Mr. Wendel's First Appt with Dr. Hymen!

Mr. Wendel, Mo Mo, Wesley, and I drove to Annapolis, MD on Friday August 21st 2009 morning for our 10:30am appointment with Dr. Hymen. We were immediately taken aback by how beautiful the building was. It is set by itself with very well maintained landscaping in the front. When you walk in, you are greeted by about 8 really friendly and competent staff of pet lovers. When Mo Mo and Mr. Wendel and I walked in, they all were talking about how sweet and cute they are and being very attentive to them. I sat down and completed the new patient paperwork and the boys sat in the chair next to me. About 20 minutes after I completed the paperwork, we were taken back to the room where Dr. Hymen met with us. She was very nice and really knowledgeable. Her technician, Shelly, was very nice as well. Dr. Hymen did several tests on both of Mr. Wendel’s eyes to check his ocular pressures, tear production, and looked at his retina. There was good news and bad news.
The good news was that she said that Mr. Wendel’s big eye’s (his left eye) retina looked good from what she could see through his corneal pigment. She did say that he would need the surgery. She said that he has some serious pigmentation (which we already knew) that was causing visual impairment for him. She also said that he has a large amount of blood vessels on that eye which she is concerned about so she put him on some mild steroid antibiotics for his eye to shrink the blood vessels.

The bad news was regarding his right eye. We were told that his eye was small due to a congenital defect. Upon further examination, Dr. Hymen told us that his right eye had sustained a serious trauma when he was younger that was evident by a large laceration scar in the middle of his eye. She said that he probably had something that stuck him in his eye when he was young and it was left to get infected. She said that the laceration must have gotten really painful and infected to the point that his eye just stopped developing and that is what caused his blindness and the size of his eye. She did tell us that it doesn’t bother him now, so there is no reason to take it out which we were happy to hear. I was so sad to hear about the pain that he must have endured as a newborn. Dogs are such amazing animals. He went through so much pain and suffering at the hands of these monstrous puppy millers, and he came out a wonderful, cuddly, happy, playful boy on the other side despite the fact that he is half blind. I think that we can all learn something from his strength and forgiveness.

We were given a cost estimate for his surgery (attached in detail). They said that it would most likely be somewhere in the middle of the high charge and the low charge. Dr. Hymen was nice enough to give us a 10% discount so it’s not as bad as I originally thought that it was going to be. Thank you so much for all of you that are interested in helping. As always, feel free to call or email me with any questions, concerns, or just if you want to chat!

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Keep Your Fingers Crossed!

Well, this morning was the first morning that we are trying to keep the boys at home...without their puppy pad!!!!!!!! I am scared for what I will find when I get home...and what Christa and Hannah (our lovely secret dog sitter friends) will have to say about the situation... We will see...

Puppy Pad Problems

So we have discovered that Wendel does NOT like to go potty outside. I don’t know why… but he really likes to go potty on the potty pads in the house and refuses to go potty outside. Wesley took him out for a last potty last night and he told me that Wendel was obviously uncomfortable and holding his potty and he finally decided to let it go outside and he put both of his front paws against the wall outside and pooped right up against the wall standing on his back legs! He is so funny! He is really good at going on the little puppy pads though. He hasn’t had an accident (knock on wood).

Wendel loves to chew the pig ears that we buy, and Mo Mo was never interested in chewing them. Now that we have Wendel, Mo Mo likes to wait until Wendel does all of the work and gets them all mushy and chewed then tries to steal them from him. A fight will ensue and Wendel always wins. Even if Mo Mo gets it from Wendel we just don’t think that it is right to take Wendel’s hard work and give it to Mo Mo so we give it back to him.

We are going to have to figure something out regarding Wendel’s pooping on the puppy pad in their room. They have their own bedroom that they stay in with a little baby gated area that has their puppy pad, water, food, and their beds in it. Wendel goes to poop on the puppy pad then they play in there and they run in the poop. By the time that I let them out in the morning they are both covered in poop! They are still smiling though… but I have to spend 8 times the regular amount of time that it takes me to get ready in the morning when I have to clean up two puppies, change their flooring in their room, change their pad, hose off their baby gate, and dry them both off. It is crazy! Their beds just got out of the dryer from the last poop incident!

Anyway, if you have any suggestions about how to remedy this problem let me know. I have thought about putting a little box around the puppy pad and having the box opening face the wall a little bit so that they can’t run into the box, but since Wendel can’t see very well I don’t want him to think that we got rid of the puppy pad all together. I also am apprehensive about elevating it for the same reason.

Wendel Surgery!!!

