Furcamper going blind. Your $0.02 to help next trip?

[portscanner]

Unfortunately, Claire is loosing her sight. She makes it around the S&B just fine - most the time. Ocasionally will miss a doorway and walk into the wall. She has some sight, but if a room is semi-darkened, she cant see a thing. She has been diagnosed with epelipsy and acording to the doctor, this is the reason for the loss if sight. Fortunately the drugs have stopped the grand mal seizures.

She still likes taking walks and riding in the car. I have blocked off the couch to keep her from jumping up on it (so she wont misjudge the distance going up or down and get hurt). I am going to spend a bit of time to make sure she learns the couch is unavailable to her any more. We already use a ramp to get in and out (as the entance door has always been an unsafe distance from the ground for the dogs) so she is familiar with going up and down it.

We have not been camping since the onset of her problems. We are going to try to go on a trip to Camp Driveway this evening and see what happens.

Any suggestions or items we should be thinking about before our next big trip?

[BB_TX]

Not questioning your vet. Just my experience.
Our previous Golden (RIP) developed "mini" seizures. Our vet referred us to an animal neurologist who prescribed phenobarbital which controlled the seizures. But later she also went blind, almost overnight. This time our vet referred us to an animal opthamologist. He immediately said he thought from the symptoms she had rocky mountain spotted fever. Started her on medication for it until the test results came back. He said it would not hurt her, and if it was RMSF it would give a head start on fighting it and maybe prevent eye damage. Well, test results came back positive and treatment continued. Vision came back within a couple weeks. On top of that, she no longer needed phenobarbital for seizures. Coincidence?

[blackeyed1]

When our cocker spaniel started going blind, it was traumatic for her to be taken out of her comfort zone (the house and everything in its place) and then go into the 5th wheel. She was having bad panic attacks because the camper layout wasn't her usual house routine. So we would take her to our vet and his kennel when we would go camping. Of course she had our other dog to curl up with in the pen as comfort. Due to her other health issues, she passed away less than a year later.