Our little greyhound x staffie Lola-Rose only has 3 legs. She's had problems with her eyes for some time now. Initially this showed up as ulcers on her eyes. Sadly once the ulcers cleared, it became clear they were masking a bigger problem in that she has a degenerative eye disease and were told around a year ago that our wee girl was going blind.

We've been away on holiday for a week and my daughter contacted me while I was away to say her eyes had flared up again but it was different. Lola-Rose was taken to the vets and given some more eye drops. We got back early hours of this morning and were pretty shocked. Its much worse now and its very clear that she cannot see at all. She's gone blind almost overnight. We spoke to vet this morning and we have 4 different meds for her to clear up her eye infection however vet thinks that the infection has just hurried the process along. Its heartbreaking because this confident and cocky wee dog is so down. Although her sight has been poor with no peripheral vision in one eye and cloudy sight in the other, this has really knocked her. Her balance isn't great, which for a 3 legged dog, this isn't good.

The other hounds are rallying round her (for those of you who know him, you can imagine my concern that Patch appears to have taken the lead role in this!) but she's miserable and appears to have lost her confidence.

I have experience of a blind cat before (and funnily enough the hounds I had at that time looked after her) but not dogs. Does anyone have any suggestions on how I can make this time easier for her?

It has occurred to me that I do not have one 'whole' dog in this house - Nick is missing his tail, Patch is missing his tail (and brains!), Duchess is missing a toe, Saffy is deaf, Shadow is missing his ear and Lola with her leg and now sight. I should be able to cope with this!

Oh, what a shame. I've no suggestions I'm afraid but we wish you well
Think it's hilarious that you don't have a single 'whole' dog! My Daughter said 'Good Luck with number seven' 😄

Best tip for blindness is change nothing. Dont move your furniture or food or water bowls of any of the dogs or beds, if yu need to move them for cleaning make sure it all goes back exactly where it was. Also dont startle he remember before she could see yu approach now she can only hear n smell you presents and initially thats going to scare her. She will start to get to know where everything is and if yu have to change anything put her on her lead and walk her around the house 5 or 10 times then take her lead off and let her try again on her own but dont be far away incase she needs your help. Hopefully the lead work yu have done before will make her know where she can and can't go.
Maybe for now if shes not used to it with living there so long with her sight then maybe yu need to try the lead thing now. In time yu will never know shes blind at the minute one of her sense have been taken away and shes gotta adapt.
Hope this helps
Katie

Sorry to hear about this. One of our last two nearly went blind just before we adopted him. He was very depressed and lost loads of weight and was very close to being put to sleep (if we hadn't already said we'd take him I think this would have hapened). He was taken to St Clair vets in Kirkcaldy and seen by Neil Geddes, who I believe is one of the leading eyes specialists in Scotland. He diagnosed that the optic nerves were wasting away and treated himwith steroids. He remained on steroids for the rest of his life. Perhaps it would be worth asking Neil for a second opinion on Lola-Roses eyes?

Meanwhile, I've found a couple of interesting articles on line that you might find helpful. The first one reiterates Katies advice;

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/living-with-a-blind-dog.html

The second one explains the different ways in which dogs can react to losing their sight;

https://www.petfinder.com/dogs/dog-care/living-with-blind-dogs/

There are lots of other articles on line that may help you. I did a quick google search for coping with a dog going blind and got lots of relevant links. I hope that either your dogs eyesight improves, or that she learns to adapt to it soon.

This is so sad but with the all the love she has around her I'm sure she will battle on. I am always amazed at how resourceful these dogs are. I wish you all the best, god bless. XXX

Hi Amanda.
I agree with Steve.
The only possible solution is steroids.
The two best vets are Neil Geddes as Steve says or Mr Davidson at Batchelor, Davidson and Watson, who fixed two of our girls perfectly. Their address is:
19 Hillhouse Road,
Blackhill,
Edinburgh,
EH4 3QP.
Tel 0131 332 0458.
Good luck wee girl.
Jimmy.

Hi Amanda,
I lost my wee blind lurcher, Dylan, just before Christmas. He suffered from retinal atrophy, which has no cure and lead to progressive blindness from the age of about four. It sounds as if Lola-Rose's condition may be treatable, which is great, as is the advice given above on expert help.
It's hard for her as it's a sudden deterioration, whereas Dylan had time to adapt and did so brilliantly.
The advice to keep her environment unchanged will help, although Dylan did manage to adapt to the odd permanent change quite well. Their memory for familiar territory becomes amazing, and their sense of smell and hearing seems to become more acute to compensate for lack of sight. I wore bells on my wellies so he could hear where I was when we were out walking, and talked to him a lot. He learned to stand still if he lost track of us, until I went back for him and worked out a vocabulary to tell me if he needed to be guided to a dog-free armchair (or to remove the dog hogging the one he wanted!). Once settled, he could also summon a drink of water as required.
I do hope your little girl can be treated successfully but, if not, don't despair. You will be amazed how she learns to cope, I'm sure.

Hi all.

Sorry I disappeared there!

Thanks for all your responses - much appreciated!

Lola-Rose has four different eye drops at the moment and one does contain steroids. She wasn't initially on anything containing steroids due to the ulcers because that would have made things much worse for her. The vet Lola-Rose goes to is an eye specialist (they're also greyhound specialists which helps!). She has a serious case of uveitis which, unfortunately for her, can cause blindness when its recurs as much as Lola has had it and all we can do is continue with eye drops which are likely to be lifelong. She sees the vet every week at the moment. Its awful because she trembles when she's getting her drops and it takes over an hour twice a day to get them all in. Obviously especially given her issues, I would do anything to try to save her sight however and although we can give her eye drops, blindness is sometimes unavoidable in severe cases of uveitis and nothing can be done.

The good news is that she's coping a lot better moving around the house. The redness has reduced in one of her eyes and we are thinking that she's either seeing shadows in one of her eyes or she's just coping and getting on with it. We're not moving anything in the house at the moment. Given we're moving house later this year, the idea about the lead is just spot on. I did move house with the blind cat and although she banged her head a few times. she got there - cat was Siamese and had respiratory disease and no sense of smell so that complicated things for her (I should add that all of my animals have came here missing parts/senses and its not something that happens when they arrive!) Lola-Rose is not playing at all any more though and she's become a lot more affectionate and wants to be beside us all the time so we're doing lots of reassuring. Patch is still looking out for her (still worrying!) although he seems a bit miffed because Lola-Rose was the only other dog who played with him so he's Patch-no-mates at the moment. Number 7 has to be playmate for Patch! Overall she is much happier and though not moving around much, she's still loving her walks with the others

Thank you again