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Post by Andrew on Jul 18, 2014 11:23:08 GMT 10
Hi Tom,
I have a bitch who is a good chaser during the day but just figured out she has "night blindness" and can't see far under the lights.
What are the options i have to rectify this issue and get her racing under lights without any issues?
Thanks
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Post by Tom Meulman on Jul 20, 2014 8:10:13 GMT 10
Hi Andrew,
Mate I hate to disappoint you but to the best of my current knowledge there is no cure for that particular condition unless it is caused by cataracts and these are removed, but usually this only occurs in much older greyhounds, and having this done can be expensive.
Or it is caused by Pannus, which is a chronic rapidly progressive disease where the cornea of the eye is invaded by blood vessels, dark pigmentation and scar tissue. The progress of this disease, if detected early enough, can be slowed by the use of cortisone based eye drops, but care needs to be taken with the timing of the treatments so as not to breach drug withholding times and copping a positive swab as a result.
In most instances night blindness is caused by Retinal Atrophy which is a degenerative disease with most likely an inherited predisposition, and can affect greyhounds from as young as 12 months of age.
Worst of all, as I have said earlier, there is no cure for this condition and all you can do is race her during daylight hours if possible and/or restrict her racing to tracks that are particularly well lit up.
However in the first instance have her eyes thoroughly examined by your Veterinarian, just in case there is a treatment that can cure the cause of her night blindness.
Cheers,
Tom
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Post by Andrew on Sept 15, 2014 20:32:58 GMT 10
Thanks Tom,
I have a question further to this but a different set of greyhounds.
I own 2 greyhound bitches who broke in well and did bite on the lure but now in pre training they are no where near interested, I have read that it could be they have lost eye site or something like that? I read this on a site via Dr Jim Gannon.
We have tried flashing a light in there eyes in the dark to see if their pupils focus but their pupils just stay small, does this mean there is an issue with their eye site? If so what is the treatment?
Thanks
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Post by Tom Meulman on Sept 16, 2014 11:57:15 GMT 10
Hi Andrew,
Firstly I must admit that I doubt very much that they would have lost vision to the extent in such a short time that it is interfering with their chasing the lure. There are so many other reasons for this to occur that are far more likely, such as illness , injury, or even just having lost interest.
If you are doing the pretraining yourself after having them thoroughly checked, take them back to the track they were educated at just to see what has happened. If they are away being pretrained, bring them back home and proceed as above.
In regard to checking their eyesight yourself keep in mind that if the eyesight is poor in low light conditions the pupil will enlarge so much that it appears to take up most of the eye in the process of trying to get as much light in the eye as possible in order to improve the sight.
In every instance the pupil will shrink if a bright light is focused on the eye, and as you would imagine this can temporarily cause eye problems. It is therefore best to simply take the greyhounds from a brightly lit area, or from a sunny outside area to indoors where the light is poor to check the reaction of the pupil of eac greyhound under those conditions.
Doing this would also give you some comparison between the pupil size of each greyhound because as a general rule the poorer the vision the larger the pupil in poor light conditions.
Cheers,
Tom
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