments of walking into things, but for the most part he's done really well with it, and learns his way around quickly. But adding the problem of any cognitive dysfunction (if there is any) would just make it really hard. But I'm hopeful he'll do fine with it.
As a treat for him, and for the trip (to have some place both comfortable and familiar for him to sleep), I bought him a new doggy bed tonight. Well, he climbed into it when I brought it home, and the only thing he's gotten out of it for was dinner. I think he's in love, and I may have a difficult time getting him out of it to go outside tonight!
But I'm glad he likes it - he's always been very picky about dog beds. When he was younger, I bought him several dog beds that he wanted nothing to do with, and would never sleep in. Apparently I picked a good one this time. Well, that, and he's much more all about the comfort anymore - which is fine, he deserves it.
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