Post date: Nov 18, 2009 2:46:12 AM
Trevor had his annual eye exam today. His eye vet pronounced his eyes unchanged from a year ago and said they looked completely normal. RELIEF, weepy gratitude, thank you universe!
In a synchronistic twist, the vet recommended a new dog eye supplement she had just heard about at a conference. It's called OcuGLO. It includes a lot of the same things I've been giving Trevor for the last year. The synchronistic part is that I just heard about OcuGLO a few days ago from a person in Taiwan whose mini-poodle has PRA, and I was just starting to look into it.
It's validating and encouraging to see an eye supplement designed specifically for dogs. According to the OcuGLO website:
We are very excited about Ocu-GLO Rx Vision Supplement for dogs! We conducted a one-year-long clinical trial on our patients in Washington and Florida in 2007/2008 and we have seen wonderful results, especially in patients with retinal degeneration. Please keep in mind, however, that the goal of this nutraceutical is not to cure anything—it is to help lessen ocular damage caused by disease and hopefully “buy some time” in which your pet still has functional vision.
I will probably be incorporating this into Trevor's supplement regime, in place of the equivalent human supplements I've been giving him. I'm planning to meet with my holistic vet in the next month to review Trevor's entire program.
In other happy news, today Rowan dropped down to 20mg/day of prednisone, down from a high dose of 60mg/day. I'm hoping that at the lower dose, his food-crazed "drug addict" prednisone personality will start to fade, and we'll get the old Rowan back.
Touki has happy news too. She's returning to the agility ring! She started acting like she wanted to work again, so I set up a few obstacles in the back yard for her. She threw herself at them with wild enthusiasm, so I decided to start practicing with her, and I entered her in all the Rancho Murieta trials. She's made it clear she has no intention of ever doing the dogwalk again, though, so it will just be jumpers and the occasional FAST class. We went over to Diamond Bar to practice today, and it was like one of the later "Rocky" movies. It's not easy to come out of retirement in middle age! After 10 minutes of jumping and weave drills, Touki looked like she needed the doggie equivalent of a martini. The spirit was willing, but the flesh was knocking bars all over the place. But [cue "Rocky" theme music] we're going to try to get her back into shape, and return to the competition ring in a blaze of glory! Or have some fun at least.
Finally, Trevor hit 600 MACH points at the NorCal Golden trial in Santa Rosa this past weekend, where he got his 31st and 32nd double Qs. Only 150 more points to go to finish his MACH! Now it actually seems achievable (knock wood).