Polly the Pannus Pup

Our pup is sick.  Well...not exactly sick, but we discovered last week that she has an auto-immune disease called Pannus, which causes inflammation of her eyes. 

Sad day!

A few weeks ago, I noticed that she had some "eye-gunk" that seemed stuck on her eye...like it hadn't yet moved over to the corner of her eye so I could wipe it away.  No biggie, I thought.

Well, after about a week, Marc and I noticed that the eye-gunk was still there, and, shockingly, it was starting to turn red!  Off to the vet we go, where she was diagnosed with Pannus after a few rounds of tests.

Waiting for tests to be completed at the vet...

It turns out that this disease is not a huge huge deal since we caught it so early, but we will need to give her eye-drops every day...for the rest of her life.  Only a slight inconvenience, but it's worth it to have a pup with healthy eyes =)

The reason I share this is because I had never heard of Pannus before, and after doing some research, we realized that Polly is definitely German Shepherd!  Unfortunately, she also had all the odds working against her - the vet said this is an extremely common disease in Shepherds (it's almost ONLY found in them!) AND it's made worse by being at high elevations. 

Patiently waiting...she jumped up on the table all by herself!!

Well, Polly...at least we know what you are and I'm very sorry that you were adopted into a family that lived at high altitude.  I'm sure going to the mountains every weekend in the summer didn't help the situation =)