Hi all - I have a 14month old intact bitch from very nice well known lines. She has been CERF'd twice now - most recent 2 weeks ago. Hip/ Elbow prelims excellent/ clear. Heart is clear. But she started squinting at me on the weekend and has an ulcer on one eye. In the process of the vet checking her all out she was also diagnosed with KCS (keratoconjunctivitis sicca) and is actually producing zero tears on the test strip.
The vet also recommended doing a Jean Dodd's thyroid panel on her to rule that out and started her on lots of eye meds - tears, cyclosporin and antibiotics for the ulcers.
My question is - how prevalent an issue is this in Labradors?? Does anyone know the method of heritability? And is it enough to remove her from a breeding program??
As an aside I pulled a tick off her about 2 weeks ago also - we do have a 10-15 cases of Lyme around here every year. Is this possibly a side effect of a TBD??
A tick borne disease (TBD) can sometimes cause rare neuro deficits. Does she blink? If she does not blink, she will not lubricate the eye well, even if she produces tears.
Is she on any meds that could cause dry eye? When did she have her vaccines last? I'd ask Jean Dodds what else to run. Give her the whole medical history on this dog, especially vaccines and antibiotics. Be as specific as possible. Donate $$ for her time.
It is a severe enough problem that if it is possibly genetic, you don't want it in your lines. However, I have not heard about it in Labs as a genetic problem--maybe check with CERF or an ACVO? They usually pick up on dry eye due to the changes it causes.
I have had one antibiotic-produced dry eye clear up on cyclosporin, as the tear production went back to normal when I also added the Bausch and L brand of nutritional support for dry eye in people (basically, vitamin E, fish oil, and flaxseed oil). You don't want her on immune-suppressing cyclosporin while breeding her.
I have also had it clear up on another just by stopping the antibiotic on vet advice and letting her get back to normal.
Good luck with her and let us know what you find out.
She has only had her Sentinel - last dose was given Sept 17/09 and a round of Clavamox at 10 weeks for a UTI. Vaccines are up to date and due again in Nov 09 for her first annual set (our Vet uses 3 yr lic Rabies and DA2PPV so it would be her last set until she's 4). She blinks all the time - increasingly over the last couple of months.
That's why I was surprised that the ophthomologist didn't pick up on it two weeks ago. If it was present then shouldn't he have seen something??
Don't vaccinate a sick dog.
Don't vaccinate a dog getting an immune suppressant.
Wait on the Sentinel for October, maybe?
I have had dogs get eye infections after an eye clinic only a couple times in many years--so many hands going from eye to eye, handling the eye drop bottle, dropping the meds in the eye, but it is rare. I don't know how an eye infection could cause dry eye, if that even happened. I don't know what is going on.
Who diagnosed the dry eye--a regular vet? What does she eat? Is she on any antihistamine?
If she has been blinking a lot for a couple months, she probably has had some kind of problem for a while. It is possible that the eye drops masked the dryness of her eyes that day, and she would have been groomed by you to clean her up and make sure she had no "goobers" in her eyes.
