400 Miles with Harley

Today my old man, Harley and I spent a quality 400 miles together in the car. He had an appointment with his new Eye Specialist. Oh, you think I’m nuts? Yeah – we may be slightly obsessed with our pooches…but that’s neither here nor there. Anywho, Harley has a disease termed Immune Keratitis/Episcleritis aka Pannus, Chronic Superficial Keratitis (which is a disease where the immune system attacks the cornea) – all I can say to that is “um yeah, ok”. We’ve actually been treating his eyes and have been going to specialists at the University of Georgia for the past 4 years. There hasn’t been much change in his condition other than the the white areas (corneal lipid or fat deposits) covering mainly his right eye…which is effected much worse. His vision in that eye is pretty impaired but the left is doing pretty good. There is no cure, no surgery, just eye drops multiple times per day, every single day, for the rest of his life. Fun, huh? (just like the past 4 years). If we had never begun any of the treatments that we have done, he would already be completely blind. If we stopped all treatment today and said heck with you Harley, he’d be blind in 6-9 months. *yeah something that us crazy owners will never allow!

Blood work was done and we’re hoping that he has Hypothryoidism. That would then give us a little better explanation of why this is occuring and would then be able to treat that with daily thyroid pills which would then help his immune system with the fat lipids that are attacking his corneas. We’ll know those results hopefully be tomorrow. *fingers are crossed

Interestingly, UGA had told us that we couldn’t feed him any food with a higher than 10% crude fat content (which if you’ve ever looked at the back of a dog food bag is like nearly impossible). This new specialist has said that he’s not concerned with the amount of fat Harley consumes, he’s concerned with the type of fat he consumes. He has suggested that Harley never eat any type of poultry again. No treats, nothing can contain chicken, turkey, duck…and when dog food products say “animal byproducts” it most always is chicken. With Bella, our Boxer, we were always very concerned about her eating chicken so we had switched all of the dogs to a fish diet. Harley’s new specialist said that is the best route we can continue to take with Harley (and Lovie). For treats he said feed him raw veggies…I’m sure Harley will laugh in my face if I try to do that (literally, if you knew him, you would understand).

Har sprawled out across the back seat…which is never empty. Always has carseats. 

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After that short stint of realizing the carseats weren’t there, he resumed his normal riding position 🙂

Stephanie Bruce

Stephanie—home cook, DIY addict, seasonal decor fanatic, and proud chicken wrangler living in a Victorian house that’s always a project. Whether I’m cooking with garden-fresh ingredients, herding mischievous chickens, or tackling another DIY, I’m here to share the fun (and chaos).