Tia

UPDATE – 1/24

Tia’s surgery took close to 3 hours! Dr. Disney needed to measure and cut the skin grafts absolutely perfect in order to have a successful outcome. She carefully cut a section of skin from above Tia’s upper eyelids and inserted and stitched that skin to an area under each of Tia’s eyes. She also had to attach tabs on the outside of each eye in order to keep the graphs from shrinking. Once the surgery was done, Tia needed to wear a huge cone so that absolutely NOTHING touched those very fragile skin grafts. Even with a perfect surgery and 24/7 cone adherence, we still weren’t sure whether her body would accept or reject the skin grafts. Fifteen days later, we were cautiously optimistic as Tia was driven to Blue Pearl to have Dr. Disney take out her stitches. As you can see from the new pictures, the surgery was a great success! By the way, Tia was adopted to a wonderful family shortly after surgery and is loving her new life! A huge thank you to all of our generous donors who made this complicated and expensive surgery possible!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tia requires a very specialized eye surgery and we desperately need your help to pay for it! She is a beautiful 8-month old Shepard mix that recently came to CAWS. This pup is chill and loves everyone and everything. She is so perfect in every way except one . . . her eyes.

Here’s Tia’s story: At just 9 weeks old, Tia was surrendered to a shelter in Northern Utah because she had “entropion” in both eyes. What is “entropion,” you ask? It is a genetic condition in which a portion of the eyelid is inverted or folded inward. This causes eyelashes or hair to irritate and scratch the surface of the eye, leading to corneal ulceration or perforation.

The shelter took sweet Tia to a veterinarian for a surgical repair, which involves the removal of a section of skin under each eye and stitching it together in order to tighten the lower eyelid so as to bring it away from the eye. For whatever reason, the surgery failed. To make matters worse, a second surgery was performed and the surgeon over-corrected, taking out too much skin, resulting in Tia having outward rolling eyelids that leave her lower eye sockets completely exposed to wind, dirt, foxtails, bugs, and infection. If left untreated, Tia will have chronic conjunctivitis and dry eyes, and the condition will eventually dry out her corneas, causing damage that could possibly lead to blindness.

Where we are today: CAWS took Tia into our program because we wanted to give her a much-needed last chance to get her eyes repaired. We knew that two vets had failed her, and we wanted to give her the best possible surgeon. Fast forward a week, Tia saw an experienced Ophthalmologist at Blue Pearl Pet Hospital. The Ophthalmologist feels that she can help Tia significantly with surgery. She explained that when too much skin is taken (as in the over-correction surgery), that skin is forever gone. So, she plans on surgically applying skin grafts under both eyes to replace the missing skin. She says she can improve Tia’s eyes significantly. We are ecstatic at the news!