Latest Appointments

Most recently Tobi had appointments with the optimologist and the dermatologist. Her skin is displaying symptoms of allergies, and we're thinking that might have something to do with the irritation of her eyes, too. The most common allergies in dogs are food allergies, so Tobi has some new food! It's fancy expensive vet food, even though it's made of only fish and potatoes! Go figure. In addition to that, she gets medicated shampoo, some special solutions for cleaning her ears and her folds, and more medication! Here's this month's lineup:

Here's how the ear cleaning works, it's kind of fun: You soak a cotton ball in the cleanser, and then squish it down into her ears, and then let her shake them out, and it breaks up the earwax!

New Meds!

So Tobi finally finished up about two months worth of antibiotics for her surgery and her eye, but then the other day she started having diarrhea. And some of it was a little bloody. Yikes. We took her to the vet, and lo and behold, prolonged antibiotics can cause stomach ulcers, which is what he thinks she has. More meds! And more antibiotics, ironically, although a different kind. He also suggested we give her a low dosage of Pepcid, probiotics, and feed her rice and cottage cheese. Which she actually likes, as it turns out. And the best part, we need to bring the vet some poop. They gave us a little jar that has a special lid, with a spoon on it. So right now we have a gross poopy little spoon jar in our fridge. All in all she's feeling better, though. Here she is playing "burrito:"

Medication Regimen

It's safe to say that Tobi has more medication than most dogs. On a regular basis, we at least give her glucosamine for her joints, eye drops for her eyes, and we just recently started using baby powder to help dry out her folds. But with all the stuff this vet prescribed, her regimen is positively ridiculous:

Gentamicin Ointment - Right Eye, 4 times a day

Cephalexin Capsules - 2 times a day

Chlor 1%dex/ 0.1% oint - Left Eye only, 3 times a day

Optimune - Both Eyes, once a day

Predisone Pills - Once a day for 5 days

Atropine Sulfate - Right Eye only, once a day for 3 days, then every other day

Ofloxacin - Right Eye only, 6 times a day for 2 days, then 4 times a day

The stuff on the left we had already, and use as needed. The stuff on the right is what she came home with.

It's complicated enough that with us both in and out of the house, we need to have a schedule on the fridge of when to give her all her stuff, so that she gets everything she needs at the right time during the day. For example, this morning I woke up, gave her two types of eyedrops in her right eye, 5 minutes apart, one drop in her left eye, and a pill. Then I was off to work. Before Jessica left for work, she gave Tobi another pill, and two more types of eyedrops. Then I came back home for lunch to give her another eyedrop, and then again at break to give her two more. Now we're both home for the evening, as I'm writing this, and I just gave her two more eyedrops and a pill. She'll get another eyedrop right before bed, and then start over again in the morning.

Back From the Optomologist

Tobi's eyes had been getting worse, we could tell that they were bothering her. Both the vets said we should see a specialist, so after she recovered from her various surgeries, we that was the very next stop. In fact, her prescription of antibiotics ran out the very morning of her appointment. Naturally, they prescribed more.
The diagnosis was what Jessica predicted, she has an ulcer in her right eye. Since it bothers her, she squints a lot, and since her eyelids roll in, her eyelashes irritate the eye even more. It's a vicious cycle. In order to keep her from squinting to help it heal, they stapled her poor eye open. That's pretty much one of the most horrible things I've ever heard. But that's Tobi. Brace yourselves, it's pretty gruesome:

She also has to wear a cone for this one when she's not supervised, since she can scratch her eyes and possibly dislodge one of the staples. She doesn't really know how to handle the cone, though. Her current strategy is to stand still as long as possible:

When she does move, she'll bump into something and immediately freeze until someone comes to help her:

Luckily the staples come out after only 5 days, and as of this posting she's already feeling a lot better.

Post-Surgery Medication

She came back from the vet all wobbly, with little doggy anti-inflammatory pills. Since she was at the specialist all day, the vet had a dermatologist take a look at her. Did I mention she has bad skin? They said that she probably had a staff infection, and so they upped the normal dosage of antibiotics, two pills a day for a month. She also came back with some fancy eyedrops, and so during the day we may squirt in any one of the following: saline, to clear out the goop, cyclosporin, which helps her make tears, an antibiotic eyedrop, and an off the shelf drop that we had already been giving her.

Butt Surgery (Tail Surgery)

During the same trip as the knee surgery, we talked to the vet about her tail. She has a cute bob tail, but for a while it had been irritating her, because under the fold of skin a her tail was poking her. In the x-ray they found that she actually had a little piece of bone that wasn't really attached to anything, just floating around causing trouble. So we had them take care of that during the same surgery, while she was still sedated. So she came home with staples in her legs and stitches in her butt. Luckily she didn't need a cone, because she can't reach either of those places to chew on them. They also shaved her, of course, which had to have been a little embarrassing.

I have to admit that this isn't really the cutest side of our dog, especially with the bruising.

Knee Surgury

So we took her to a specialist, and after doing their own x-rays, determined that in fact her hips weren't the problem, but that she had torn her cruciate ligament in her knee, which in humans is referred to as the ACL. We scheduled her for a surgery in which they stabilized her knee with a little metal wire. It left her walking much better, and sporting this impressive scar: