Turns out, not only is he old and blind, he's also got cushings disease. He has a tumor on his pituitary. Symptoms: excessive drinking, excessive peeing, excessive eating, thinned out hair, blindness. So, the dog's a real mess. But, I was with him no more than 1 minute and I knew he was coming home with us anyway! He is the sweetest thing, and has the most wonderful disposition...how could I leave him there to be euthanized?
We took him on a foster arrangement so that we could have him checked by a vet and make sure that the disease wasn't too far gone for him. The good news is that the disease is treatable with some fairly expensive medicine. But, it's treatable, and he's ours now. We've had to special order the medicine...so we haven't been able to start him on it. We hope to get it on Monday. Once he's on that, the symptoms should go away, except of course for the blindness. He pees a lot, so at night we have to get up a few times and take him out, and when we're gone during the day we have to kennel him. I can't wait to get him on his medicine so we can stop worrying about the peeing!!!
He makes me smile every day...much of the time because he's bumping into things and looks funny when he walks himself into a corner. But, it's really amazing how well he does for being blind!!!
Here's our guy, Sparky:
