Update on the Fur-baby

On Sunday, we took Odin to the vet. He's been coughing (like he has phelm stuck in his throat) and had a snotty nose (just like a kid, I tell you!) He's also been acting like he can't see very well, but that had been off and on. Like one day he would act like he was blind, bumping into my leg, falling off the sidewalk when Natalie walked him, not grabbing the treat out of my hand like usual. Odd things like that. Then a couple days later he would be fine. 

Anyway, finally got him into the vet, we take the dogs to the Idaho Humane Society Veterinary clinic. They help us out with the pricing because we are low income. It helps. That's why we had the Sunday appointment, they have a walk-in clinic on the weekends. We missed our chance on Saturday because we showed up too late, so we weren't taking chances on Sunday and got there at 9 am, only an hour after they opened. They got us in quite quickly considering the full waiting room.

I will spare you the details of that zoo. In the room, the doctor had us unleash him so that he could see him walk around, watch the way that he walked and interacted with his environment. It was painfully obvious that something wasn't right. He put him on the table and looked at his eyes, not cloudy or showing obvious signs of cataracts or anything like that, so he went to get his light and eye looker thingy. He took long looks into his eyes and determined that Odin likely has 90-95% vision loss. There is some vision, but not a lot. He called the reason for the loss "retinal displacement" and said it was probably gradual and that he got used to not being able to see so well and just adapted to it. Which is also why we didn't notice until it got to be almost total blindness. There are options, but none of them great. What the vet recommended was just to learn how to live with it, how to adapt to his disability and help to give him his best life. We can do that. 

The other concern, his doggie cold, is all upper respiratory (thank God!) so we were given a lovely 10 day prescription for antibiotics to be given twice daily. To say that Odin isn't a pill taker is an understatement. It has been a struggle but only a few days left! Hoping that this round of antibiotics will take care of it and we won't have to go another round. I am already done and we only started Sunday! 

As we do at every vet visit, we discussed his weight. At his last check, he was 13 pounds, a healthy weight for his size. At this visit he was 20. Not so healthy. Apparently they put recommendations for portions on dog food bags not for health but to sell you dog food. So, now he is getting FAR less food and hopefully he can loose some pounds since mom was feeding him about twice as much food as he needed daily. :( Freaking dog food companies suck! 

One other thing we think is that he is older then the seven years old that we thought he was... the vet agrees... not sure how old he is but we plan to give him an amazing life however long that is.