3/16/2011

Well it has been a busy week so for this week. Bought a new washing machine Monday and had to install it. And yesterday I bought a new (used) deep freeze for Tina's son Justin. Well Tina said it wasn't big enough so I unloaded it and put it is the camper went to Home Depot and bought a new 7.0 CF deep freeze and went to Justin's house and moved out his old freezer (very heavy) and installed the new and put the old one in the truck sold it to a guy here at work. Last week I moved out and old dryer for Justin and moved in a new (used) dryer for him. I have figured out after moving all of the appliances is that I do not want to be an appliance deliveryman when I retire.
Took Waldo and Elmer to the Vet last night. Elmer got a blood test to check his kidney function because of the medicine he is on. Also took Waldo to get his health certificate so I can ship him to Connecticut on Monday.

Well today I am going to cover something that covers dogs but is not training it has to do with dog health. I am going to talk about cherry eye. First thing I want to say is that I am not a Vet and I am sure some people would disagree with what I have to say but with a lifetime with pointers I just know what has worked for me.
Cherry eye is the bulging of a tear duct that extends out in front of the dogs eye. It causes the dog no harm other than a small limit to their vision. The problem with cherry eye it is just plain butt ugly.
There are 3 options when it comes to repair cherry eye:
1. tuck and stitch
2. standard surgery removal
3. laser removal surgery
I will give my opinion on all 3 and tell which one I prefer.
Tuck and stitch is where your Vet would tuck the tear duct back in place and put a stitch in to hold it in place. The plus to this is the dog will retain 100% of the their tear production. The cost of this surgery is $750 to $1000. The minus to this surgery is that it is not guaranteed. The tear duct could possible dislodge again and require another surgery. For a lap dog this might be fine but for a working/hunting dog who takes a beating in the Field the chances of this happening again is very great.
Standard surgical removal is where the tear duct is removed by standard surgical removal and requires a small suture or 2 for minor bleeding. The minus to this is the loss of the tear duct. But this tear duct only supplies 20% of the tear production in the dogs eye. The remaining tear ducts will start to produce more tears to cover the loss of the one. With this surgery your Vet should run a tear test which will tell them how many tears your dog produces and whether they are a candidate for this surgery. The cost of this is around $100 and would be my second option.
My first option would be the laser surgery. It has the same minuses of the standard surgery and a tear test should be taken. But the plus to this is with the laser it cauterizes the small blood vessels and there is little or no bleeding. The cost of this type of surgery is $150 to $200 but in my opinion it is worth the few extra dollars for the laser surgery.
All of these are usually same day surgeries drop your dog off in the morning they do the surgery and make sure the dogs come out of the anesthesia OK and then you can pick you dog up later in the afternoon.
After either of the 2 removal surgeries I would suggest that you put the remainder of the salve and a bottle of artificial tears in your dog first aid kit. If hunting in early season when it is dry and dusty you might need to put the salve or the artificial tears in the dogs eyes just for safety sake.
Steve and Rosemary Prichard came in from Ohio to have the laser surgery their pointer, Kate. It was nice to see them again and spend some time talking dogs and just visiting. They could not find a Vet in their area that does the laser surgery so they decided to have the laser work done at our Vet. Kate is 9 months old now and come from Morgan's 2010 litter.
Here are some before and after pictures of Kate. As you can see in the before picture that Kate is in fine shape she is just not as beautiful as before and in the after pictures you can see the results and how beautiful she is again.
Please feel free to comment here if you disagree with any statements I made, but like I said I am no Vet just have a lifetime of experience.



This is Kate the evening before her surgery she is fine but the cherry eye is not very pleasing to the eye.





In the 2 pictures above is Katie's after pictures as you can see the red blob is gone and her eyes are back to normal. This was less than 6 hours after her surgery and she was so glad to see Mom and Dad and she was really cranked.



Well I hope this shed a little light on cherry eye and I hope to put a little training tip on here next week.
God bless,
Jim