Yorkshire terrier- severely dry eyes

[babyproblems]

Recently adopted a lovely golden oldie (think he is a yorkie/dachshund cross) and he’s been with us about a month. He’s old - approx 15; not our first senior rescue but I’ve no experience of this specific problem- he has extremely dry eyes. He is almost blind I am quite sure of that - and he is currently recovering from a stressful few months maybe more as he’s been seized, given to pound then to refuge, then on to us.
Wondering if anyone has any experience of severe dry eye in their dog and what worked or didn’t? Currently we are giving ‘optimunne’ twice daily but I’m not seeing much improvement. I’m also giving him eye drops (ocucan) multiple times a day (all on vets advice). If I don’t give the ocucan drops within 3 hours say his eyes will be almost bone dry. Theres virtually no tear production from what I can tell. I’m also cleaning them daily usually twice to avoid infection. Any tips or experience welcomed! I’ve also read its a very common genetic trait in Yorkshire terriers.
thanks x

I have a 16 yr old and 10 yr old yorkie mama and daughter pair.
Actual purebred though.
Neither one have issues with dry eyes.

What does your Vet say?

You could try simple eye ointment. I buy it from Amazon or eBay, as pharmacists recoil in horror if you say it's for a dog.

Dry eye is an autoimmune disease and if it’s been untreated for a long period before you got him then the tear producing tissue may have been irrevocably damaged. Optimmune contains cyclosporine which dampens down the immune response, but it depends if there is functioning gland there to save. Your vet can get a stronger cyclosporin ointment from Summit if the optimmune hasn’t increased tear production but other than that it’s tear replacement/lubrication to try and keep the eyes comfortable. Does he have a lot of pigment over the front of the eye? One of the aims of treatment is to prevent that but if they have been neglected you may be past the point where treatment has much to offer other than improving comfort levels. A lot of lubricants are designed for human contact lens wearers who can put them in frequently as needed. A thicker ointment based treatment e.g. lacrilube will last longer.

(The stronger cyclosporine is off licence so they need to have tried optimmune and demonstrated it’s not working first)

@Patchworksack thanks that’s really really helpful!! I’d read a bit about cyclisporine online. We are still using optimunne for now. He has one eye that is very cloudy - I’m fairly sure he can’t see much at all- and the other is much better but they are both severely dry. If I didn’t put anything in the morning say, by lunch they’d easily be absolutely bone dry.

Hes had a tough time of it probably for the last year so I am wondering if we are too late to really make any major improvements for him 😕 if he is completely blind in the one eye that is clouded and completely dry, and we can’t improve the dryness or protect his eye really I wondered if he’d be better without it but that makes me very sad. X

Our dog had dry eye.
We did all the eye washing, ointment and eye drops ,but there was no sign of improvement .
The vet suggested a operation to reroute his saliva gland, but we decided we wanted the eye removed because he was clearly in a lot of pain and he didn't like the ointments.
He is coping very well with one eye and so much happier.

Ddog has dry eyes, and we use a combination of optimmune and xialin night, which is a human OTC dry eye medication. I tend to just get mine off amazon because it's easier. It's a lot thicker so it lasts longer.

Thanks for your replies, the optimubbe has improved one eye but the other is still very dry. Going to carry on for another few weeks and see how he goes..