After discussing it amongst ourselves, we decided that if there is a way to make Wendel able to close his eye, we want to get it done. I called (literally) every veterinary ophthalmologist in Virginia and Maryland and I found a doctor that we are comfortable with! She is located in Annapolis, VA. We are more than likely going to have him undergo a procedure called a Canthoplasty. Basically, the lateral canthoplasty will shorten the upper eyelid by making a triangular split thickness resection. The success rate is very high, and we are really hopeful.

It is going to be really expensive but it will be money well spent. I can’t imagine how uncomfortable it is to sleep with your eye open and never be able to fully close it. He is such a happy boy you would never know that he had an issue, but at this point we have to administer his eye lubricant every two to three hours and I am sure that he would rather be doing something else. Also, if it is hot or really windy or sandy I don’t want his eye to be exposed and that could lead to other foreign objects getting into his eye and terrible pain.

We have our appointment for consultation with the veterinary ophthalmologist in early September, so in the meantime we just need to keep giving him his eye lubricant and his antibiotics. We are very excited!

http://www.jaaha.org/cgi/content/abstract/42/6/435

lagophthalmos treatment for dogs

Good evening!
Does anyone know anything about lagophthalmos treatment for dogs? I am trying to look into getting Wendel surgery so that he can blink and

sleep with his eyes closed...two things that at this point he can't do. I see that in people, they insert a weight in the

eyelid so that the person can blink easier. I am thinking that there must be a surgery to extend the eyelid or something

to that effect. If you know of anything, please let me know!

Wendel update!

Wendel is a dream boy! He is so wonderful! He can already sit and lay down and we haven't even had him for 24 hours! He walks with Mo Mo and I without a leash on and he is the most cuddly boy in the world. He has to get eye lubricant per the vet because his eye is so exposed and it can't lubricate itself and let me tell you, the first time that he got the drops, he freaked out (it is my opinion that he freaked out because he could tell that vet didn't like him...) but when I put them in he was SO happy! He sits still and just lets me rub it and loves to get his medicine! Both of the boys got their heart worm preventative and flea and tick preventative today, so they won't have to worry about that until a month from now.

Wendel makes me hate puppy mills even more than I already did (as if that was possible). Mo Mo and Wendel are both so sweet. They both love to give kisses. They both love to cuddle. They both love attention. They both are smart. The only major difference between them is their face. That's it. Also, Wendel is a little smaller than Mo Mo. When people see the two of them it breaks my heart because everyone immediately goes to pet Mo Mo and won't touch Wendel. They just stare at him and get this weird look on their faces. I think even Wesley is having a hard time with his eye... he has yet to let him kiss him or kiss him on his face. I hope that changes...

He sleeps on my feet when I am on the couch and he LOVES when I hold him like a baby while I am sitting in the living room. He really has taken a liking to Wesley. He cries for him when he is not around and he really likes it when he gets attention from him.

Another thing that is really interesting about Wendel is that he seems to already know that it is not good to go potty in the house. He is already using the puppy pads, and he scratches at the door when he has to go potty. It is unreal how quickly he has caught on to how our house works. Our neighbors have a very barky dog that they always leave out on their porch and when he barks he scares Mo Mo but Wendel barked back and defended Mo Mo! He is a little macho man!

He has the sweetest heart and he is the nicest little boy and I just hope that people can see past his small issue to see the big sweetheart that he is!

WENDEL IS HOME!!!

We picked Wendel up from the airport last night!!! He was very stinky and scared. He didn't want to come out of his crate at first, but when he did he was a wild child! He wasn't following me like Mo Mo did when we first got him, and he was trying to run away. He was so stinky that Wesley had to keep the windows down the whole time that we went back to my parents' house! We went there to have dinner and let them meet Wendel. That went really well. First order of business there was to wash his stinky butt! It cut the smell a little bit, but there was still a lot left on him so we are just going to have to wash him everyday until the stink goes away. So we had dinner with my parents and their dogs, then went home to let the boys meet each other. They get along SO well! Mo Mo is really excited to have a brother. Wendel is a bit different that Mo Mo. He is a lot more possessive of food (as Mo Mo is not at all possessive of anything...except me!), he cries a lot more than Mo Mo ever has, and he doesn't follow you very well. I was so afraid that Wesley wasn't going to love him, but you just can't help loving this cutie!

This morning, we went to the vet's office at 8am. Dr. Reed Hall doesn't work on the weekend so I had to settle for someone else, which I wasn't to happy about but I figured it was worth a shot. The vet was visibly grossed out by Wendel which made me so frustrated. She said that he has to have eye ointment for the rest of his life, he has limited visibility in his big eye and no visibility in his small eye, and his big eye may have to be removed at some point. She said everything else is good. He was a very good boy at the vet and only barked when a big black dog came through the door that he really really wanted to play with. On the way home, we got new beds for the boys, a tag for Mr. Wendel, and some more heavy duty soap for the stinky boy! We got home and took naps because EVERYONE is tired!!

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