I am at the end of the rope with Layla's eyes I think. I am going to make an appointment for another opinion.
Since Layla's spinal surgery 2 years ago, she started getting excessive tearing. It wasn't this bad before, and I know it. She was 4 years old before her surgery so it was very out of the blue when the tearing started afterwards. At that point we did bring it up, but of course there were major issues with her at the time (she is still paraplegic, but at the time was going through therapy to try to get her walking again). We were told to grow out her nose hair (we kept it shaved down) so it wouldn't poke her in the eyes, and the vet also thought it was probably from getting splashed in the face with water from the underwater treadmill and things like that.
We asked our local vet about it a couple of times too, and she said the same thing about the hair on her nose, so we had been growing it out. When that didn't seem to slow anything down, she suggested we try buying Angel Eyes. We bought some (very expensive!) and Layla has had it sprinkled on her breakfast for the past 2 or 3 months at least, and there has been no change in the amount of tearing. A few weeks ago I cut off all the hair right down the side of her muzzle that was so soaked in brown gunk that there was no way to get it out, no matter how often I wash it. She looked great for a few days, we went on vacation and left her with my parents, and when we came home a week later it is the same as before, dark brown streaks down both sides of her face and big black chunks I can pull out at the corners of her eyes daily!
I think we need to ask to be referred to an opthalmologist. I wonder if this could be an issue with tear ducts. Would there be any correlation with that and her having surgery? There is no question that it started then.
If anyone else has gone through this kind of thing, can you tell me what the problem ended up being, and how it was fixed? I have done some research on blocked tear ducts and things like that and it looks like that might require surgery. Did anyone end up doing that? And if so, can you give me an idea of cost? I know it depends on where it is done, but I'm not sure if it's a "hundreds" or "thousands" type of issue
We were recently gifted some money for our wedding and planned to use it for things we need around the house, but of course would put it towards Layla if we needed to instead.