Pablo was blind … and he had never seen his mum, Claudia. Claudia had effectively 'rescued' Pablo from a Shar pei breeder, and realising he had a severe problem with his weeping eyes (which she she also realised she could NOT see), she brought him to us for a check up.
It was immediately obvious that Pablo had severe entropian (rolling in of the eyelids), worsened by the fact that he also had been bred with large amounts of excess skin. Whereas skin folds are what Shar pei breeders breed for, if there is an even more than 'usual' amount of excess skin present then problems worsen dramatically. The most common breed we perform entropian surgical correction on is the Shar pei … however Pablo was the worst case we had ever seen.
His entropian obviously had rolled his eyelids inwards, but his excess skin on his head was pushing down on them as well, forcing his upper eyelids in terribly. No matter how we tried, we could NOT open his eyes enough to even glance the surface of his eyes!!!! The constant stream of tears told us that he was suffering relentless pain and irritaion caused by his eyelid hairs grinding away at his eye's corneas. We admitted Pablo for assessment under an anaesthetic, and for both entropian surgery AND a face-lift.
From the heart-wrenching sight of a blind and painful Pablo … to a bright, playful and VERY happy Pablo who could now SEE, and had no pain, was WONDERFUL to behold! Claudia cried when Pablo saw her for the first time - it brought tears of joy to all our eyes 🙂
BOTH of his eyes had severe corneal ulceration affecting the entire surface of the eyes…and they were milky with severe inflammation. Once we had stopped the eyelid hairs rubbing on his corneas, his eyes healed very quickly and he has never looked back … so to speak!
You can clearly see just HOW MUCH skin I removed from the top of Pablo's head … from below the back point of his left jaw bone up and over, down to lower than the point of his right jaw bone!!! THE MOST I HAVE EVER NEEDED TO REMOVE!
The bright green in his left eye is Fluoresciene stain to check the healing of his corneal ulceration.
One year after surgery and Pablo continue's to enjoy life to the full!
Pablo is definitely a new dog!
A VERY Fulfilling surgery.
Ian 🙂