Hi everyone! My name is Heather and my dog Frankie is not doing so good. He went completely blind about 10 months ago. He was finding his way just fine and still happy until recently. He was diagnosed with glaucoma in his right eye. It is so swollen and drops aren’t working after being on them for 3 weeks. He was prescribed dorzolamide HCI 3 times a day, but nothing has changed and I can tell it hurts him badly. I’m just wondering if anyone has been through this and if a different medication was given. I don’t want to have his eye removed if I don’t have to. He is a cairn terrier and between 10-12 years old. Thank you for any advice 🙂
At this point, there is no known conventional cure for glaucoma in dogs. If the medication isn’t working the eye will have to come out. Your dog is in pain, as you can already tell, and the only way out of that pain is for the eye to be removed.
Many of us on this site have been through it with our dogs and once the eye is removed we all feel better. The dog feels better mostly because the pain is gone but the owner feels better too because they realize that it isn’t as bad as they thought it all was going to be.
However, if you still want to try and get the pressure down then your vet should be prescribing drops. Take a look at this post (link below) for different types of drops your vet can prescribe. Latanoprost is the best in my opinion.
http://www.blinddogsupport.com/what-happens-when-your-dog-gets-glaucoma-faqs/
Our Elly has been diagnosed with glaucoma in her left eye (completely blind) and it’s already beginning in her right eye even though she still has vision. Our vet has her on Timolol, Dorzolamide, Pred Acetate & Latanoprost. The Latanoprost has been such a wonderful drop. She had a pressure spike one morning and was completely blind. The vet told me if that happened I should give an additional drop of the Latanoprost and it brought the pressure down and brought her vision back. Although it’s not a cure like Paula said, it helps for the time being.