[jkarline]

I own a 10 1/2 year old male Shar Pei/Lab mix - Bruiser. Great demeanor, attitude and health. Over the past month or so, his Right eye has begun to bulge farther and farther out. His thir eyelid is exposed and the eyelid does not fully close. His physical attitude is a roller coaster from wagging tail to having to practically push him to go outside. I have also noticed he is drinking almost three times the amount of water than in the past.
We have taken him to a vet weekly for the past three weeks and were given Amoxicillin, an anti-inflammatory and an ointment. After the first week, the inflammation had gone down a small amount, but it was not going away. We were told to continue with the Amoxicillin and was switched to a Cortizone ointment due to the redness. Our visit yesterday, the vet did a stain and determined that now there is an ulcer on the cornea so the Cortizone has been stopped and we are back to the last ointment. The vet was treating it as an abscess, but now believes since the treatment is not working that there is more to the story and he has referred us to a canine opthalmologist.
I have searched everywhere to find out what this might be as the fee just to walk in the door is $100, I love my dog, he has been with me through the death of a child and two military deployments, but I want to be able to read about possibilities before I put him through a barrage of tests that may not yield anything different.
I have only been able to match his symptoms to Retrobulbar Abscess, but was hoping to find "if vet believes it is not an abscess it may be this. . . " but I have found nothing.
Can anyone help point me in the right direction so I can make an informed decision about the next steps in his treatment?

 

[sassafras]

If the eye is bulging out to the point that the lid can't close, there is either something wrong with the eye (like glaucoma) or there is something behind or below the eye pushing it out. Retrobulbar abscesses are one possibility but certainly things like tumors can occur in that retrobulbar space, too. Either way, you're not going to know without more diagnostics.

 

[katG]

The excessive water drinking might be from the meds. I don't know what is wrong with your dog, but I understand how difficult it is to make decisions about specialists etc. It does get incredibly expensive, and its always a gamble whether they are even going to give you any answers or not. One thing I would perhaps suggest, if you do end up going to the specialist... unless they are certain what the problem is, have them do a few tests. If they just keep saying "try this and come back in a week" then you're going to be spending a lot of money at $100 to walk in plus treatments/tests/etc. We had an eye problem with one of our Boston Terriers that wouldn't heal and it was always come back in a week... we ended up spending so much money just to come back and have a test they tried to put off to begin with.

The only experience I've had with a dog with a bulging eye was with another Boston Terrier we had. He ended up having cancer in his nose, and the tumor grew and started pushing his eye out.